Tenants endure deteriorating conditions as some Allegheny County subsidized properties sit in limbo

The residents cite leaky roofs, rodents, mold and insects as major problems.

By MEGAN TROTTER
TribLive

Vines have swallowed Patrice Aaron’s back window.

They press against the glass from outside her home, blocking nearly all of the sunlight. For the single mother of two, the vines are just one of a handful of health and safety issues inside the Bedford Avenue home in Pittsburgh’s Hill District. They stem from her landlord’s ongoing absence.

Aaron, 32, has lived with the deteriorating conditions of her two-story home for years. For other tenants of properties owned by the New Jersey-based company NB Affordable, the list of issues looks different, but the pattern is the same.

Problems linger and repairs don’t come.

Over the past two years, tenants have been reporting collapsing ceilings, leaking roofs, holes in walls, mold, mushroom growth and severe rodent and insect infestations across roughly 1,300 subsidized housing units in neighborhoods like Homewood, the Hill District and the Mon View Heights complex in West Mifflin.

“It’s been hard because it’s been taking over a lot of people’s mental health, including mine. I don’t want my kids to live like this. I never wanted them to live like this,” Aaron said. “They just don’t care about how people’s living.”

Over a two-week period, TribLive visited four properties in Allegheny County, where tenants gave tours of their homes.

Vines, mold and mounting frustration

Allegheny County Director of Housing Strategy Ed Nussar said the problems began to pick up in 2024 when the executives of NB Affordable were indicted in New Jersey federal court. They faced charges for diverting U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development funds meant for property repairs and for separate federal mortgage fraud schemes and pleaded guilty in August 2024.

NB Affordable, a private equity firm, acquired the Allegheny County properties in 2023 from the nonprofit Allegheny Housing Rehabilitation Corporation. AHRCO, the largest non-governmental affordable housing provider in the county, sold the affordable housing units to 14 different companies run by or linked to NB Affordable.

In the first few months of 2025, the banks that owned most of the NB Affordable properties filed for foreclosure. The local courts appointed the San Diego-based company Trigild to be a receiver at most properties. Trigild then hired Lynd Living, which is headquartered in San Antonio, as the property manager.

But the problems didn’t end there.

Confusion over the responsible party for building maintenance soared among tenants, and property conditions worsened. That led Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr.’s office to charge the owners of one of the larger NB Affordable properties, Mon View Heights, with creating a public nuisance.

NB Affordable residents also established a tenant organizing committee to spread information and take action.

Since then Renters United Allegheny, an active tenant organizing committee under OnePA, has been meeting with local legislators on a semi-regular basis in an effort to advocate for housing improvements.

OnePA is a grassroots movement focused on fighting for safe, healthy and permanently affordable housing.

“The company functionally disappeared, in terms of paying their mortgage payments, paying property managers, paying utilities, and most consequentially for tenants, what that means is that property managers, Lynd, did not want to do work anymore because they were not getting paid,” said Matt Rubin, an advocate from OnePA.

Over the past two years, the tenant organizing group has requested meetings with NB Affordable, receivers, property managers and other parties. Most recently, Rubin sent a letter on behalf of Renters United Allegheny to Lynd Living and Trigild, requesting a response by July 29.

The letter received little response with no commitment to collaborate, Rubin said.

On Friday, Rubin said leadership at Lynd Living had contacted some tenants who had left multiple voicemails to the company. Lynd Living told the tenants that Trigild would be reaching out to them in the next few weeks, Rubin said.

Trigild did not respond to a reporter’s request for comment.

“What it really comes down to is we think it’s atrocious,” Rubin said.

Home stopped feeling like home

Crystal White, a 47-year-old resident on Watt Street in the Hill District, has lived in her NB Affordable row house for 16 years. The home was once stable and suitable for her family, but conditions worsened significantly over the years.

White now spends only about two days a week there, opting to stay with family, friends or in hotels the rest of the time. Her two children, ages 17 and 11, move around with her.

“We’ve been going through a lot of water intrusion, leaking windows, pulling plaster, broken steps, rodents entering from connected homes, and we repeatedly report these problems, and they don’t make any repairs,” White said.

White said the bathroom has large amounts of black mold and mushroom growth around the toilet. The toilet itself is not anchored to the ground.

On the days White and her kids do stay at the house, she said her son, age 17, who has autism, struggles with the living environment, often finding the state of the home overstimulating.

