From his office along Homestead's Eighth Avenue, Doug Van Haitsma has an expansive vision of how to rebuild some of the neighborhoods still suffering from a decades-long slide of urban decay in the Mon Valley.

"It's about tackling housing rehabilitation one neighborhood at a time," said Mr. Van Haitsma, real estate development director for the Mon Valley Initiative, a nonprofit coalition of 11 community development corporations.

In the valley towns which once hosted expansive and vibrant steel factories, the agency, together with Allegheny County and the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency, is in the midst of a housing push that could change the face of many neighborhoods in the Mon Valley.

From the East Thirteenth Street corridor in Homestead to Andrew Street in Munhall to Fifth Avenue in Rankin or in the hilly neighborhood on Parker Avenue just above Carnegie Library in Braddock, advocates of the building initiative say the impact of new single-family housing units is obvious. The housing is available mostly to low-income buyers at reduced prices, but market-value homes will be available to all buyers soon.

"I grew up in these neighborhoods and the housing revitalization that we see happening in Braddock and much of the Mon Valley is the truest form of change I have seen in many years," Tina Doose, a Braddock councilwoman, said as county and state officials celebrated the re-opening of a 90-year-old building on Corey Avenue on Monday.

The tan brick building sat empty for many years and was almost torn down because it was an additional eyesore in a town full of abandoned properties. It was renovated at a cost of about $1 million this year and now houses nine spacious new rental units.

Ms. Doose, a board member of the Braddock Economic Development Corp., said the Mon Valley Initiative has proven that projects like the Corey Avenue apartment building and other single-family housing projects in Rankin, East Pittsburgh and Swissvale are an effective way of enhancing economic development in the Mon Valley.

"There has been little or no investment of this kind in the Mon Valley for years. And we now see that people don't want to leave these communities if they have good and affordable housing," she said, adding that almost all the homes and rental units recently built in Braddock were leased or sold before their construction was completed.

"We are beginning to see what we have been talking about for years, " said Allegheny County Chief Executive Dan Onorato.

Since 2004, his administration has invested about $27 million in new housing, renovation of old apartment units and street reconstruction projects mostly in Braddock, Rankin and Swissvale.

Mr. Van Haitsma said the county's investment is used as matching funds by the Mon Valley Initiative, which sells tax credits it is awarded from the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency to lenders like Bank of New York Mellon Corp., PNC Bank and Citizens Bank to secure funding for the projects.

Each housing project requires its own specific funding package, said Mr. Van Haitsma, adding that the Mon Valley Initiative also depends on Community Development Block Grants and loans from the Federal Home Loan Bank.

For example, the agency spent $3.9 million on a joint project to renovate the Corey Avenue apartment building, build three townhouses across the street and build townhouses in East Pittsburgh. Most of the funding came from PNC Multi Family Capital, which put up $3.3 million in exchange for Pennsylvania Housing Finance Authority tax credits.

"The success of what we do depends on the strength of the community groups we work with and their commitment to identifying neighborhoods where we could make an impact," said Mr. Van Haitsma.

The community groups not only identify neighborhoods; they also help with the recruiting of about 60 percent of the home buyers and people interested in apartment leases in the new buildings, he added.

The Mon Valley Initiative works with community development corporations in Braddock, Duquesne, Downtown, East Pittsburgh, Charleroi, Homestead, Monessen, North Braddock, Rankin, Swissvale and Turtle Creek.

"What we have found is that there are many nice houses in all of these neighborhoods, but people often can't see that because of all the blight around them," he said. "We try to tackle such neighborhoods with expansive projects like a 25-house construction that can actually change the look of a neighborhood."

That is what the Mon Valley Initiative is doing with its 30 single-family housing projects in Braddock and North Braddock.

Sometimes the goal is to stop the spread of abandoned properties, which often happens in a domino fashion.

"We don't want the blight to spread. Many times, we see neighborhoods which have pretty nice houses, but then a few abandoned properties in the same area have the capacity to create other abandoned properties and absentee landlords," he said.

To that end, the Mon Valley Initiative is always looking for properties to buy: the former Slovak Social Club of East Pittsburgh, a former church in Swissvale to be converted into condos, and an automotive garage on Library Street in Braddock, which will be converted into a loft.

The sale prices for the homes range from $60,000 to $75,000 and they have income requirements. Depending on the size of the family, a qualified home buyer can make a maximum income of either 80 percent or 115 percent of the median income in a particular area.

"What we see [MVI doing] in the Mon Valley is a model of what we want to see happening in other parts of the state," said Brian Hudson, executive director of the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency.

Citing the number of ongoing new housing and renovation projects in the Mon Valley, Mr. Hudson said Western Pennsylvania has emerged as a competitor to the Philadelphia region, which for years won the lion's share of tax credits for redevelopment projects.

"I like what I see in the Mon Valley," Mr. Hudson said. "It is a model [of housing redevelopment] that I hope places like Philadelphia, Lancaster, Reading, Harrisburg and York will adopt."