Four years ago, Tiffany and Rob Robinson, married for 13 years and the parents of two daughters, decided it was time for a home of their own.

	Martha Rial Tiffany and Rob Robinson, with their daughters Tayler, 4, and Robbyn, 16 months, felt that they were "welcomed with opened arms" when they moved into Homewood. Click photo for larger image. Related article Lending a helpful hand in Homewood

They had rented for seven years in the Hill District, where Rob is a minister, and they knew they wanted an urban setting. But for Tiffany, Homewood wasn't exactly at the top of the list. That is, until she walked into their future home and got a feel for the neighborhood.

"I read things in the newspaper and thought it was a bad place," she said. "One person told us we were moving from the frying pan into the fire. But when [Rob] showed me the house, I was like, 'We're moving.' "

Tiffany's uncertainty reflects a widespread reaction to Homewood that has long bothered residents, who feel that perceptions of the East End neighborhood as a hotbed of crime, poverty and drugs are fueled and skewed by the news media. Less likely to grab headlines and a spot on the news, they say, is day-to-day evidence of a mostly strong, cohesive community of stately brick Victorian-style homes along tree-lined streets.

"Homewood has a long history as a stable African-American neighborhood," said Mulugetta Birru, former director of the Homewood-Brushton Revitalization and Development Corp., who recently stepped down as executive director of the city's Urban Redevelopment Authority. "It has a lot of beautiful homes and a lot of good families. Crime happens everywhere. There are a lot of good things happening in Homewood."

Among the good things happening in Homewood are a Community College of Allegheny County branch, a music school, a health clinic, an oral history museum, a YMCA and YWCA and the newly renovated Homewood Library.

The Robinsons have been in their three-story brick house on Mt. Vernon Street for nearly four years, and they intend to raise their children, 4-year-old Tayler and year-old Robbyn, in Homewood. The street is serene on this day as elderly residents sit on porches or tend to their yards. Young children play ball and chase each other down the street. Their laughter filters through the Robinson's living room window.

"The neighbors look out for each other," Robinson said. "They welcomed us with open arms. I felt pretty confident that this is where we want to be."

During the winter months, neighbors shovel snow from each other's sidewalks. A neighbor plows the street when the city neglects to do it.

"That's the misconception people have," Tiffany Robinson said, "that just because it's Homewood it has nothing good to offer. Just because it's a black area, it's not good, but that's not true. People who aren't from the neighborhood always have an opinion of something.

Lake Fong, Post-Gazette Four generations of Homewood residents: Nasir Butler, 4, with, from left, mom Chantelle Long, 24, grandmother Lawanda Long, 43, and great-grandmother Geneva Long, 64 at Geneva's apartment. Click photo for larger image.

"People have told my husband that we don't seem like the type of people who live in Homewood. Well, what type is that? People on welfare, drugs or drinking and don't want anything out of life? Some people think if you're from Homewood, you don't have a stable home or good credit."

Thanks to an increase in gun crimes last year, her neighborhood remains notorious in many people's minds. In June, Pittsburgh was named one of 15 cities to get a federal-led violent crime impact team. Homewood, which last year led the city in gun-related deaths with six, is a targeted neighborhood, along with the Hill District and the North Side.

The impact team brought in federal agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; the U.S. Marshals Service; and the Drug Enforcement Administration for six months to work with local police.

As in the early 1990s, the recent violence is partly drug-related. Petty disputes have been settled with guns, and innocent bystanders have been caught in the line of fire. But the impression many people have of Homewood may well be based on a few crime-ridden streets.

"We feel very safe here," Rob Robinson, 38, said. "Everywhere has its good and not so good. Homewood is not as bad as many people think it is, especially [as it is seen] in the media."

Robinson, an assistant pastor at Central Baptist Church in the Hill, was raised in Homewood; his wife, who works for Highmark affiliates, grew up in Wilkinsburg. The Robinsons want their children to take advantage of all that Homewood has to offer, such as the Afro-American Music Institute, a nonprofit school that offers training in voice, songwriting, arrangement and various musical instruments. Rob would also like to work as a pastor in the area to help improve the community.

