Kate Giammarise
ReporterKate Giammarise focuses her reporting on poverty, social services and affordable housing. Before joining WESA, she covered those topics for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for nearly five years; prior to that, she spent several years in the paper’s Harrisburg bureau covering the legislature, governor and state government. She was part of the P-G staff that won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting on the mass shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. She has won numerous state and local awards for her reporting and was honored with a 2020 Keystone Media Award for her beat reporting on poverty. She can be reached at kgiammarise@wesa.fm or 412-697-2953.
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Local programs to help troubled tenants are largely unused by the McKeesport Housing Authority, which last year filed complaints against 1 in 4 tenants.
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Researchers in the house at 257 Oakland Ave. aim to develop new technologies to help people stay in their homes as they age, as well as to test existing technologies already on the market.
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Coverage for many adult dental services was cut in 2011 under the administration of former Gov. Tom Corbett as part of a cost-saving move.
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Experts and advocates say inflation and policy changes have expanded eligibility for food assistance and made it easier to enroll in the program.
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United Way of Southwestern Pennsylvania is seeking volunteers for its free tax preparation efforts, which serve Allegheny, Fayette, Greene, Washington, and Westmoreland counties.
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State officials say their proposed changes to the state's Medical Assistance program aim to address unmet social needs, such as housing and food insecurity.
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McKeesport’s 9th Street Clinic, a free primary care clinic serving uninsured adults, has a new home on Fifth Avenue in downtown McKeesport.
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After questions from WESA and Spotlight PA, McKeesport signed onto Pennsylvania’s opioid settlement, granting the county a full payout this year.
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The Penn Avenue building, which housed a mix of subsidized and market-rate apartments, was the site of a deadly fire last December.
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Homewood House is one of a number of affordable local communities where tenants say a new owner is unresponsive to problems, and not investing in their properties.