Lawsuit against URA centers on food access, neighborhood development

In the fall of 2025, Ebony Lunsford-Evans was looking forward to relocating Farmer Girl Eb, a West End-based fresh produce store. That all changed when she received a letter from the Urban Redevelopment Authority informing her that, due to the lawsuit initiated by her nonprofit, the entity was unable to consider her for a loan.  Frustrated and faced with stalled plans for her business, Lunsford-Evans filed a federal lawsuit against the URA in June 2026, alleging that the agency had weaponized its loan program and retaliated against her. Lunsford-Evans told Pittsburgh City Paper that she’s saddened to have to pursue legal action against an entity that had shown her so much support in the past, and had previously hoped the situation could be resolved through communication.  “I didn’t even want it to get here. I actually thought that we would have been sat down in a room and they would have explained to me, ‘I don’t know if there was some kind of miscommunication or mishaps about where we’re at,’ [or] ‘here’s actually a new space and here’s what we can do to actually move the space.’ None of that ever happened,” Lunsford-Evans says. “I’m actually still waiting for them to sit me down in a room and actually have a conversation about it, but it just never happened.” The URA declined Pittsburgh City Paper ’s request for comment. Previously a teacher in Pittsburgh Public Schools, Lunsford-Evans’ journey into urban gardening began in 2017 after she’d just moved to the West End. Lunsford-Evans began teaching her own children to garden and grow vegetables, and other neighborhood children were initially attracted to the basketball hoop in her yard, but stayed for the gardening lessons. As time went on, the gardening developed into a youth farmer’s market, and both the children and their parents asked for more programming.  “They sold the food, and neighbors came out, and it just became more of a community connection, and