LIVING REALITIES Johnstown's population decline amplifies the impact of widespread Section 8 housing

Dec. 11—JOHNSTOWN, Pa. — Almost 20% of Johnstown's population lives in public housing or Section 8 rental units.

There were 18,411 residents recorded in the 2020 U.S. Census. A recent count showed that 2,613 people were in the Johnstown Housing Authority's public units, while 883 elsewhere in town were using the Housing Choice Voucher Program, better known as Section 8, for a total of nearly 3,500 as of Nov. 30.

The number of individuals residing in JHA properties remains relatively steady. As the city's overall population continues to decline, however, the number of people living in public housing or Section 8 grows as a percentage, which affects the overall poverty rate.

Johnstown's poverty rate was 34.3% between 2009 and 2013, according to Census data. It now stands at about 38.5%.

There is little the housing authority can do to reduce its population numbers, since U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development controls policies the local agency must follow.

The federal government will not likely close and tear down usable housing stock in one municipality just to spend money constructing similar buildings in other communities.

"My understanding is they're looking at it like a federal program," said Michael Alberts, JHA's acting executive director. "They don't care that Johnstown's population has declined. If we told them that, 'Hey, our population has declined. We don't need this public housing. We want to knock down a couple buildings.' They're going to tell us, 'You're at 99% occupancy rate. You're crazy. No way, no how.' "

When asked about the poverty saturation, a HUD spokesperson responded in an email that the organization "does not direct PHAs (public housing agencies) to restrict occupancy of existing public housing units, which in many instances have been a part of the community for decades, based on ever-changing local poverty rates."

The spokesperson added: "HUD requires PHAs to have a local admissions policy designed to promote deconcentration of poverty and income mixing — such as a policy that provides for bringing higher-income tenants into lower-income developments and lower-income tenants into higher-income developments.

"These policies do not, however, impose or require specific income or any type of (racial) quotas for any developments. In keeping with its primary purpose, the public housing program provides decent and safe rental housing for eligible low-income families, including specific vulnerable populations such as elderly persons and persons with disabilities."

Data on housing

More than 2,000 people have moved in or out of JHA public units or Section 8 rentals over the past three years.

In public housing:

—2021: 270 move-ins, 244 move-outs

—2020: 226 move-ins, 251 move-outs (includes a JHA-imposed, three-month moratorium on accepting new move-ins due to the pandemic)

—2019: 390 move-ins, 404 move-outs

In Section 8:

—2021: 106 move-ins, 239 move-outs

—2020: 104 move-ins, 94 move-outs

—2019: 162 move-ins, 147 move-outs

Move-in tracking includes participants who received JHA vouchers, ported out of the city, and leased-up in another location.

"Two things really make these numbers difficult to use in tracking recent trends," Alberts said. "No. 1, when the pandemic started, we put a complete stop to move-ins for about three months and then started slowly when we resumed new admissions to see how it went. We are at full speed now, and while the monthly average for public housing shouldn't change much, monthly voucher move-ins still have a possibility to climb.

"No. 2, those outside housing authorities that were billing us for voucher participants and just this year decided to absorb them into their own program creates the somewhat untrue appearance of an exodus of voucher holders."

The comings and goings play a significant role in the transient nature of the city's population.

Preferences in JHA housing are given to Cambria County residents, but even that policy cannot provide a clear sense of where all people living in public housing are coming from.

"As far as where people are from and who's living here right now, it's so hard to track," Alberts said. "HUD tracks that stuff. Whenever we submit tenant data to HUD, it includes the ZIP code that they were coming from, but even that's not accurate, because they could move here because they know they're going to get in faster with a Cambria County address. They could have been from outside Cambria County two months ago, but whenever we moved them in, they had a Cambria County address."

Alberts further discussed the connection between people from outside the region moving into JHA housing and poverty, saying, "It's probably more with the problem being that the population decline is a product of the other problems in Johnstown. Local people aren't taking it and local people are moving out of the area instead, so there's just a better opportunity for people outside of the area. That's my view on it.

"Maybe if Johnstown's population started going up, the people that are outside the area would have a harder time getting in because they wouldn't have that preference."

Tracking vouchers

Housing Choice Voucher Program participation is open to successful applicants whose total annual gross income "may not exceed 50% of the median income for the county or metropolitan area in which the family chooses to live," while "a PHA must provide 75% of its voucher to applicants whose incomes do not exceed 30% of the area median income," according to hud.gov.

A person can then "port out" — take the voucher to find housing with any authority in the United States.

"In that choice to live, they can lease-up right here in Cambria County, which we like," Alberts said. "This is where we live and work. This is where we want to help people live and work. They could also choose to take their voucher and attempt to port it to another housing authority anywhere in the country. This is a federal program."

Conversely, voucher holders from other authorities can come to Johnstown to live in approved Section 8 properties.