“He basically barricades himself in the room,” White said.

While White said her son’s bedroom is considered to be “the best room in the house,” it still poses significant safety issues, with several areas of exposed electrical fixtures, which the family covered up with furniture.

Melinda Kinney, a 43-yearold who lives in NB housing on Fifth Avenue in Uptown, said she struggles with depression due to the state of her apartment in addition to several medical issues, including epilepsy.

“Why bother beautifying? Why would I bother taking close care of anything, if they’re not going to deal with the issues, anyway?” Kinney said.

Part of Kinney’s ceiling in her hallway droops from water damage, sewer flies are rampant and the security system outside her apartment door has been loudly beeping every few seconds since she moved in.

TribLive staff observed system still chirping loudly as its screen flashed each information from each the apartment’s floors on Aug. 4.

Kinney said the noise is especially upsetting because she fears the sound could trigger a seizure. So far, Kinney has not yet experienced a noise-induced epileptic episode due to the beeping.

Kinney said the property manager told her she owed 10 months worth of fees in April. White said she has been threatened with eviction and faces financial strain from high utility bills.

Many tenants have also struggled to renew leases and complete required recertifications for housing subsidies. Others say they have received notices claiming they owe thousands of dollars in back rent with little documentation to support the charges.

“We just want affordable, safe house housing,” White said. “Most of us keep nice, clean places and we shouldn’t be treated like this. We’re treated like we’re nothing.”

In March, Allegheny County Council approved legislation that bans landlords from punishing renters who join tenants’ associations, request repairs to ensure housing conditions are safe, file complaints with government agencies or exercise any other rights that renters are guaranteed by law.

The bill was co-sponsored by Councilmen Jordan Botta and Alex Rose and Allegheny County Executive Sara Innamorato. Under the legislation, a tenant who believes they’re being targeted can force the landlord to prove that’s not the case — rather than the other way around.

“People in low-income housing are particularly susceptible to terrible landlord conditions. You know, landlords aren’t able to collect rent like clockwork and then treat maintenance like it’s optional,” Botta said.

“NB housing in particular is from out of state, and honestly, you can’t manage Pittsburgh from a boardroom hundreds of miles away if you’re not paying attention to what tenants are actually living through day to day,” Botta continued.

For now, there’s nowhere to go

Nussar, the county director of housing strategy, said that while the properties are located within Allegheny County, the tenants are at the mercy of the process to find a buyer, as the decision regarding who will purchase the properties ultimately rests with the receiver.

In September 2024, Zappala’s office charged Mon View Heights’ property owners with creating a public nuisance. The owner then defaulted on a $17 million mortgage, leading Merchants Bank of Indiana to foreclose.

A court-appointed receiver took control of the property.

In June, Zappala’s office asked the court to set aside $1 million from the property’s pending sale for demolition, sewer repairs and surveillance. A month later, Common Pleas Judge Chelsa Wagner approved the property’s $7.5 million sale to Camber Property Group, a real estate developer in New York.

On July 30, Common Pleas Judge Jill Rangos denied Zappala’s request to divert the $1 million and also denied his request for a site visit.

Zappala’s office appealed that ruling to the Pennsylvania Superior Court on Aug. 10 and is seeking a written opinion from Rangos, who did not issue one.

Nussar told TribLive on Aug. 7 that the receivers had not made the county aware of any other potential buyers for other NB Affordable properties.

“We have had thousands of county residents that have been subjected to these conditions because through no fault of their own, simply because the owners of their property engaged in criminal activity, and unfortunately, there is not the magic wand to wave to do this quickly and restore everything,” Nussar said.

Some tenants are searching for ways to move out of their properties, but for many residents, their efforts have been in vain.

Kinney was approved for a Section 8 voucher in January, but couldn’t find a place that provided what she needed for her disability. Other tenants, like White, haven’t been able to save up enough money to move because they need to cover their own repair costs or pay for alternative places to stay.

Nussar said county officials have supported intervening in the receivership and emphasized finding buyers with the capital and experience to restore and preserve the properties as affordable housing because Allegheny County does not have additional housing units available for households to move into.

The county executive’s “500 in 500” initiative, which housed 500 individuals by October 2025, illustrates the scale of the challenge. Nussar said the project was considered ambitious and effectively moved people at a pace of one household per day.

At that rate, relocating 150 or more households would take roughly six months, he said.