Johnstown, Pa — The deadline for residents of Johnstown's Prospect Community to move out came and went this past weekend.
With the community now mostly vacant Channel 6 continues to look into low-income housing struggles within the city of Johnstown.
6 News spoke with State Representative Frank Burns about the relocation of the Prospect Community as well as low-income housing struggles around Johnstown overall and some of the numbers may surprise you.
“I don’t know why they waited to tell us this information. It shouldn’t have to come down to a right to know request to get basic information, but it seems like that’s what we have to deal with here especially in the city of Johnstown,” said Rep. Frank Burns, 72nd district.
Burns – like 6 news - had to file right to know requests in order to learn why exactly the Prospect Community was given thirty days from the Johnstown Housing Authority to relocate entirely due to “structural issues”.
“it all seems things that are fixable and that are happening in everybody’s home around Johnstown,” added Burns. “There’s cracked drywall and damage like that, and you just slowly repair it. This is not something that just happens suddenly, they had to of known this was a problem for a while now.”
Many of the Prospect Community residents have relocated to other public housing within Johnstown such as Coopersdale, Solomon homes and Oakhurst.
“Those are one of the nicer homes that we have in public housing is the prospect community. When you start looking at the other ones they’re not nearly as nice as what prospect is, but yet Prospect is the one that is shut down,” said Burns.
But still – some of those residents had to relocate from Johnstown entirely - due to a lack of public housing being available.
“Well, I believe when you’re allowing all these people from outside the area to come and take public housing this is the situation you run into because now, we have a need for people who actually reside in Cambria county and there’s no housing for them,” said Burns.
Burns mentioned the city of Johnstown has ten times the amount of public housing as other cities.
The Johnstown Housing Authority estimates every month there are dozens of families with incomes less than 13,000 a year on average moving to Cambria county to access public housing.
“The housing authority also estimates that 80 families a month are moving into Cambria county for public housing from outside the area. 80 families a month and then they’re moving out and were left with this transient population that creates a burden on our schools, our hospitals, all of our mental health service agencies, it’s just a lot to deal with. For our police officers, fire companies, you name it,” said Burns. “Were one of the poorest cities in Pennsylvania so to compound that with people moving into Johnstown and having little money it creates a double burden on which we have to deal with.”
And Burns says if the Prospect Community is vacated permanently - it could only make the situation worse.
Mountain Research LLC began taking geotechnical surveys of the ground Monday and from these surveys – Michael Alberts says they can get an idea of what the future of the prospect community will look like.
Burns tells Channel 6, “They got to remember that they work for the people and that they owe those people answers.”
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