A month after a Pittsburgh shelter fire, unhoused people ‘strive for another day’

From left, Marvell Stillwell, 39, Tara Springer, 34, Anita Green, 43, and Timothy Maloni, 42, photographed throughout Pittsburgh in June 2024. The four have recent experience with homelessness and housing instability. (Photo by Stephanie Strasburg/PublicSource)

By Eric Jankiewicz, Stephanie Strasburg and Laura Turbay, PublicSource

It’s been nearly a month since a fire shut down Allegheny County’s low-barrier shelter Second Avenue Commons, suddenly displacing 188 people.

As homelessness continues to rise in the county, unhoused people and the people and agencies helping them considered the immediate response to the temporary shelter closure and the persistent challenges that the blaze only heightened.

Before the smoke had even cleared from the June 4 fire, the David L. Lawrence Convention Center was transformed into an 11-day temporary shelter for up to 150 people. When that closed, Pittsburgh Mercy opened an emergency shelter in the gymnasium of its Reedsdale Street facility. Not everyone who had been using Second Avenue Commons moved to the convention center and even more people peeled off in the transition to the Reedsdale shelter.

Advocates say longer-term shelter and affordable housing options remain scarce amid closures — including that of the Smithfield United Church of Christ almost exactly a year ago — and rising housing costs in the Pittsburgh area.

Two days after the fire, County Executive Sara Innamorato announced an initiative to make 500 affordable housing units available in 500 days . She acknowledged that the temporary shuttering of the 18-month-old shelter is a significant blow to those efforts.

PublicSource interviewed people who were displaced from the recent shelter fire or opted out of the shelter system to understand their experiences firsthand. Local organizations weighed in on the fire response and challenges around housing and homelessness more broadly. Their responses, edited for brevity and clarity, are published below.

Several government agencies didn’t reply for comment, including Mayor Ed Gainey’s office and UPMC, which runs the shelter’s health clinic, now operating out of 1 Smithfield St.

Timothy Maloni, 42

Timothy Maloni moved into a single-room occupancy unit on the fourth floor of Second Avenue Commons just as it opened in November 2022. Last month, Maloni was out installing bounce castles for his brother’s party rental business when fire struck the floor. He said he arrived at the convention center seeking shelter, but there was no room. Maloni described being given a few hours to collect his belongings from his waterlogged room. Now, he is back to staying in a tent.

Everything I had just built back up in my life, I lost, you know, like, all the clothes I acquired and stuff, all my electronics, everything is just destroyed because the fire was one thing, but it’s, the flood really screwed everything up.

Coming to Second Avenue originally was, you know, pretty uplifting in my situation. I feel really bad for anybody that was like completely on their feet, and like got cleaned up off drugs or alcohol or whatever their twist was because like, something like this, I imagine is really devastating.

It feels like Pittsburgh is doing a very good job at saying, ‘f–k you, homeless people, we don’t like you anymore.’

It feels more dangerous kind of to me. It seems like just in general, like the mood of like the homeless person culture is elevated, like in a negative way. Like everybody seems more stressed out. Pittsburgh’s really dropping the ball with this one. How do you shut down shelters as you’re ripping up homeless camps? What do they think people are going to do? This is home.

What I’m doing is just trying to accomplish something every day, like stay on track with little goals, you know, baby steps to get back at least what I had, if not ahead. The other day I started to grab some new clothes. Like I just grab a couple of T-shirts from here, like, you know, just building. Like, you know, things that are so corny and stupid like that, I shouldn’t even have to be dealing with, like, going to get my identification card again. I did that today.

What are the takeaways from the Second Avenue Commons fire response?

Tara Springer, 34, originally of Fayette County

Tara Springer said she has bounced through Pittsburgh camps and shelters including Smithfield United Church of Christ, Wood Street Commons, Bethlehem Haven and Second Avenue Commons. Recently, three encampments she stayed at were shut down. She’s currently staying in a tent with her partner.

[I’ve seen] a lot of overdoses, a lot of pain, suffering, tiredness. Tents being taken. It changed a lot of us. Especially after Smithfield. After Smithfield, we were more away from the safe haven that we had. They were really big on helping us. There’s barely any places to go.

