How does Pittsburgh have 20,000 vacant homes — and a housing shortage?

418 Rochelle Street looks like an ordinary row house at first glance. Backed against a hillside in the Pittsburgh neighborhood of Knoxville, its porch is messy, but that’s hardly unusual.

A reporter walked up the front steps one windy day this November to take a closer look, peered through the front window and saw something that doesn’t belong inside a house: the sky.

Both stories are caved into the basement. The exterior walls, though, are intact, giving the illusion that nothing is amiss on the end-unit row home…

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