"We certainly have a concern for the neighborhood," he said. "It always has the potential to do more. More funding needs to be channeled into the area, too. It can be vibrant again."

Where it began

Homewood, a valley of woods, fields and swamps in the 1850s, began as a few farms and houses and a railroad station. A refuge from the polluted Downtown and industrial river valleys, it soon became home to Pittsburgh's aristocracy, including George Westinghouse, Henry Clay Frick, Durbin Horne (who owned Horne's department store) and Andrew Carnegie. Homewood's borders stretched into what is now Point Breeze.

Black residents settled in the area as early as the 1860s, many of them former slaves who became servants for the wealthy. The Homewood African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church on Tioga Street was built in 1871, the first of dozens of places of worship ranging from storefronts to traditional churches that sprang up throughout the neighborhood.

	Lake Fong, Post-Gazette Homewood-Brushton Unified Sports team founder Lonnie Isaac, 64, works with neighborhood boys during a football practice at Willie Stargell Field last week. Click photo for larger image.

With the growing middle class in the 1890s, Homewood was transformed into a streetcar suburb. By the early 20th century, it was still largely Protestant and white, and many of its residents were European immigrants.

In 1917, Homewood experienced a preview of the white flight that would later transform the neighborhood when Pittsburgh Courier Publisher Robert L. Vann bought the house next door to his on Monticello Street and rented it to another black family. White neighbors held meetings to demand that blacks be forced to leave the block. Vann and his neighbor refused, and many whites fled to the suburbs.

Italian, Irish and German immigrants also faced discrimination from their white neighbors when they settled in the neighborhood. Nonetheless, the neighborhood had a history of integration with little racial strife until the 1950s. By that time, Italians had become the biggest ethnic group in Homewood.

A key moment occurred when construction of the Civic Arena displaced more than 8,000 residents of the Lower Hill, most of whom were black. Many of them moved to Homewood. As more blacks, many of them poor, moved in, whites moved out. Whites did not, however, abandon all of Homewood. Many stayed in the area south of the railroad tracks and renamed it Point Breeze.

Homewood's black population went from 22 percent in 1950 to 66 percent in 1960. Today, it is 97 percent.

As the African-American pop-ulation grew, prominent black families, such as the Vanns, Watsons and Goodes, emerged. Homewood's famous sons and daughters include photographer Charles "Teenie" Harris, jazz pianists Erroll Garner and Ahmad Jamal, fashion model Naomi Simms, broadcaster Bev Smith, educator Dr. Helen Faison, professional basketball pioneer Charlie Cooper and author John Edgar Wideman.

Now and then

Today, Homewood has more than 9,200 residents. Statistics reflect challenges facing the neighborhood. The number of single-parent families rose between 1990 and 2000, from 74 to 80 percent. The area lost 19 percent of its population in that time. Vacant housing units are up from 12 percent in 1990 to 21 percent in 2000, some of them city-owned. Of the houses in use, fewer than half are owner-occupied.

Homewood again has become home to people displaced by demolition of public housing projects. Longtime residents see some renters as a source of problems. Home owner Verbertine Williams, 67, has lived in Homewood since the 1950s. She raised her children in the neighborhood and a number of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren reside there. Williams said some new residents lack respect for the community.

"You get some people who were poor and destitute, on welfare year after year," she said. "Unless they're inspired, they're not going to change. If you're a homeowner, most of the time you are more responsible. We have to encourage younger families to own property."

Williams also blames the city. "It gets on you about snow, grass and cleanliness, but the city doesn't clean up their properties," she said. For Homewood to rebound, she said, it needs a community-wide effort of residents, leaders, and public and private interests.

The Long family has been in Homewood for four generations and has seen many changes. Geneva Long, 64, a mother of three, grandmother of five and great-grandmother of one, moved to Pittsburgh when she was 11. She grew up, met a man, the late Charles Long, and fell in love with him and the booming neighborhood they moved to.

