The board of Pittsburgh’s Urban Redevelopment Authority has adopted a tenant protection policy, as part of the city larger efforts to safeguard and preserve affordable housing.

The URA’s tenant protection policy creates three additional responsibilities for landlords before they can end tenants’ leases: it gives tenants more time to move out, requires relocation assistance if multiple leases are being terminated, and requires landlords to notify local government of evictions.

More notice is always better, said Tom Cummings, director of housing for the URA.

“It’s important to have advanced notice of these types of actions so that possibly assistance can be provided to those tenants, or some sort of a plan could be implemented to help the tenants.”

The tenant protection policy is not citywide and is not retroactive, said Cummings.

“Starting from now going forward, it would only impact those projects that purchase URA land and or receive URA financing for the development of multi-family housing.”

All other developments or rental units simply have to comply with Pennsylvania’s Landlord and Tenant Act, passed in 1951.

Mayor Bill Peduto issued an executive order in February 2017 that called for greater tenant protections in projects developed on public land or built with public money.

(Photo credit: 1sock / Flickr )