Wynona Harper has a dream to transform part of a Lincoln Park neighborhood in Penn Hills from a rubble-strewn lot into new housing and other amenities. In 2022, Penn Hills razed five condemned homes there in its Townwide Demolition Program. Instead of lying fallow and becoming overgrown attractive targets for illegal dumping and wild animals, the lots may become a model for new development in the municipality.“My son got killed up here,” says Harper. She founded Jamar’s Place of Peace after her son Jamar Hawkins’ 2013 murder. The trauma propelled Harper to become a community activist.Harper’s nonprofit began modestly — with her handing out food from her car. It now provides food and clothing plus economic and substance abuse counseling support. She operates among a network of Pittsburgh area anti-violence groups. “I serve this community out of respect,” she says. The proposed housing project will expand the nonprofit’s footprint in Penn Hills.A Penn Hills resident for 26 years, Harper has watched her Lincoln Park neighborhood fray at the edges. Once it was a fashionable Pittsburgh suburb, but many Lincoln Park homes built 80-120 years ago began to deteriorate as their owners aged and died. Upkeep became a financial hardship, and many single-family homes were abandoned.Jamar’s Place of Peace housing development proposed site plan. Courtesy Penn Hills Planning Department.Penn Hills uses federal Community Development Block Grants to pay for its demolition program. But because the municipality doesn’t own the properties, they are left to revert to nature. There’s no money and no legal obligation for Penn Hills to maintain the vacant lots after the homes are demolished. This has led to a proliferation of vacant lots that some residents claim is harmful to their health.Harper considers the abandoned homes and vacant lots a nuisance. She’s battled falling trees and invading vegetation from lots next to her home off Lincoln Avenue. “It’s horrible,” says Harper.Wynona Harper. Photo courtesy Wynona Harper.“We were constantly complaining about them taking those houses down,” says Harper. “I always wanted to do a development in order to help the next person. … It came from a dream of mine to help the people.”In 2021, Penn Hills began the process to condemn three houses on Velte Street and two on Doak Street. Letters to the property owners of record were returned to the municipality as undeliverable. Contractors demolished the houses, and Velte Street disappeared — all that remains is a row of utility poles that carried telephone and power lines to the houses once located there. Once eight separate parcels with homes, garages and other buildings, now only bricks, tile and other debris occupy the lot across the street from the home where Pittsburgh Pirates player Willie Stargell lived.In October, the Penn Hills Council unanimously approved transferring the eight vacant parcels to Harper through the Allegheny County Vacant Property Recovery Program. “The Vacant Property Recovery Program is a good way to get vacant properties in the hands of a responsible resident or developer and put it back on the tax rolls,” wrote Penn Hills Planning Director Chris Blackwell in a memo recommending the transfer.Pittsburgh Pirate Willie Stargell lived in this home across from where Wynona Harper proposes to build the Jamar’s Place of Peace supportive housing development. Photo by David Rotenstein.Blackwell, who is retiring at the end of December, worked with Harper throughout the process. “She came in and mentioned wanting to purchase properties through the Vacant Property Recovery Program,” says Blackwell.That was two years ago. Harper secured an initial $100,000 grant to design the development. According to the 2022 application Harper filed, the project is made up of seven houses “that will provide transient supportive housing to homeless and unhoused individuals.”Supportive housing offers safe and affordable housing combined with social services. The Jamar’s Place of Peace development will provide relief in a housing market where Pittsburgh and Allegheny County leaders are trying to create more affordable housing in initiatives like 500 in 500 days.Harper’s houses will be prefabricated “tiny houses” measuring 14 feet by 48 feet. The proposal includes a parking lot, chicken coop, garden plot and a “farm store.”The development, says Harper, will serve the entire community, not just the supportive housing residents. “It is for the community to heal it, to heal that area. And the community will be more than welcome. That’s what it’s for, that community.”Penn Hills Mayor Pauline Calabrese, center, and Penn Hill Manager Scott Andrejchak, right, at the Oct. 21 council meeting where the Vacant Property Recovery Program resolution for Jamar’s Place of Peace was approved. Photo by David Rotenstein.Now that she has a green light to acquire the property, Harper needs to raise more than $1 million to make the project a reality. She is applying for bank loans and will be exploring grant opportunities from government and philanthropic funders.Harper also needs to clear some regulatory hurdles, including getting zoning approvals and building permits. “She’s not your typical developer,” says Blackwell. The planner says that Harper is motivated by factors that set her apart from many of the real estate professionals he ordinarily works with. She’s not driven by market studies and not deterred by some of the things that have stalled new housing production in Lincoln Park. “There’s a tight margin in Penn Hills of how much you invest and how much in return,” says Blackwell.Will Harper’s plan come to fruition? “I think it is because of her persistence,” says Blackwell.The post New housing proposed for Lincoln Park in Penn Hills appeared first on NEXTpittsburgh.