Montco commissioners approve new emergency shelter option in Pottstown

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The Montgomery County Board of Commissioners voted unanimously Thursday to establish temporary housing for up to 120 people experiencing homelessness in Pottstown Borough.

The contract is the second the county has entered into in the past several months to provide around-the-clock transitional housing to unhoused residents. In December, the county voted to create a permanent transitional housing shelter for single adults in Lansdale. That facility is set to open in the first half of this year.

“Knowing how much this community has struggled with their unhoused population, and really thinking about a meaningful solution to help these individuals … it’s just a great feeling,” County Commissioner Jamila Winder said. “And it’s just an example [of] the work that we’re doing as an administration.”

Pending Pottstown zoning variance approval, 62 single and double occupancy rooms will be available at the Days Inn Pottstown on West King Street for people experiencing homelessness in the area, with priority given to those currently living on the grounds of Norfolk Southern and borough properties. The commissioners approved emergency funding to Reading-based Opportunity House to provide 24/7 wrap-around services to people who choose to use the shelter.

Opportunity House had already begun what President Modesto Fiume described as a “pilot program” in November to provide shelter at the hotel to residents of Pottstown’s “Tent City,” an encampment on Norfolk Southern property that was swept by authorities on Jan. 2.

The lease with JSK Pottstown, LLC is for an initial six-month term and will cost approximately $669,600.

The county estimates more than 300 people are living unsheltered in the Pottstown area year-round. Pottstown has one of the highest percentages of homelessness in the county, and the new shelter option has the capacity to reduce homelessness in the area by up to 75%, Winder said.

Pottstown Beacon of Hope has been working to advance a plan to construct a permanent homeless shelter. That project is pending approval by the Pottstown Borough Council.

“We have a permanent shelter that is approved, the 45-bed, but that’s still some time out,” said Justin Keller, Pottstown’s borough manager. “We needed something to bridge the gap in the interim. So that’s where the county stepped up to the plate and helped us out to bridge this gap until the permanent shelter is built.”

Winder said in addition to the Pottstown temporary housing and the Lansdale shelter, she hopes to have one or two more shelters in place in other boroughs and municipalities by the end of the year.

County officials are currently exploring options in Norristown to provide year-round emergency shelter to many of the people currently living in encampments in the area.

“There’s multiple reasons why somebody ends up in a homeless situation, and they’re not people that we should look down on,” Commissioner Tom DiBello said at Thursday’s meeting. “They’re people that we should work aggressively on to help and help them through these rough times, and that’s why commissioners, we’ve been working extremely hard to lift these programs up throughout Montgomery County.”

Winder said providing solutions to unsheltered residents is important for all community members. She challenged assumptions about why or how some people end up experiencing homelessness.

“This is around changing hearts and minds,” she said. “This is about having the courage that even if homelessness isn’t my lived experience, that seeing any friend or neighbor on the street gives me the motivation to invoke real change in helping get that person off the street.”