The Propspect Community is now practically empty, as the Johnstown Housing Authority gave the Residents until this past weekend to pack up and move out. Now, we’re looking into the low-income housing struggles within the city of Johnstown.
When we sat down with State Representative Frank Burns, not only did we discuss the relocation of the Prospect Community more, but he shared data with us on low-income housing within Johnstown and the numbers may surprise you. There are a handful of Public Housing properties managed by the Johnstown Housing Authority, such as Solomon Homes, Coopersdale and Oakhurst — where many of the Prospect Community Residents have recently relocated to since they received notice from the Johnstown Housing Authority that they had to vacate the Prospect Community due to structural issues. However, some of those Residents had to find alternate housing – even outside of Johnstown – as there is not enough room available to house everyone from the Prospect Community.
State Representative Frank Burns says the city of Johnstown has ten times the amount of Public Housing as other cities and the Johnstown Housing Authority estimates there are about 80 families a month – with an average income of $12,600 – coming to Cambria County for the Public Housing. Rep. Frank Burns adding: “And then what they’re doing is getting a voucher and “porting” out as they call it, they’re moving back to the city they came from, but yet we’re left footing the bill and this has led to a lot of problems with social service agencies because they have to foot the cost of this.”
The fate of the Prospect Community is still unknown. However, Mountain Research LLC began Geo-technical Surveys of the grounds there on Monday and from those Surveys we should learn what the future there could be.
