Congratulations to Philadelphia NBC television station WCAU for committing journalism regarding the influx of Filthydelphians to Johnstown.
Readers of this blog are aware that our once relatively crime-free Johnstown has devolved into an area of relatively high crime, often with a Filthydelphia component. These refugees from the eastern part of the state come here to partake of public housing and other handouts. Too often, they show up in crime reports.
We’ve wondered often in this space why so many people from Filthydelphia end up here.
As a lifelong resident of the area, having graduated from the now-inept Greater Johnstown School District, I can’t recall ever running into a transfer student from Filthydelphia.
Now it’s a common occurrence for Filthydelphians to show up, leave, return, leave, etc.
This, and the subsequent increase in crimes, has been as prominent as the botox work on Nancy Pelosi’s face for years, yet our local left-wing rag newspaper has ignored the phenomenon. The same is true for our local NBC affiliate, whose motto is Centre County Uber Alles.
Give partial credit to that television station for moving temporarily beyond all things Penn State and eating out of the WCAU garbage can by running that station’s investigative work Thursday. Presumably, the local rag will have some weak story in Friday’s editions about all this. Or not.
What the WCAU story revealed is Filthydelphians come here to get their feet in the public housing door – figuratively and literally – then leverage this into beating the long-term waiting lists for such in Filthydelphia.
Somehow, Johnstown is blessed (we use the term in the ironic sense) with more public housing units than a shrinking city of maybe 18,000 population should have. This is residue from when the population was more than 60,000.
Nature, or political transfer payment systems, abhor a vacuum. The rush to fill the vacuum of those housing openings has produced a veritable flood – arguably the most damaging long-term example of such for our so-called Flood City.
As with most government operations, our public housing has operated totally ignoring the reality of that declining population and, as government handout programs go, has become a beacon for others to come here, perhaps temporarily.
Too many, while here, have committed crimes. Just check the crime blotters.
I have wondered before and will again, why here? Do public housing officials in Filthydelphia steer people to Johnstown? Or, have astute exploiters of the handout culture found Johnstown on their own, but have spread the word far and wide to fellow Filthydelphians?
What will happen after this bit of exposure of it all from the WCAU story? Likely little or nothing.
But, it is nice to see how a professional news operation identifies and pursues a story, despite the possibility of irritating the poverty panderers on the political left.
Our local media operations should be ashamed that such a local story was broken from Philadelphia. But they won’t be.
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