Veteran selected for new home to be 'blitz' built in Johnstown; recipient to be introduced later
A panel of representatives from local veterans organizations made the pick after privately interviewing five finalists on Saturday. The application process was open to honorably discharged veterans from Cambria and Somerset counties with dependents, who met other criteria regarding military service, community involvement and personal finances.
The home, which will be constructed on Somerset Street in Johnstown, will be gifted by the Polacek Veteran Home Initiative, led by JWF Industries CEO and Chairman Bill Polacek.
'Bill has a very respectful understanding of veterans and service members because a good portion of his business is involved in that,' said retired Army Col. Jeff Pounding, who helped organize the application and selection process. 'And he has a very good sense of honor.'
Pounding said the groups will now figure out when to introduce the recipient to the community.
The entire process is expected to move quickly.
Vision is currently undergoing the legal steps to acquire the property and prepare it for construction.
Allegheny County-based Hosanna Industries is expected to do a blitz build from July 14-17. A foundation will be established before that time. Then, over four days, volunteers plan to construct an entirely new home that will be ready to move into, with flowers on the table and towels in the bathroom, on the 17th.
It will be a 1,000-square-foot, three-bedroom ranch house.
'We've done this several hundred times, but it's always a leap of faith,' Johnstown area native Rev. Donn Ed, founder of Hosanna Industries, said. 'We always hope and pray that it's all going to work well, and it always has.
"I don't want to minimize the effort. It's a monumental effort on the part of hundreds of people to make all those pieces fit together properly in the right sequence at the right time. This blitz building procedure that Hosanna has kind of invented, it's extremely time-critical.
'From Day 1 until the very end, every moment is accounted for. There can't be any slop in the gears because there's not enough allowance of time to permit it. Everything's got to be right on.'
About 150 volunteers are needed. Even people without construction skills can help in other ways, such as cooking or donating landscaping materials. Anybody interested in participating can contact Hosanna Industries at 724-770-0262.
'People who know nothing about home construction are welcome to volunteer, because their energies will be properly channeled into productive results by the Hosanna team,' Ed said. 'Skilled volunteers are also needed: block layers, carpenters, electricians, plumbers, drywall mechanics, all of these are very much needed and invited to join in this unique community building venture.'
This is the first home in Vision's plan to construct 21 new houses throughout Johnstown, using revolving funds provided by community organizations through the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development's Neighborhood Partnership Program tax credit initiative.
The other houses will be sold to people, unlike the first home, which is free to the selected veteran.
'The ones going forward are for anybody,' Vision Together 2025 Executive Director Robert Forcey said. 'In fact, that's kind of a misconstrued assumption that a lot of people have been making that these are only for low-income families. We made them affordable enough for somebody that they should be able to afford it on low- to middle-income. But for these houses we've had applicants all the way from a first-year graduate from UPJ (the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown) all the way to a couple that's been renting for 30 years and they want to move into their first house for the first time.'
Forcey said one of the goals of the first free house is to 'show everybody that it's a viable project and it's going to move forward.'
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