It's not unusual to walk through the Prospect Park apartment complex in Whitehall and find young Bosnian men cruising in cars, blasting the latest rock CD from their home country. The sharp tones of neighbors speaking Bosnian are easily heard from open patio doors.
Mothers call children playing outside.
The mouthwatering scents of homemade bread and meat-filled patties, called pitta, waft through the hallways. Welcome to Pittsburgh's Little Bosnia. As the number of Bosnian refugees began to rise in 1995, Catholic Charities, the resettlement agency in charge of finding housing for arriving refugees, scrambled to find affordable apartments. Linh Quach Langenbacher, the agency's refugee services coordinator, said Catholic Charities worked out a partnership with Prudential Realty, which provided low-rent apartments in the complex. So the refugees began moving in and created their own little enclave.