Originally posted by @Jim K.:
This whole town is dying. The philanthropic roots first laid down in the Gilded Age are too deep to be fully destroyed, however. I believe that by 2030, Pittsburgh is going to be a much smaller city than it is today with two main job centers: downtown and the university district in Oakland. Why would people come to Pittsburgh? A much lower cost of life tops the list by far. People do not get excited about starting anew somewhere else just because it's cheaper. Ergo, I don't see many companies enthusiastically picking up and moving their people to come here.
As part of its dying, Pittsburgh currently survives on a torrent of federal money coming into this area to house, feed, and medically provide for its elderly population. Greater Pittsburgh is the oldest metropolitan statistical area in America. By 2030, most of the old people will have died off in droves. Per my argument above, they will not be supplemented by massive numbers of young people coming into the area from far away, a national draw. This population collapse will be most keenly felt out past the city first, and the younger inhabitants will move into Allegheny County and Pittsburgh proper from communities like Kittanning and New Castle, Canonsburg and Jeannette. Almost of those younger inhabitants are white and quite a few of them have anti-immigrant views. In the near future, the population of Pittsburgh is very clearly going to get more white-trashy-hillbilly and even less tolerant than it is today. This in turn does not bode well for the cultural diversity of the near future.
A lot of people think fracking is going to change everything here, the production of petroleum from shale. We're already at the point in our national energy changeover to solar and wind power when it's obvious that it isn't. Supposedly fracking is going to feed a lot of money into a lot of pockets. But we haven't actually seen that happening here, in practical terms. The few landowners that do get a windfall out of the shale companies tend to take their windfall and head for Florida. The rest work fracking jobs until oil wars lay them off.
UPMC makes most of its money off its unassisted and assisted long-term care facilities. It is ambitiously trying to take that money in build cutting-edge hospitals here to make the city more of an "eds and meds" economy. Will it succeed? We;;, it's in direct competition with Cleveland Clinic, and Cleveland Clinic routinely makes the list of the top 5 medical systems in America. UPMC, on the other hand, is significantly behind the curve, coming in around 10-15th. Given a choice, I know where I'd go for care.
To briefly return to the possibility of turning Pittsburgh into an eds economy. The endowments of local universities are a pittance next to NYC and the Bay Area, Boston and Chicago. Pittsburgh can't compete meaningfully in this outside of certain niches, such as programming and robotics. The difference in the money is just embarrassing.
For me, it's those two tech niches that are the wild card, but it's not much of a wild card. If UPMC, the area's largest employer, is broken up into its individual units, not one tech company makes the top twenty employers in Allegheny County. I don't see a flood of tech jobs coming, although I've heard it promised and promised for the area since the early 90s, when my brother first came here to study at CMU. My brother currently lives in Cranberry Township and couldn't give less of a damn for the future of this area.
I moved here from Athens, Greece, another doomed, dying city. It's amazing how many parallels I've heard here, how many wild hopes based on nothing repeated in astonishing similar words. Of course PEOPLE WILL COME! OF COURSE! The future's bright and getting brighter! That's all that was said about Greece until 2007, when I left. Now, my old friends over there think I'm a prophet.
Pittsburgh is dying, but there is definitely money to be made off its slow death throes, and the corpse can be robbed after that. I am certainly ghoulishly enthusiastic about the area.
As a Pittsburgh native who is, born and raised here, living here for 23 years and counting, and from generations of minority heritage here: you're right.
The phrase goes that Pennsylvania is Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Alabama in between. There's a reason for that. I'd hate to get political, but we see this very clearly every election in Pennsylvania. We've seen younger people move from urban centers to rural areas during this pandemic because work from home has become mainstream, but it won't last.
Gen Z is far too spunky and entrepreneurial to want to shack up in rural areas; they'll be drawn to the Orlandos, NYCs and San Franciscos. Because of this, when they turn into renters, and then homebuyers, ~ 2025-2030, they're not going to coming to Pittsburgh. Any reason to come to Pittsburgh (sports, tourism/hospitality, medical jobs, education) is done much better nearby (Philly, Cleveland, DMV/DC, New York, Atlantic City).
There is simply nothing to do here for the young, trendy spenders that isn't done better next door. Because of this, the only people that'll be in Pittsburgh are older generations (who already have homes or if they don't, won't be looking for one) and rural Pennsylvanias who treat Pittsburgh as their Philly or NYC with less "liberal influence".
If you're planning to invest in Pittsburgh, invest to sell for the rural Gen Z who like football, guns, and John Deere. They'll be military families, Christian, white, middle class, and used to a lot of space for a low price. Don't expect metropolitan rents unless you're slumming to naive and/or non-Pennsylvanian students in Oakland and Shadyside. Go for fix and flips (or buy and holds) in suburban areas (Plum, Penn Hills, Kiski, South Hills, Monroeville, Robinson Township, Greentree.
If you just want to rent for low to medium amounts but have solid payments: Homewood, East Liberty, Wilkinsburg, Arlington, Uptown, and the Hill District are good spots. Be aware: These are hoods. And they've been hoods for a long while. The change here will be slow.