Far more vouchers are being acquired in Johnstown and taken elsewhere, as opposed to out-of-town holders coming to the city, according to JHA numbers, with the issuing housing authority being responsible for paying the individual's rent regardless of where the person leases-up, unless the other authority decides to absorb the tenant.

Johnstown's recent numbers are:

—2021: 149 port-outs (28 leased-up), 4 port-ins

—2020: 65 port-outs (41 leased-up), 4 port-ins

—2019: 104 port-outs (58 leased-up), 8 port-ins

—2018: 81 port-outs (67 leased-up), 7 port-ins

"The spike in port-outs this year is mostly because the total number of vouchers issued this year is way up," Alberts said. "With the situation we had this year with outside areas absorbing vouchers that they were previously billing us for, we have had to operate differently.

"That is a complicated topic to discuss — how our voucher program utilization has changed just over the past five to 10 years. We went from an open waiting list to a closed waiting list that was rarely only opened for two weeks at a time to now being completely open again."

About 650 of JHA's 953 vouchers are currently leased-up.

The cumulative effect is that the 880-some people living in Section 8 housing in Johnstown, among 18,411 total residents, account for not quite 5% of the population, far exceeding the national average.

"Nationally, the rate of Housing Choice Vouchers to population is about 0.8%. Vouchers per capita, however, may not be the best metric to evaluate the presence of Housing Choice Vouchers in a particular community, as public housing authority (PHA) jurisdictions can overlap, be state-wide or have large differences that would impact any voucher per capita calculation," according to the email from a HUD spokesperson.

"Housing voucher allocations were initially made based on relative need and poverty — they have increased over the years due to special purpose voucher allocations, which are made available to PHAs through application or competition."

Alberts does not anticipate the number of JHA's vouchers decreasing.

"The way the Section 8 program works with funding is we have the capacity to get up to 953 vouchers leased-up," Alberts said. "We could be at a place where we had 700 leased-up, and, if a chunk of those was from outside of the county billing us, it costs us more money. So we get our pile of money from HUD, and these places are billing us and it's costing us more. We go to HUD and say 'Hey, we need more money.' HUD just gives us the money."

Section 8 debate

Section 8 is one of the most controversial topics in Johnstown.

JHA promotes the vouchers as a program that provides quality living accommodations in properties that must pass inspections.

"Section 8 is a benefit," Alberts said. "It is a pure benefit. If you look at anything and you think it's a slum, guarantee you it's not Section 8. Guarantee you. Our inspections are so tough, my house isn't going to pass a Section 8 inspection."

Others, including 2020 Republican mayoral candidate John DeBartola, consider the program to be a detriment to Johnstown by increasing poverty and making the city unappealing to people considering relocating.

"Ask the citizens of Johnstown, don't take my word for it," DeBartola said. "Ask people who live next to Section 8 houses. Ask Realtors if it's easier or harder to sell houses in the city or in the suburbs because of the preponderance of Section 8 homes in the city. The city has had difficulty hiring a city manager for one reason — because they don't want to live in the city. Why do you think that is? One contributing factor is the abundance of Section 8 housing. While I understand the need for Section 8 housing, it has not remained proportionate with the population in the City of Johnstown."

DeBartola said the amount of Section 8 housing should "absolutely be reduced."

"The city leaders and local elected officials need to put pressure on the JHA to reduce the amount of Section 8 housing in the city," DeBartola said. "The JHA is incentivizing property owners to put their units into Section 8 and if they do, they'll give them a thousand dollars. ... The mayor needs to appoint people to the JHA board who will hold the JHA director accountable and hold their feet to the fire to reduce the concentration of poverty and Section 8."

History of housing

The reason so much public housing was put into the city might be lost to history. Officials who made those decisions are no longer involved in local government or the JHA — and many may be dead.

The first units — Oakhurst Homes and Prospect Homes — opened in 1943 when World War II was raging, Bethlehem Steel ruled the region and about 65,000 people lived in the city. Oakhurst was expanded in 1951. Then came Solomon Homes (1959), Coopersdale Homes (1959), Vine Street Tower (1971), Fulton I. Connor Tower (1972), Town House Tower (1976) and Nelson G. Loughner Plaza (1985).

About 100 units combined were placed outside the city — in Nanty Glo and Portage — in the 1960s.

Alberts said he has never heard why the decision was made to put almost all of the housing in the city, as opposed to spreading it into outlying townships and boroughs. He said many of the authority's records that possibly could have provided answers were destroyed in the 1977 flood.

"My best guess is that it was the authority's decision, meaning that the JHA administration chose the available land to purchase or otherwise acquire from the previous owner," Alberts said. "Even assuming that HUD operated differently in the '40s and '50s, I still doubt that HUD would've mandated locations to build public housing. It was likely just an approval process on HUD's end, and then the authority would receive the funding to carry out the project.

