The upside of finding a new space is that CHOC can reimagine a new kind of shelter. It plans to find a building big enough that each individual can have an “efficiency apartment” type of space, with its own bedroom and bathroom — compared to one big room with 50 cots, for instance.
Such private rooms offer people more “dignity and respect,” said Camuso.
The biggest roadblocks to finding that new space for CHOC, according to Camuso and Silver, are “NIMBY-ism” paired with stigma against people without housing.
Silver said the county can’t decide where to place a shelter without community and local government buy-in. And right now, they’re just not seeing enough.
Even if a singular nonprofit or building steps up, “it takes the community to step up,” said Silver. “We may receive responses from nonprofits or churches. But that is one step of a many-step process. You need services, you need zoning, you need local community approval for it to be there.”
A housing crisis already exists across Montgomery County, exacerbated by Hurricane Ida, the pandemic, and rising rental costs, especially in more low-income towns such as Norristown, Pottstown, and Lansdale.
Colleen MacNamara, director of housing services for Access Services, said that its street outreach team currently serves 150 single adults, and that around 75 of them would want to enter a shelter. CHOC is at capacity, and there are always folks waiting to get in year-round, according to its director, Christina Jordan.
Rents in Norristown are up nearly 4 percent from 2019, said Silver. According to a county housing affordability study released in May 2021, roughly more than half of renters in Montco are paying more than 30% of their monthly income toward their rent.
In September, the remnants of Hurricane Ida wiped out 124 affordable housing units in Norristown, a gut punch to a county already lacking in them. The hurricane also left 142 households, 316 people, in 157 emergency hotel rooms provided by the county.
Mark Boorse, director of program development with Access Services, which does outreach to people without housing in several eastern Pennsylvania counties, has concerns about the shelter being moved far from Norristown. That could come at the cost of removing people from their networks of support that exist outside, like their “social connections,” said Boorse.
Individuals from Norristown could also have a harder time just reaching the shelter. Silver said they are predicting the “probable need” for extra transportation services, though, and will support RHD and Access Services in those endeavors.