RTP & Equity
Everyone deserves to live in a safe and healthy home: this is our core belief and why we do the work that we do.
Rebuilding Together Pittsburgh exists to help low-income homeowners maintain and keep their homes. We recognize that performing this work means confronting the many social, economic, and health inequities that have been levied on communities of color from decades of discriminatory development methods, redlining, and vast displacement practices.
Understanding this context helps us develop and deploy our programs in ways that maximize their impact on both individual homeowners and the neighborhoods they call home. We have made strides to decelerate the negative consequences of gentrification through the stabilization of affordable homeownership. As an organization we have always rooted our housing work in equity and inclusion, and we know that we still have work to do to overcome racial inequality and injustice. We have started with an introspective reflection on who we are and how we conduct our business.
To this end, RTP has formed an internal Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee to listen, learn, and advocate for change starting within. The committee has a broad set of goals that include:
- Providing education to our staff, board, and volunteers about the individuals and neighborhoods we serve including the history of housing injustice and racist housing policies;
- Develop communications strategies that foster a culture of learning and transparency;
- Incorporate community members in decision making
- Diversifying the leadership on our staff and board, as well as our vendor pool;
- Advocate for revisions to policies that perpetuate inequities in the housing space.
Three subcommittees will undertake the work towards these initiatives – Education, Messaging and Policies, and Hiring Practices and Expanding Diversity. The committee and subcommittees are accountable to the Executive Director and the Board of Directors, and ultimately the communities we serve. Because educating ourselves is a key component of this work, this group is actively working to incorporate voices from our neighbors. “If you have feedback or recommendations on how we can more equitably serve low-income homeowners in Allegheny County, or would like to become directly involved in our diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, please contact equity@rtpittsburgh.org or call us at 412-247-2700, ext. 129.
We recognize that through this process, we will have insights, updates, and more concrete action steps to share. We plan to update our community at least quarterly and are actively planning to focus on this work with a blog on our new website that will be launched in early 2021.
We recognize that through this process, we will have insights, updates, and more concrete action steps to share. We plan to update our community at least quarterly and are actively planning to focus on this work with a blog on our new website that will be launched in early 2021.