Wonder if there is an option to talk about how any new housing, but especially now, needs to be accessible for ADA standards given the increasing population of folks newly disabled due to COVID. For those of us who have been disabled from birth, we see many new housing units being built that comply with state Department of Labor & Industry building codes but not federal civil right legislation, the Americans with Disabilities Act..

DJ Stemmler
Fiscal manager, Graduate School of Public Health

Just read your article on the Pitt Oakland-living potential benefit and naturally I’m a little biased (staff member living in Highland Park), but think better benefit would be parking-permit-based.  That’s a painful expense (when staff can even get lucky enough to get!) that I’d bet is disproportionately much more painful (percentage of income-wise) for the lower-income staff.

Staff member from Pitt IT, who wished to remain anonymous

Read with interest the article re: Oakland accommodation and easy walk to work. Was interested in where Dr. Dostilio and Dr. Gallaher live. Do they have children in the Pittsburgh Public Schools? So many Pitt faculty colleagues, least in the past, lived in the city until their children were of school age. At that point, they moved to the suburbs. And then, with children grown, moved back into the city.  While living in Chicago, I saw what happened to  a minority neighborhood around the University of Chicago. Not much space for minorities when the urban renewal was completed but the university was “protected.” I sure hope the overall aim at Pitt is not to oversee the same pattern in Oakland.

Sean Hughes
Emeritus associate professor, School of Education