Montco businessman commits $1M to support new Lansdale homeless shelter

From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to cover? Let us know!

An Ambler businessman has made a commitment to donate $1 million to support a new homeless shelter under construction in Lansdale.

Montgomery County officials intended to open the year-round, 20-bed shelter in the fall, but construction on a number of safety upgrades at 1107 E. Main St. remains ongoing.

Officials now hope to cut the ribbon on the Lansdale shelter in February 2026.

The gift from Nand Todi, founder and president of Penn Manufacturing Industries, to Montgomery County is almost the equivalent of a year’s worth of expected operational expenses at the short-term housing facility.

“This problem of … homelessness is very close to my heart,” Todi said. “I have seen with my eyes how bad it can be and it saddened me to see that this problem exists in America, the world’s richest country — and most powerful and advanced country.”

Todi, who emigrated from India in 1970, said he came to this country with “nothing” in his hands, used his background in mechanical engineering to take advantage of the opportunities in front of him and started Penn Manufacturing Industries in 1978. He wanted to return the favor.

Montgomery County Commissioner Neil Makhija said he and county staff met with Todi and delivered a presentation about the project. The county granted Todi and his wife, Shashi Todi, a walkthrough of the shelter on Dec. 5 alongside officials from Resources for Human Development, the nonprofit that will operate the shelter.

“Shelter space is hard to come by because it requires collaboration with municipalities — zoning as well as the funding,” Makhija said. “In Lansdale, everything really came together because we had the partners on the ground, the leadership in the county and now some additional support from the community through the Todi Foundation to really get this off the ground.”

Homelessness rises in Montgomery County

The latest federally mandated Point-In-Time Count reveals a county facing a growing need of shelter space amid a housing-affordability crisis.

In January 2025, there were 534 people experiencing homelessness in Montgomery County — a 14% increase from the year prior.

“We’re seeing more people sleeping on the streets and the county is struggling with trying to find ways to pay for the shelters that we need and all the services that we provide to help people get back on their feet,” Makhija said.

Encampments have sporadically popped up in communities such as Norristown and Pottstown in recent years, oftentimes leading to conflict. In 2025, a perfect storm of factors collided to further complicate the task of reducing homelessness.

Montgomery County, like every other county across Pennsylvania, faced the double whammy of a state budget impasse and a federal government shutdown. As a result, work in the human services sector was heavily disrupted, including front-end intake work at various shelters throughout the state.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Continuum of Care Program provides funding to participating communities to address homelessness. Recently proposed — and later withdrawn — changes to the initiative would have placed a 30% cap on permanent supportive housing expenditures.

Montgomery County receives about $5 million annually through the program and uses all of it on permanent housing initiatives, according to Kayleigh Silver, the administrator of the Montgomery County Office of Housing and Community Development.

“It really needs to be a both-end approach, and programs like these are just as crucial. And it takes all sorts of partnerships, such as from the federal government, local government, philanthropy, private citizens and businesses to really holistically support someone experiencing homelessness,” Silver said.