Research reports

Long-form reports and dashboards

Reports I have authored or co-authored, mostly for the Pittsburgh Community Reinvestment Group. Each opens on the original.

AuthorInteractive Power BI report·2026

30th Annual Mortgage Lending Study

Interactive Power BI report marking thirty years of mortgage lending analysis across the Pittsburgh region.

The 30th edition marks thirty years of PCRG tracking who gets a mortgage in the region and who gets turned away, going back to the first study in 1996. It reads HMDA data across the Pittsburgh MSA, with a long view from 1996 to 2024 and a close look at 2020 to 2024. It maps where lending flows, where it dries up, and which neighborhoods and banks sit on each side of the line. Three decades in, the disparities have outlasted a lot of changes to the financial system, which is why the Community Reinvestment Act still matters.

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AuthorReport·2025

Black Homeownership and Wealth Building

Research on the housing wealth of Black and low-to-moderate income homeowners in Allegheny County.

This one follows Black families in Allegheny County through the whole arc of owning a home, from the first offer to the financing costs to the day they sell. Each step lands differently by race. Black residents make up 12.5 percent of the county but received just 3.2 percent of its home-purchase loans, and at similar incomes they were turned down more often than white applicants. The core finding later ran as a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review op-ed.

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Co-authorWhite paper·2025

The Case for Citywide Mandatory Inclusionary Zoning in Pittsburgh

White paper advocating for citywide expansion of mandatory inclusionary zoning in Pittsburgh.

Written with Dave Breingan, who runs Lawrenceville United, this paper looks at what inclusionary zoning has actually done for Pittsburgh housing. It traces the long history of inclusionary zoning in the city and pulls lessons from how other cities have used it. In Pittsburgh's pilot districts of Lawrenceville, Bloomfield, and Oakland, it helped produce more than 150 affordable units and pushed total housing production up 96 percent.

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AuthorFact sheet·2025

Allegheny County State of Housing Fact Sheet

Fact sheet visualizing key American Community Survey (ACS) housing trends for Allegheny County.

This fact sheet looks at how housing conditions in Allegheny County changed between 2017 and 2023, using American Community Survey data on occupied housing units. It walks through home values, household income, cost burden, race, and age, showing a county where prices and incomes have both risen, homeowners carry less cost burden than before, and renters still face persistently high pressure. To check those cost-burden shifts were real and not just an artifact of sampling, I ran hypothesis tests on the changes for both owners and renters.

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AuthorInteractive Power BI report·2025

29th Annual Mortgage Lending Study

Interactive Power BI report analyzing mortgage lending in select Pittsburgh MSA counties.

Each year, PCRG's annual lending study serves as both a mirror and a map: it reflects the current state of lending in our communities while providing direction for action and advocacy. The 29th edition analyzes Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) data from 2018 to 2023 across Allegheny, Armstrong, Beaver, Washington, and Westmoreland Counties, laying out lending trends, bank lending profiles, and profiles of Pittsburgh neighborhoods. Community groups, development organizations, and local governments use it to push for more equitable lending commitments from banks.

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AuthorPower BI dashboard·2025

Mortgage Products Survey

Power BI dashboard analyzing the results of PCRG's home-purchase mortgage products survey.

Explore how mortgage products are structured across local lenders. This interactive dashboard pulls together 23 mortgage products reported by 15 banks and lays out where they line up and where they differ, across eligibility requirements, down payment expectations and assistance partners, debt-to-income limits, fees, and insurance, alongside bank-level practices like online applications and VA/FHA lending. Filter by bank size, and page through to move between high-level trends and the details behind them.

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AuthorFact-sheet series·2026

Data Center Fact Sheets

A series of fact sheets and briefs on data centers in Pennsylvania.

Data centers are going up fast across Pennsylvania as AI and cloud computing pull more power and water. That leaves towns with hard questions about energy, land, and who pays for the infrastructure. This three-part series, made with the Penn Policy Center, sets out what the development actually involves, how it lands on communities, and where state and local policy stands.

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AuthorReport·2024

28th Annual Mortgage Lending Study

PCRG's 28th Annual Mortgage Lending Study.

The 28th edition covers the full spread of mortgage-lending indicators that show whether credit is flowing fairly. It opens with region-wide trends, then drills down to individual banks and neighborhoods. Different readers can stop at whatever level they need.

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