Allegheny Links. Allegheny Health Network. Red Door. Food, clothing [all help]. The outreach team comes out every day. They make sure we have water, food. 1HOOD comes out. We have a lot of nonprofits that come out and feed us and make sure we’re OK, and they’ll be out again today. … We have a stove. We have beds. We have ice to make sure we keep our stuff cold. … And I got a man that treats me remarkably well.

Drug activity is bad, especially back this way. And that’s why the cops have been, I mean, they’re not going to get rid of the drugs. That’s going to be here regardless. I mean, they’re uprooting all of us and expecting us just to not have nowhere to go. And then we’re fighting. We’re fighting the cops because they want to uproot us.

It was a lot easier [when Smithfield was open] because we were able to be right there. They knew what they were doing. And then when they got rid of ‘em, a lot of the overdoses happened then.

I’ve saved [from overdoses] my best friends’ lives. I just recently saved a girl’s life. This is what we deal with.

​​I just go day by day. Get up and strive for another day.

What are the needs of Pittsburgh’s unhoused community at this moment?

Anita Green, 43

This isn’t Anita Green’s first time being impacted by a fire. After her Swissvale home caught fire just before Christmas, she and her husband stayed in hotels until it became too costly. They landed at Second Avenue Commons’ shelter floor for two months before moving into a tent to be together. Green and her husband, who served in the U.S. Army, are exploring housing options through a program serving military veterans.

I was [at Second Avenue Commons] for two months, but I get more help on the streets than I did in there.  And, we have [Our Streets Collective] , Bridge [to the Mountains] … we have them on speed dial. We call them for anything.  They’re great. And then just random people come. They’ll bring food or on hot days they’ll bring water.

When I went down [to live in the encampment], it was probably six to seven tents. Now there’s [lots more].

Me and my husband, we’re our support system. And then we built like a community down there. So they call my husband “The Mayor” down there. We got Northways, our church, we had two cookouts down there to bring homeless awareness and, yeah, just we do what we can.

Once we get on our feet, we want to do something like this just because we never realized how much when you are on the streets, a kind word or somebody showing they care – it goes a long way.

What do you want people to know about the people experiencing homelessness you serve?

Marvell Stillwell, 39

Marvell Stillwell came to Pittsburgh from Chicago for work and family. He stayed at several shelters and is now renting a room in Wilkinsburg from someone he knows. Working as a welder, he dreams of being a steamfitter and getting into a rent-to-own living situation.

When I first came up here, I had employment, but I didn’t have nowhere to lay my head at. And so, like, they sent me to these shelters up here and I mean, they do what they can. But they have so many people that be going and coming, and coming and going, and be on drugs so much I think it just became like natural for them just to kind of feed you, and just put you back out in the streets.

It got so inhumane because, like, the shower system and everything is like jail or something, you know? Push came to shove, I had to start renting out hotels. I was paying $1,200 a month, and, you know, that’s rent for housing. But, like, what can you do?

By getting Social Security, you know, and working, I was eligible for low-income or subsidized housing. And so I got put on the waiting list here or whatnot. And I end up going to the Wood Street Commons, which is right up the street right here, which was one of the worst places I have ever been in, besides in my hometown.

And so, make a long story short, I got into a little trouble up here, you know, that cost me a year, a long time. And so I decided to go to a sober living.

Instead of leaving Allegheny County Jail being homeless in the street, I went into a drug treatment program. The drug treatment program helped me to meet people. They also helped with housing. They also helped with schooling. You know, and so, like my insurance was paying for that. You got to stay positive.

Editor’s note: This story was updated to include information received after initial publication.

Eric Jankiewicz is PublicSource’s economic development reporter, and can be reached at ericj@publicsource.org or on Twitter @ericjankiewicz .

​​Stephanie Strasburg is a photojournalist with PublicSource who can be reached at stephanie@publicsource.org , on Instagram @stephaniestrasburg or on Twitter @stephstrasburg .

Laura Turbay is an editorial intern at PublicSource and can be reached at laura@publicsource.org .

This article first appeared on PublicSource and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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