Editor’s note: I’m back from traveling and this week’s edition is an open letter to KDKA Radio’s Marty Griffin. See you back here next week for my regular nonsense!
Dear Marty Griffin,
You don’t have to be like this and I bet you weren’t always like this. Were you? Do you look at yourself, into your heart, and find honesty and sincerity there these days? Do you look at the motivations that drive you to say the things you do, and if so, do you find authenticity there? I mean for you to look deep. Past the surface where you’ve convinced yourself you’re a journalist with integrity and honorable intentions. What’s the framework holding up that facade you’ve spit-shined and shellacked into place?
I have bad news. That facade? While it reflects your own image back to you, for the rest of us, it is a crystal clear window. We can see through it. Deeply into it. And what we see is not what you think you’re showing us. At least the vast majority of us.
We see your disingenuousness. Your motives. Your true agenda.
You’ve been doing some terrible things lately, and those are the ones I’ll focus on here. Not your past, because what you’re doing currently is so gross, I don’t even need that old ammunition.
First, let me state that downtown Pittsburgh is not what it used to be pre-pandemic. The loss of a portion of the downtown workforce has harmed the businesses, which does even further harm to a city that is not a destination. A city that replaces local restaurants with staid bank branches. The next downtown revival is going to require destination-thinking. Streets closed to traffic. Spaces that encourage walking, biking, gathering, laughing, seeing, and spending. It’s going to require, and please don’t scream, MORE bike lanes. Maybe even protected bike lanes. The horror.
Second, let me state that Pittsburgh on the whole has a big, fat litter problem, but downtown does not have much of one, thanks largely to the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership. Certainly the PennDOT-maintained ramps into the city are trashed, and the rivers clogged with plastic, and many roads through the neighborhoods are in atrocious state, but downtown is, for the most part, quite clean of litter.
Thirdly, let me state that there are over 900 individuals in Allegheny County who are experiencing homelessness at last count, which was in January of this year. But I think a look at the numbers, which I’ve charted out for you here, is helpful to get a sense of where we are. As a journalist, you’ve already done this legwork, right?
I used Point-in-Time data freely available to do this and I’ll just cut and paste the language from the Allegheny County report:
Each year, Allegheny County’s Continuum of Care (CoC) collects Point-in-Time (PIT) homelessness data as required by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The PIT count occurs across the country during the last 10 days of January and includes a required annual count of all sheltered homeless as well as a biannual count of unsheltered homeless (with some CoCs such as Allegheny County choosing to collect data more frequently).
Got that? Okay. Here’s a chart I made showing the general homeless numbers from 2010 to 2023, and I’ve added a trend line.
It should be noted that the 2016 report reflects data of when the county began changing how they counted veterans and began employing new tactics to more quickly rehouse individuals. As for that unsheltered number, that can fluctuate quite a bit based on the weather when the counts are taken, but I think it still useful to see. I really don’t like that that number is growing as a proportion of the total. Advocates are sounding the alarm that they expect a jump in the next report, but I think it helpful to at least look at the big picture to understand where we are in the ongoing battle to house our people. Had I more time, I’d chart our population growth/loss year-by-year as well, but regardless, I think that chart at least give us a broad understanding.
The chronically homeless are those who are homeless on a more long-term basis. They are a unique challenge, and we should look at those numbers too. Again, I’ve included a trend line so you can see what’s what.
Looks like things were seeing a big improvement in this sector before the pandemic, then things got very bad. The next set of numbers will show us if that 2023 is significant and where the trend goes from there.
Those are the numbers behind the people, Marty, not just in downtown Pittsburgh, but in the whole county. That’s the best estimate for what is happening on the street. But again, you’ve already done this work and it took you two hours to do it, because that’s how long it took me. Because I wanted to understand the situation as it exists in data before I dove into how it exists in your head before you eject it out of your mouth and into a microphone with insincere concern on your face.
The thing is, I’m not sure you’re using any data.
If you were, you’d see that violent crime is actually down on the South Side. You filed a report from there so callous you were criticized for your lack of empathy. (South Side has problems. I do not dispute this. But we shouldn’t pretend it is the worst it has ever been.)
If you were, you’d see that crime is also down in downtown. You recently filed a report from there so driven by an agenda, I’ve got to write this letter calling you out for it.
You called it “Get Marty: Take a Walk…” and the chyron said …
“Tony”? Tony who? TONY MORENO?!? The retired cop who tried to run for mayor as a Democrat before fully embracing his true far-right ideology? The dude that showed up for this “walk through downtown” looking like Mister Clean after he broke bad?
That’s who you’re going to “walk through downtown” with? For what purpose, Marty?
“We’re going to show folks why this town is going down the toilet.”
Marty, you gave away any claim to impartiality or integrity of reporting the second you opened with that hyperbolic statement with that particular person by your side.
