Conversation with the MontCo Commish will take place in Pottstown:
Thursday April 2
7:00 PM
Sunny Brook Ballroom
50 N. Sunnybrook Rd.
Pottstown, PA
Flashback to the previous meeting with the County Commissioners:
Feb. 11, 2013 Covo’s with the Commish <<clik for Mercury News coverage
Castor said:
“In the nearly 30 years he has been in county government, I think Pottstown has improved dramatically. In Norristown, I have not seen the same level of improvement that I have seen in Pottstown. Praising the quality of law enforcement here and local government, I think Pottstown is headed in the right direction, I think Pottstown will come back.”
QUESTION: What “facts” predicated his opinion? Residents are more closed off from local government than ever, before the tenure of Borough Manager, Mark Flanders. We do not see the same level of improvement that Castor does and we live here.
David Kraybill, the director of the Pottstown Area Health and Wellness Foundation, said that prediction will more likely come true if the borough gets help developing and attracting jobs with a living wage.
“Job opportunities would solve some of the issues being raised here,” he said
QUESTION: What has the county done since 2013 to assist Pottstown in job development with a living wage?
Judy Memberg, executive director of Genesis Housing Inc., who also sits on Pottstown’s Blighted Property Review Committee, asked if the county could help in supporting laws that make it easier to take blighted properties whose owners cannot be found or identified.
ZOMBIE PROPERTY 433 HIGH ST ./ BUTTONWOOD ALLEY OWNER LIVES IN POTTSTOWN.
QUESTION: Has the county stepped up, in any capacity, to address the abandoned blighted properties in Pottstown?
Andrew Monastra suggested the commissioners use some of their political connections to help “leverage private investment,” as Shapiro described it. Monastra described as “putting us in touch with some of your pals.”
QUESTION: Other than an accelerated influx of extractive investors clamoring for cheap properties to rent for voucher money and SSD boarding houses, has the county leveraged any investments in Pottstown? Minimum wage working families are, increasingly, priced out of rental housing as Sue Repko explained:
She has a theory that the increased amounts of money the housing vouchers can now apply toward rents have had the unintended effect of artificially raising rents landlords could have previously demanded in Pottstown, thus making it more attractive for them to buy some of Pottstown grand old homes, put in apartments and “bleed the property dry and then walk away.”
FACT: We haven’t seen an upward trend since this meeting with the Commissioners in February, 2013. In fact, we have seen massive deterioration in the downtown neighborhoods. We see more people walking away from their homes and I am contacted regularly by working class renters who cannot abide the filthy, unsafe housing for which they pay a premium while, often, rents are demand in cash payments by income property owners.
And then King Street resident and activist Katy Jackson kicked off a long and wide-ranging discussion about public and low-income housing programs.
“We’re over-burdened by people who need social services,” she said, explaining that part of that is due to a high level of low-income housing. “We can’t continue to be a dumping ground for Montgomery County’s disenfranchised.”
Shapiro said any discussion of low-income housing issues should be based on a set of common facts, so he rolled out some numbers to provide a statistical basis for the discussion. Here are a few of those he mentioned:
• 90 percent of Montgomery County’s 62 municipalities have housing choice vouchers in them; (55 other communities besides Pottstown is 90% of 62).
• Less than 15 percent of those vouchers are used in Pottstown; (Assuming we have 15% then 85% of all vouchers in MontCo = an average of 1.5% of vouchers in each of the other, 55 MontCo communities >with the exception of Norristown that we can assume has at least as many vouchers as Pottstown @15%).
All other communities that Shaprio claims have housing choice vouchers equals only 1/10 OF THE VOUCHERS THAT POTTSTOWN HAS, (Save for Norristown).
• Of that, less than 15 percent, 70 percent were living in Pottstown already and only about one-quarter come to Pottstown from other communities;
• Less than 8 percent of housing in Pottstown is housing choice.
IN OTHER WORDS, POTTSTOWN HAS 10 TIMES AS MANY VOUCHERS AS ANY OTHER COMMUNITY IN MONTGOMERY COUNTY. As always, it’s how the commish’ spins their “facts”.
Question: How does staying on this trajectory benefit MontCo? Do the benefits of segregation outweigh the increasing potential that the county could face an Anti-Discrimination Lawsuit as did wealthy Westchester County N.Y. in 2009?
Westchester Adds Housing to Desegregation Pact <<clik for NY Times article
“The lawsuit, filed under the federal False Claims Act, argued that when Westchester applied for federal Community Development Block Grants for affordable housing and other projects, county officials treated part of the application as boilerplate — lying when they claimed to have complied with mandates to encourage fair housing.”
We have recently learned that Montgomery County’s 5 year plan is no different than the past 5 year plan <<clik 3/16 in the Mercury News in that the county has applied for and, once again, received CDBG grant $$ although we can anticipate continued “dumping” of the disenfrancised in our community.
Steve Kambic is a Pottstown resident and the executive director of Petra Community Housing, which is among the non-profit agencies which partner with developers to create more affordable housing.
He said despite years of effort, Petra has been unable to create any of this housing along the SEPTA bus lines and near shopping, both because property owners in those locations don’t want those kinds of projects, and because local zoning often forbids it.
AND THAT, FRIENDS, IS DISCRIMINATION THAT IS FOSTERED BY THE POLICIES OF MONTGOMERY COUNTY, PA.
Click to view slideshow.ARE THE CONDITIONS DEPICTED IN THE PHOTO’S ABOVE BRUCE CASTOR’S IDEA OF “IMPROVEMENT”?
ARE THE SICKENING, UNSAFE RENTAL CONDITIONS THAT MANY ARE FORCED TO LIVE WITH IN POTTSTOWN (AT A PREMIUM PRICE) AN “IMPROVEMENT”?
ARE THE INCREASING NUMBERS OF BLIGHTED, DANGEROUS BUILDINGS IN OUR COMMUNITY AN “IMPROVEMENT”?
THE ANSWER TO EACH OF THOSE QUESTIONS IS: NO THEY ARE NOT.
ABUSE OF CDBG GRANT MONIES IN OUR COMMUNITY ARE EVIDENCED IN SHODDY CURB CUTS AND REMODELED PROPERTIES, ONCE OWNED BY THE COUNTY, THAT WERE LEFT TO BLIGHT.
FINALLY, THE ELECTED OFFICIALS OF POTTSTOWN HAVE A DUTY TO ADVOCATE FOR THIS COMMUNITY WHICH MEANS SITTING DOWN WITH COMMISSIONERS AND WORKING OUT A PLAN THAT SPELLS I M P R O V E M E N T FOR POTTSTOWN.
