| The University of Pittsburgh has created a Community Outreach Partnership Center (COPC) for the target neighborhoods of Central Oakland, South Oakland, West Oakland, Allequippa Terrace/Oak Hill, and Hazelwood in the East End of Pittsburgh, PA. The area lies in the Pittsburgh/Allegheny Enterprise Community and mirrors the problems of the city of Pittsburgh and the region itself: depopulation, concentrations of poor and elderly, and older housing in deteriorating conditions. The Pittsburgh region has undergone two decades of regional structural change and lost more than 150,000 manufacturing jobs between the late 1970s and 1990. In 1999, the city lost its last steel mill, the LTV Coke Plant in Hazelwood.
New job growth in educational, health, and legal services, and in the financial sector has helped to stabilize the regional economy, but the regional economy has grown slower than the U.S. average. Population loss and income decline continues to characterize Pittsburgh in 2000. The COPC neighborhoods lost nearly half their population from 1960 to 1990. With the loss of residents naturally comes a decline in housing. That decline exists not only in the number of households, but the condition of housing as well as the demand for housing. Income discrepancies also are contributing to the area's problems. In 1990, the total area served by the COPC showed 42.8 percent of the people living below the poverty level. The COPC will address the area's needs through programs in housing, neighborhood revitalization, economic development, job training, education, and health/wellness.
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