"There were businesses and everything you could want. I just fell in love with Homewood. I've been living here all my life and never been afraid to live here. Even during the [1968] rioting, I wasn't afraid. And it's still nice. They're building it back up and we're doing OK."

Long, a retired surgical technician and homemaker, said she loved raising her children in Homewood and is happy her family chose to stay. Long's daughter Lawanda, 43, is a community organizer at the Homewood-Brushton Family Support Center. "I have love for Homewood," she said. "It's a safe haven for me."

Lawanda walks home from work almost every night without fear. "I know what the neighborhood used to be and what it will be as well," she said.

She recalled her days at the community-run Liberation School that taught black history and culture and provided a place to learn music, African dance and karate. The school taught residents to be proud of themselves and their neighborhood.

"That school was very important to who I am today," Long said. "We learned about our African heritage. It taught us how to be free ... lessons like, 'Don't be a litterbug.' We have to learn how to instill pride back into our community."

Long also fondly remembers roller skating at the Coliseum, the Black Arts Festival that drew thousands, buying albums from Dorsey's Record Shop, Homewood's oldest black-owned business, and early Saturday morning "candy runs" to Kinley's Drugstore, where she would stop to watch a man from Penn Hills stroll his horses down Franks-town Avenue.

"Homewood at that time was relatively self-sufficient and had all kinds of stores," longtime Homewood resident John Brewer said. "It just did not have employment for black people. Homewood was very much a whites-only work area."

The riots after the assassination of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. ravaged many black neighborhoods across the country. In Pittsburgh, the Hill District and Homewood were largely affected. There was one death in Homewood. A curfew was enforced by the National Guard for about a month. Looting and vandalism destroyed many businesses, which were primarily white-owned.

Today, the commercial district is not as vibrant as it was. Birru said a strong development organization would help invigorate the neighborhood. "There are a lot of committed people in Homewood," he said.

Lawanda Long is one of them. Not even during the gang violence of the early 1990s did she consider leaving, not even when her front door was firebombed because she was outspoken against criminal activity.

"It's all in how you feel about your community," Long said.

She had no trepidation about raising her daughter in Homewood. Chantelle, now 24, works for Ebony Development. She also decided to stay in the neighborhood to raise her son, Nasir Butler, now 4.

Nasir, who curiously explored his great-grandmother's apartment, stopped to say how much he likes living close to his "Nanma" (grandmother) and great-grandmother. Chantelle also makes sure her son uses the YMCA and Carnegie Library branch. "Homewood is very rich in history," she said. "I enjoy Homewood the way it is, but I just want to see improvements."

Homewood shows signs of a rebound with the construction of an elementary school that is opening this fall, several detached single-family houses along Finance Street and new businesses along Frankstown Avenue, including a RE/MAX real estate office and Family Dollar store. But residents say more is needed.

Among the needs: a supermarket, a recreation center, more retail shops, greater employment opportunities, better schools, quality rental housing, renovations to dilapidated homes, eliminating abandoned properties and overgrown lots, more financial institutions, accessible and affordable child care, more green spaces and parks, stronger and visible block watches and improved relations with the police.

"There needs to be more police presence, but they need to be more mindful of how to deal with people," Rob Robinson said. "They show no respect to people in the community. There has to be more training or education."

He is also concerned that the needs of the children are ignored. "The more you have for young people to get involved with, the less trouble they'll get into," Robinson said.

The future of Homewood's children is a concern to many.

"We need young people involved in the community," Lawanda Long said. "We need to cultivate them to take over when the old folks die off. There are a lot of outside influences on our children. We have to serve as buffers to help them make the right decisions."

Chantelle added that adults cannot fear young people either, and that young and old must work together for positive change to occur in the neighborhood.

Throughout its history with its bright spots and blemishes, Homewood has remained a cohesive neighborhood because of the tenacity of its residents.

"Change has to be left up to the people in the community," Chantelle said. "We have to have faith and want to do things to change."

"We certainly have a concern for the neighborhood. It always has the potential to do more. More funding needs to be channeled into the area, too. It can be vibrant again."

-- Homewood resident Rob Robinson