"That is how it would work now, and this seemed to at least still be true in 1985 when Loughner Plaza was built."

Crime and policing

Part of JHA's obligation is to provide security at its 1,504 public housing units, including the approximately 1,400 located in Johnstown.

The authority will pay the city $304,403 for police services in four family communities — Solomon, Prospect, Coopersdale and Oakhurst — and $68,922 for the "towers" in 2022, according to information released at Wednesday's City Council meeting.

JHA receives regular reports from the Johnstown Police Department.

Those numbers show:

—2021: 1,716 total calls (777 categorized by JPD as "miscellaneous/non-crime calls")

—2020: 1,727 total calls (851)

—2019: 1,453 total calls (760)

"Crime stats are somewhat difficult to analyze for a snapshot," Alberts said. "The way we used to relay them on our website was to report arrest numbers, though the number displayed included more than just arrests. The numbers presented (here) do not include foot patrols in our communities. I don't have any other further breakdown of what is included in the miscellaneous/non-crime calls, but without checking anything, my guess is they include a lot of mental health issues, noise complaints and minor disputes with neighbors."

JPD's total calls for service have been 31,765 in 2021 through Nov. 17, 32,504 in 2020 and 27,932 in 2019.

Arrests in recent years have been:

—2020: 650 (City of Johnstown), 93 (JHA family communities)

—2019: 2,326, 121

—2018: 2,125, 133

Regarding crime involving Section 8 tenants, Alberts said: "We do not have any data on police calls or arrests at Section 8 properties. Our staff discovers criminal activity at Section 8 properties by monitoring local news sources and from information reported to us by the general public. We diligently check all names and addresses from criminal news stories on a daily basis to try and catch anything that matches Section 8 property addresses or residents of both Section 8 and public housing."

The housing authority also works to track down boarders, especially people who cannot qualify for housing on their own, but then illegally move into a place with somebody who can pass an application process. Tips can come from disgruntled neighbors, the U.S. Postal Service, school districts, social service organizations and law enforcement.

"That's part of the policing that we have to do," Alberts said. "We have lots of people that have become pretty good detectives since working here. You do the best you can."

Philadelphia is the scapegoat in two persistent — but never proven — rumors regarding low-income housing in Johnstown.

One is that JHA advertises using billboards and flyers to attract residents from Philadelphia to local projects.

No verifiable firsthand or photographic evidence of the promotional materials allegedly distributed in Philadelphia has ever been presented to The Tribune-Democrat.

"Completely unfounded," Alberts said. "Never seen proof of it. Cellphone cameras are not a new thing. They've been around 15, 20 years. I don't know where it came from. Like I said, we have a waiting list of people. We don't need to advertise."

Private property owners can provide information about their Section 8 units, but that is not the same as a housing authority advertising.

Some independent websites give details about local public housing units, but they are not affiliated with JHA, Alberts said. For example, Johnstown Housing Authority buildings are listed at affordablehousingonline.com, a site owned by self-described "affordable housing professional" David Layfield. That site describes its mission as to "provide exhaustive information on individual apartment communities which receive federal housing funding."

"Since we aggregate all government housing databases, update our data daily and never charge apartment managers to put their properties on our platform, we have better affordable rental apartment info than anyone else," according to the website.

The site boasts of sharing data about "each state, county and city in America" — not only Johnstown — and helping more than 50 million renters over 15 years.

Another rumor is that the Philadelphia Housing Authority sends people to Johnstown. No documentation has been found to confirm this alleged scheme.

"The rumor is absolutely untrue," said Nichole Tillman, PHA's executive vice president for communications. "The Philadelphia Housing Authority is not purposely sending people to Johnstown or any other city.

"As you know, PHA has recently received two Choice Neighborhood Implementation Grants from HUD. PHA believes people should have the choice to select a place to reside where their family cannot only live but also thrive."

Positive word-of-mouth about Johnstown — a community with less violent crime than major urban areas, along with abundant and easily accessible social services — might play a role in attracting people from Philadelphia and other big cities.

Also, the demand for public housing and Section 8 is so high in Philadelphia that the waiting lists for both have been closed, meaning low-income individuals need to look elsewhere for places to live. The average wait time for public housing in Philadelphia ranges from one year to 13 years, depending on the property, according to pha.phila.gov.

"PHA closed its Public Housing Program wait lists on April 15, 2013," according to Philadelphia's website. "The wait list will reopen when PHA determines that the average wait time for housing has reached an acceptable level. The public will be notified through advertisement on this website."

More recently, rumors have circulated that undocumented immigrants who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border and Afghanistan war refugees were going to be housed in JHA buildings.

"My answer to that is we're at 99% occupancy (in public housing)," Alberts said. "I've got nowhere to put them. We've never been approached."