Last November, a desperate act of violence threw Club Pittsburgh, a gay bathhouse in the City’s Strip District neighborhood, into chaos.
William Samuels, a 55-year-old unhoused man, allegedly shot another patron after sneaking a gun into the club under his coat. Samuels and his girlfriend, who had been living in a tent Downtown, rented a room not for its intended purpose but as a shelter of last resort.
This tragedy is not just a crime story—it’s a window into Pittsburgh’s fractured housing landscape. While the city touts accolades as “livable” and “affordable,” rents have surged post-pandemic, and private equity firms—emboldened by federal policies like those of President Trump’s Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner—gobble up housing stock, turning homes into profit engines.
For marginalized communities, the crisis is all too real. When housing fails, desperation thrives. Shelters in Pittsburgh routinely fall short: unhoused individuals face harassment, loss of possessions and pets, and endure crowded, dehumanizing conditions. The story of William Samuels—a man driven to violence in a place that should never have been his last resort—illustrates the tragic cost of systemic neglect.
There’s a well-worn parable about a sick man who wanders into a village, seeking help, but is met with scorn and rejection by its people.
The villagers, fearful of his illness or judging him for his condition, refuse to offer assistance. The man dies in the streets, and his death causes a sickness to spread through the village, infecting everyone.
The moral of this story is clear: when we fail to care for the most vulnerable among us, the consequences are never isolated. They may even reach as far as the secretive rooms of a gay bathhouse.
Why are we, as a city, forcing our neighbors into such impossible choices? And why is this crisis hitting the LGBTQ+ community so disproportionately hard?
The statistics are damning. A 2020 UCLA study found that 8% of transgender adults experienced homelessness in the past year, compared to just 1% of cisgender, heterosexual adults (Williams Institute, 2020). For LGBTQ+ youth, the numbers are even more alarming: nearly one-third face homelessness or housing instability, often turning to substances as a coping mechanism (Trevor Project, 2021).
In Pittsburgh, the housing crisis exacerbates these challenges. With rents climbing and inflation continuing to strain the economy, the LGBTQIA+ community faces financial hardship at a higher rate than their cisgender peers.
According to the Williams Institute’s 2023 report titled “LGBT Poverty in the United States: Trends at the Onset of COVID-19,” 23% of LGBTQIA+ individuals lived below the federal poverty line in 2018-2019—compared to 15% of non-LGBTQIA+ people.
And the federal poverty threshold is outdated: a single person making just $15,650 a year is considered impoverished, yet the median rent in Pittsburgh hovers above $1,000 per month.
This means a person making the federal minimum wage would spend around 83% of their income just on housing—far exceeding the 30% benchmark for affordability. This would suggest that the situation is even more dire than we know via statistics and reporting.
Pittsburgh’s recent groundbreaking for the Mosaic Apartments—a $28 million project aimed at providing affordable housing for queer seniors who survived a lifetime of discrimination—is a promising step forward. But this initiative, while groundbreaking, took years of lobbying to become a reality.
The success of Mosaic demonstrates that Pittsburgh is capable of rallying institutional support for marginalized communities. Yet, the city’s failure to extend this urgency to trans youth, couples like Samuels and his girlfriend, or populations struggling with addiction highlights a complacency that prioritizes ‘ideal victims’ over true need. By focusing only on those who fit a ‘respectable’ narrative, Pittsburgh has abandoned those deemed ‘too messy’ or stigmatized to deserve basic dignity.
The good news? Solutions exist.
Cities like Houston have reduced homelessness by 63% since 2011 through rapid rehousing and landlord partnerships. San Francisco funds LGBTQ+-specific shelters, and Los Angeles has developed a 100-bed LGBTQ+ housing campus. These cities pair systemic reforms with targeted programs.
In contrast, Pittsburgh continues to lag behind. The shooting at Club Pittsburgh is a stark reminder of what happens when cities offload crises onto spaces ill-equipped to handle them. Samuels—who legally carried a gun into the club—underscores the perverse priorities of our state: It’s easier to obtain a weapon than to secure housing or mental healthcare in Pennsylvania.
Pittsburgh has the tools and the heart to address this crisis. We certainly have the housing stock (Pittsburgh’s population declined from 604,332 in 1960 to 369,879 in 1990 according to the Census Bureau). What we lack, perhaps, is the political will to treat housing as a human right. It’s time for our leaders to adopt a housing-first model, push back against the unchecked power of private equity firms, and extend our support to all of Pittsburgh’s residents.
The shooting at Club Pittsburgh was a wake-up call. When we fail to house our neighbors, their crises will inevitably spill into our communities—whether in our bars, hospitals, or streets.
