The Tartan

Pittsburgh mayor Ed Gainey convened with Carnegie Mellon students last Thursday, March 20, as part of a town hall organized by the Graduate Student Assembly (GSA) and Undergraduate Student Senate. Also attending the town hall were Alexis Walker, the City of Pittsburgh’s Prosperity Manager, and Lisa Frank, the City’s Chief Operating Administrative Officer. Gainey’s visit comes in light of his bid for reelection against Corey O’Connor on Nov. 5, 2025.

Being a Good Neighbor

When he was asked about how universities and university students in Pittsburgh could support the city and be good neighbors, Gainey emphasized mentorship.

“All of our Black and Latino and Asian communities, we don’t have a middle class. They’re all in poverty,” Gainey said. “And so when I think about it from that perspective, I think being a mentor to a young kid in high school really exposes them to a greater quality of life.” 

Gainey also emphasized the value of volunteering, remarking, “I was always at the Greater Pittsburgh Food Bank volunteering. And those are things that brought me the most gratitude because that’s where my passion lies.” 

Gainey furthered his remarks by directly addressing young people, “So I always tell young people, whatever your degree is in, whatever you want to do, think about what you would do for free because your passion burns for you to learn that.” 

Gainey suggested that students volunteer at litter clean-up days in Pittsburgh, commenting, “It just shows a different type of love when you’ve got college students coming out and really saying, ‘Listen, I don’t just go to school here. I’m a product of the environment.’”

Housing

Gainey was then questioned about his administration’s plans to combat the increasing price of housing. The mayor responded that when he first entered office, he aimed to address the gentrification of Pittsburgh neighborhoods and the displacement of working class and African American families, with 2,000 units of affordable housing being built in “just three years, more than any administration in the last 20 years.” 

Gainey then explained that in order to repopulate the city, he planned to stabilize the housing market and encourage immigration. “That’s why we came out so aggressive against the Trump administration’s ICE policy — that we would not work with ICE to separate, destroy, and divide families,” Gainey said. “We want immigrants here. We’re a nation of immigrants. We’re a city of immigrants, and if we don’t stand up for that, then who are we?”

Gainey also gave an update on the Rental Registry, a rental unit inspection program which began in Dec. 2024. “As of today, we’ve got over 160 applicants that have voluntarily signed up with the rental registry,” Gainey stated. “In June, it will be mandatory that everybody sign up with the rental registry.”

Supporting and Retaining Young Professionals

Gainey went on to discuss initiatives that were in place to retain young professionals in Pittsburgh, which included Invest PGH, a Community Development Financial Institution which provides loans to small businesses with a focus on “minority- and women-owned businesses.” (This organization was mostly publicly funded in 2023.) 

According to Gainey, “You take a school like Carnegie Mellon that is big in robotics, big in technology, life sciences, and things of that sort. So through a program at the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA), Invest PGH, we’ve been able to work with them as one of our affiliates to help entrepreneurs that spin off of some of our local colleges and universities to help them get started.” 

The mayor also mentioned the importance of celebrating culture: “One of the things that I’ve done as mayor,” he said, “is that regardless of what cultural day it was, I make sure I’m in every culture event that I know about, because I want them to feel seen. I want them to know that we want them here and they belong here.”

Gainey then addressed students who might be afraid of graduate programs disappearing in light of recent federal budget cuts. “It’s okay to be scared, but you’ve got to stand up for what you believe. [Trump’s] just the nut we gotta deal with right now, but that don’t mean that he’s going to be the president forever.”

Gainey continued, “I’m not sure what type of leader you want to be if you want to be able to defund education. How do you defund what you grow from if you defund education? 

“You just don’t want to grow old,” he continued. “You want to grow up. And education is the way that we grow up. Education is the way that we learn how to be better students about what we want to do in life.”

Pedestrian Safety

Pedestrian safety was also on the mayoral agenda. Frank discussed the Red Light program, which is currently a pilot for red speeding cameras: “Right now, the state of Pennsylvania does not allow us to use speeding cameras. 

“So they’re gonna let us show them that we can manage the technology by stopping you from running a red light.” 

Frank also mentioned potential solutions to speeding such as planting trees, which “slow people down by almost seven miles an hour,” and road diets, a type of roadway reconfiguration in which the middle lane is a turning lane. 