I am always in “this town.” Yes, I live in the suburbs and I always have. But downtown is where the first restaurant I co-owned for ten years still operates. Downtown is where I worked since I was 16. I eat there. It’s where I tend to meet friends for drinks (There’s an off-menu cocktail at The Warren that is my absolute favorite). I go to Pirate games. I take my autistic teen daughter downtown regularly. She could give you a tour of the Fort Pitt Museum, the Mattress Factory, and more. She could show you how to walk from the Point to Market Square and to her favorite spot for milkshakes. She knows where we usually park. She knows how to take the T for free from the downtown station to the North Side.
I went to Picklesburgh. I went to the Arts Festival. The symphony. PPG Paints Arena. I’ve walked the North Side. The South Side. I’ve been in the casino. The Science Center. Mount Washington. The Slopes. The Strip. This is all just in the past four or five months, day and night. So please understand I’m writing from a place of HAVING BEEN THERE QUITE A LOT RECENTLY. It is experiencing struggles, but it not “going down the toilet” like your credibility has been for several years.
We have to make everybody see and feel what’s going on downtown because just talking about it you don’t get the full experience of what has happened here and what is continuing happening, people and their businesses are just being ignored. We’re gonna show them. We’re gonna show everybody what’s going on in real time.
So I watched 23 minutes of this showing. But what exactly did you show us?
Filth? You showed no litter.
Ugliness? You turned down one of the most gorgeous alleys in the entire downtown, always exhibiting some artist’s vision of urban beauty. The current design is one of my daughter’s favorites and she got to watch it being drawn. She’s been loving Strawberry Way for a long time.
Crime? That same alley-turn revealed a police officer on bike patrol. And weirdly you accosted several people with your insincerity and aggressiveness and your stupid-ass microphone and you didn’t get your face punched the whole way in.
Homelessness and drugs? You showed two people who used, sitting on the steps of church that until very recently housed a shelter, who were actively being helped by an advocate who explained the process and how they aren’t just leaving people there to die. That safety came first. And then when you asked that lovely human if it was fair to say downtown had deteriorated, he mentioned that with the shelter system efforts things had “improved drastically over the last few months,” and boy did you end that interview right then and there instead of asking for particulars. No, we can’t have any good news when we’re out here trying to make things seem like a dystopian hellscape.
This has been fascinating to see in real time … we’ve seen how downtown has deteriorated rapidly.
Did we? Did you really show that? Or is that what you hoped to see, and what you tried to frame around what you saw, when what you saw was a pretty clean, safe downtown city street corner? Nearly all you did was talk. You showed nothing of substance. Nothing to fear. The first business owner immediately said things had gotten better. The homeless and addiction advocate plainly told you things were improving. You pointed to a door. You saw a cop. You accosted passersby. You extrapolated anecdotes to apocalypse.
How simple it would be to fix it. There are tools to be used and they are not using them.
Tony. Marty. What is the simple plan to fix homelessness? Please tell us. I assume it has mental illness, trauma and substance abuse prongs? Put it in writing, this simple way to fix this societal problem. What are the tools, exactly, that are not being used? Please list them for us. How do we solve substance abuse? If this quick-fix plan is simple, I’m pretty confident everyone will support it. You just need to write it down for us. Publish it. Show us.
“Walk through town?” You didn’t leave that damn corner because you had an agenda and the canvas on which you wanted to present that agenda was that particular corner.
Your agenda?
Fear. Scare those who aren’t visiting into thinking the city and county leadership have completely checked out on caring about downtown. Scare them into believing crime is up. Scare them into anger that the city is being “flushed down the toilet.” Inject fear via the perception of crime. Create fear that keeps people from ACTUALLY coming downtown and seeing it for themselves, thus creating a self-fulfilling prophesy.
Politics. Cards on the table. We know where yours lie and why it behooves you to lead your listeners into believing Ed Gainey is destroying the city. I have openly criticized Ed Gainey. I will continue to do so. I don’t know that he’s being as effective a mayor as he can be. But I know that downtown’s problems are not one man’s doing. I have openly criticized Rich Fitzgerald. I expect to do the same with the next County Executive. But I also know the data shows that there are people in the City-County Building who are dedicated to addressing the problems we face.
Attention. Marty, you have ours. We are looking at you. We are looking deep and we do not see empathy (this is how you inform on the problem with empathy), no matter how many shoulders you grab in your creepy, off-putting way. We are looking and we do not see sincerity in your overly eager active listening. We do not see love. We do not see integrity. We see your agenda. We see every item on it.
We know salaciousness, sensationalism and scandal trump facts, data, and good solid reporting for you and have for a long time now.
You marched around that corner with your microphone and your righteous indignation and your big-talking weird friend and acted like you cared and that you wanted to make things better. But when you talked to a person who was actively doing just that with heartwarming sincerity, you silenced him. We see you.
You don’t have to be like this, but please believe me when I tell you that for as long as you choose to be like this, most of us will see you for what you are.
A monger of fear.
Take a walk, Marty, indeed.
But take your lies with you when you go.
V.