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Wednesday, September 25, 2002

By Steve Levin, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

The Mount Oliver neighborhood is one of the smallest communities in Pittsburgh, with just 584 people, two schools, one bar and one restaurant -- and the bar and restaurant are part of the same business.

	Census 2000 Observatory Hill on an upward trend Graphic: Neighborhood vitality

But newly released Census 2000 data show that some big changes occurred in the area between 1990 and 2000, changes that have radically altered the community's composition.

The figures show that during that decade, Mount Oliver dropped from a neighborhood consistently ranked near the top third of Pittsburgh's 90 communities in education, income, employment and low poverty to one now near the bottom in those categories.

"This is causing a great deal of concern for myself and others," said Pittsburgh Councilman Gene Ricciardi, whose District 3 includes Mount Oliver. "It's a great challenge for us."

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette analyzed census information about high school and college graduation rates, employment, poverty and household income levels to determine where the 90 city neighborhoods ranked in each category.

Mount Oliver was not alone in its drop over the last 10 years; Allegheny Center, the Bluff, Crafton Heights, East Hills, East Liberty and Hazelwood -- representing all four geographic points of the city -- dropped in the same categories.

What happened in Mount Oliver, a blue-collar community wedged between Mount Oliver Borough, the neighborhood of Arlington and St. Clair Village public housing complex, is a result of two factors.

First, the neighborhood's elderly population began to die off. In 1990, about 20 percent of the community's residents were 60 or older. By 2000, that percentage had dropped to about 15 percent. During the same period, there was a commensurate decline in the percentage of homes owned by people 55 and older.

Maria Moore, a real estate agent with Century 21-Rise/McIlrath in Carrick, said 75 percent of the homes she has sold in Mount Oliver belonged to elderly clients. Most, she said, had been in their homes for a half-century.

Secondly, during the late 1990s, the city demolished substantial public housing at Arlington Heights, just north of Mount Oliver, and a lesser amount at St. Clair Village, which abuts Mount Oliver to the east.

Homes formerly owned by elderly residents of Mount Oliver were bought -- "unfortunately and regrettably," Ricciardi said -- by people living outside the community. The absentee landlords have used the homes for government-subsidized Section 8 housing.

A U.S. Housing and Urban Development study from July shows that Section 8 housing represents a growing percentage of the area's rental property. In Arlington, 17 percent of all rental property is Section 8, while in Knoxville the percentage is 25 percent and in Carrick, 11 percent. Ricciardi said Mount Oliver also had a substantial increase in Section 8 rental housing.

He called the increase in those four parts of his district "compaction," and said it was not "living up to the goals of the [Section 8] program" because it was concentrating too many of those residents in too few neighborhoods.

In 2000, Mount Oliver ranked 87th out of Pittsburgh's 90 neighborhoods in the percentage of its residents 25 and older who had earned a high school degree or higher.

It had nearly 8 percent fewer employed workers in 2000 than 1990, and the number of households with less than $10,000 annual income almost doubled, from 29 in 1990 to 54 in 2000, representing nearly 24 percent of all households that year.

Patti Stewart, 49, a 20-year resident of Mount Oliver, said drug use had increased in the area, with deals even taking place on the grounds of nearby Murray Elementary School. There was a string of stolen cars and burglaries this summer.

"Most of the people don't want to get involved," said Stewart, one of the leaders of the Mount Oliver City/St. Clair Border Block Watch. "Even if I convince them to call 911 they don't want to be a witness because they're afraid of retaliation.

"A lot of people say to me, 'Why don't you move? It's getting bad.' I just tell them, 'This is my home.' "