Frank explained that, “We believe that congestion is our friend. We’re not afraid of people having to wait in the light for an extra second.”

Gainey added, “Speeding is a thought, and if we can control that thought, we can save lives.”

DEI

Gainey was then asked to speak about Pittsburgh’s LGBTQ+ and immigrant communities. “No matter what [Washington D.C.] wants to do to us in regards to DEI, that has nothing to do with me,” Gainey said. 

Gainey emphasized his and his administration’s commitment to respect people’s lived experiences. “The Mayor’s office right now is the most diverse administration in the history of the mayor’s office, period,” he said. “The reason why I wanted this diversity is because I believe that people have different lived experiences. And when you put a people’s lived experience on a problem, you come up with multiple solutions.”

Gainey also mentioned recent efforts to connect with the LGBTQ+ community. “We met with our LGBTQ+ community to talk about how we can work with them,” he said. “We started to talk about what’s going on right now, but also what will happen in the future. We met with them in December, we met with them again in January, and I think we’ll be starting to meet with them quarterly.”

Gainey also discussed how his administration supported immigrant communities: “We created situations with our immigrants and our refugees where we backloaded a lot of the funding to ensure that the programs, the resources and everything that’s out there is going to help them, in case they encounter any type of intimidation that could lead to trauma in their life.”

Frank then brought attention to the various resources that Pittsburgh has to defend these various communities. Regarding the immigrant community, Frank stated, “Our police have a policy that’s called Unbiased Police and you can read that on the website. Essentially, what it says is that our officers will not help anyone enforce administrative warrants.” 

Frank also mentioned the Pennsylvania Immigration Resource Center (PIRC), which provides legal services to immigrants. (PIRC was mostly publically funded in 2023.)

As for the assistance of the LGBTQ+ community, Frank referred to Pennsylvania’s discrimination law enforcement agency, the role of the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, which “used to be very closely tied to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC),” the federal government’s discrimination law enforcement agency. 

However, due to changes in the federal government, Frank stated that additional measures were taken such as shifts in the city budget to ensure that the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, “which can enforce your rights with an employer or possibly with a university, is not living off grants, is not living off federal money in any way, shape, or form.”

Walker gave an update regarding the status of various DEI programs and commissions in Pittsburgh. “One thing that we’re doing is distributing ‘Know Your Rights’ cards. They will be in both English and Spanish, because we understand that Spanish is the second most popular language in the city. We want to be as inclusive as possible for our residents.” 

“Know Your Rights” cards contain information about the rights to remain silent and to speak to an attorney. The cards are distributed by a collection of nonprofits which distribute other advice pertaining to “people without lawful immigration status … people with lawful immigration status who have certain criminal convictions … [and] people present in the U.S. after being ordered removed.” This includes suggestions to “avoid carrying foreign IDs” and to refuse to consent to searches.

Walker added that “our office spearheaded an open house for folks who are in fear of their gender identity not being reflected on a passport come Jan. 21. We had these clinics with different attorneys and other people so that way they can get them and get some of them pushed through.” 

Other initiatives mentioned included the Gender Equity Commission (GEC) and unisex bathrooms in city government. The GEC was created in 2016. Its focus is “to center the communities that experience the most impact from inequitable systems” and to propose new rights to the city government.

Concluding Remarks

When Gainey was asked what he wished for students to view him as, he remarked that “I want them to see me as someone who’s engaging to create a city for all. I want them to know that we worked diligently to make this the safest city in America. And we want to do something that this city hasn’t experienced at all, and that’s making it a welcoming city.”

Encouraging students to stay in Pittsburgh, he continued, “And we don’t want people to feel like they got to leave here to thrive. We want them to know that you can raise your family right here. Love who you want right here. Be who you want to be right here. And that’s the culture that we’re creating.” 

Gainey continued, “That’s difficult sometimes because you’re fighting against that old school that really doesn’t want to see nothing but what they grew up and how they remember the city used to be. And all that they want is what they’re used to. 

“But everything changes,” Gainey said, “and we have to be a city that is always open for change. And that means making it safe, welcoming, and thriving. And that’s what I want to be remembered as. A mayor that impacted change.”