Amid a tangle of felled trees and dirt, a yellow bucket crane sits along the hillside above Perrysville Avenue, just below an orange umbrella on the deck of a townhouse.

A September 2004 landslide that damaged the Perrysville Avenue home of John Jackline still defines the hillside, but the bucket crane, owned by a private contractor, makes occasional headway toward correcting the problem.

Most landslide victims would be grateful for that little progress.

From Perry South to Arlington, Greenfield to Stanton Heights, Spring Hill to Oakland, people who live above or below steep slopes are dealing with eroding backyards, upended trees, lawsuits going nowhere, companies that won't take mitigation jobs for fear of lawsuits, and a city that doesn't keep up.

Invariably, the city has a role, whether to enforce citations against property owners or repair public rights of way. Sometimes its own properties are involved.

Nina and Shawn Kopa live on Ivondale Street in Greenfield with three children, two dogs, a hillside pressing on the back of their house and a road that's eroding down a hill across the street.

More like an alley, the street has eight homes; four are abandoned.

Ms. Kopa said a hole in the road in 2003 has not been repaired. Her husband put up sawhorses and an orange-and-white warning board to keep people from the edge, where the guide rail leans at a two-o'clock angle.

"The kitchen gets water [from the hillside] when it rains, and the cabinet's buckling," she said. "We're like the sticks up here and never get any service, no snow removal, not even paving. The city has cited us to fix up our house but they don't fix our road. We don't want to put anything in this. It's a buyout waiting to happen."

The city needs to be proactive, said George Sliman, whose backyard in Greenfield slid in April 2007. "Somebody needs to take charge, do a cost-benefit analysis and, if the cost is greater than the value of our houses, relocate us. We don't want anything for free. We just want some help."

Mr. Sliman's home is one of 20 in landslide limbo on Flemington Street and Beechwood Boulevard since 2005 and 2007 landslides. Two slides within days of each other in January 2005 displaced six Flemington backyards down the slope, behind six homes on Beechwood.

"That was slide group one," said Mr. Sliman. His and seven other properties took a hit two years later.

"The mayor came out and did a tour and we sat at my dining room table and talked and he said he was going to appoint someone to do a study of this area to see what we needed to have done. That was July 2, 2007," he said.

Has he heard back? "Absolutely not."

Mr. Sliman said his property assessment was lowered, "but that is not fixing the problem."

Rob Kaczorowski, deputy director of operations for the city Public Works Department, said the city has committed $600,000 to landslide remediation this year and all but $200,000 will probably go toward correcting a dangerous situation at Oakland Square, where two houses are a few feet from plunging into Panther Hollow.

He said the city is seeking federal economic stimulus funds to take care of other sites. "We requested $700,000 and could hear about that any day now."

Audrey Glickman, staffer for City Councilwoman Darlene Harris, said residents complain frequently about slides and the office pushes for action. The answer is always: "Not enough money."

District 1 covers the bulk of the North Side and has "a long list of landslides," she said. "Whenever people ask what issues we have in our district, the thing that always comes to mind is Portman Street," which borders on Riverview Park in Observatory Hill. "The whole side of the street is falling over the hill and jersey barriers are in the street."

Queen Street in Spring Hill has disappeared altogether. "The city bought out the last house up there. Queen Street is sad because a whole history is gone," she said.

Councilman Patrick Dowd said his office has been trying to ameliorate damage from a 2003 slide in Stanton Heights where 53rd Street and Alford Way intersect. He said rain exacerbated it but that a builder was dumping dirt to create a level space.

The weight of the fill caused the slide, which "exposed [Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority] lines," said Mr. Dowd. "A road was damaged so vehicles couldn't get to the two houses there."

The water and sewer authority bought out one property owner and the city is buying out the other, he said. "When we can, we need to take these properties out of service so they don't have to be maintained and are not affected by landslides again."

At the end of 2005, City Council passed legislation that restricts construction on steep slopes, which Mr. Dowd called "a good thing. It keeps us from adding to the burden."