Pottstown homeless shelter plans inch closer to finalization

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The Pottstown Planning Commission requested that Pottstown Beacon of Hope officials make some minor adjustments to their site plan to construct a homeless shelter at a meeting Wednesday night.

The nonprofit has some details it must correct on its civil engineering drawings before returning for a meeting Feb. 19 with the five-member planning commission, where the plan would presumably be subject to a vote.

If the temporary housing facility on 601 W. High St. gets the approval of the planning commission, Pottstown Borough Council would have the final say on whether the shelter comes to fruition.

Despite the yearslong road to get to this point, Council President Dan Weand, who also serves on the planning commission, told WHYY News he expects the project to pass its final tests.

“If they dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s, it’ll go through,” Weand said. “It’s not a matter of, ‘How do you feel about it?’ It’s a matter of, ‘Does it meet all our ordinances, codes and requirements?’

That’s the way it works. We have to treat everything, every project fairly.”

A council vote on the homeless shelter could happen as early as March. Because of its location, PennDOT must also approve the plan. Tom Niarhos, executive director of Pottstown Beacon of Hope, said the goal is to have shovels in the ground by late spring.

“Basically, it’ll be a 45-bed transitional housing facility for the unhoused in the Pottstown area,” Niarhos said. “It’ll be fully staffed, with individualized care plans for all of our residents and we’re working with local organizations and agencies that provide human services already to the community and population that we serve. But instead, they’ll be doing it on our site, making care more efficient and more effective.”

Montgomery County does not currently have a 24/7 overnight shelter for single adults. The Pottstown Beacon of Hope would help fill a gap that has been there since the Coordinated Homeless Outreach Center (CHOC) in Norristown was forced to close its doors in 2022.

“Its intended purpose is to help people who are unhoused in Pottstown — the people from Pottstown who are living outside — to be able to move inside in the place that they’re connected to in the community they’re part of and then transition into housing also in Pottstown,” said Mark Boorse, board president for Pottstown Beacon of Hope.

The long road to approval

The organization’s journey to get to this point has been rather lengthy. Pottstown Beacon of Hope started in 2020, operating a winter warming center.

Since then, organizers have tried to accomplish the goal of installing a permanent transitional housing facility here in the borough.

“We did get zoning approval in September 2022. It took us over two years to close on the property for title reasons. But now, we’re finally at that point [where] we see light at the end of the tunnel,” Niarhos said.

Over the past two years, the visibility of homeless encampments led to clashes between unhoused residents and local officials — and ultimately encampment sweeps. Pottstown was sued in 2023 over plans to clear an encampment along the Schuylkill River.

In 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson handed communities the ability to criminalize homelessness, prompting even more localized sweeps. Norfolk Southern cleared “Tent City” from its property along the railroad tracks near Montgomery County Community College’s satellite campus.

“Sweeping just moves people around, they have to get new gear, they get destabilized and re-traumatized,” Niarhos said. “So what we intend on what we’re going to be building, we’ll definitely be part of the solution. There needs to be similar projects throughout the county and throughout the country.”

Weand pinned a lot of the problems and tension on the closure of CHOC.

“They closed it without knowing what they were going to do with the residents and those poor people were just out on the street,” Weand said. “A lot of them migrated out here because we have a lot of charitable institutions that will give a handout. Unfortunately, they ended up sleeping wherever they could find space. And that’s first of all, not legal. Second of all, it’s not healthy.”

He said the borough begged the county for assistance, but to no avail. To his understanding, there are now more funds available for programs designed to help unhoused people.

“I’m going to stick my neck out and speak for all of council and the people involved. We want to give these people with problems a hand up — not a handout,” Weand said. “Help them out of their situation, make them a productive part of society, bring them back into real life.”

When asked if Pottstown Beacon of Hope’s shelter could be a solution, he said “to some, yes.”

“A good portion of them could be with the proper assistance, brought up and put back into life.

Some, they’re there by choice. That’s not going to change. I don’t know where they’ll go or what they will do. But if they’re willing to take the necessary assistance, there’s someone out there with a hand to help pull them up,” Weand said.

Pottstown Beacon of Hope meets some residential resistance

Although Wednesday’s meeting was supposed to be focused on the minutiae of land development details — parking requirements, street trees and windows — a handful of nearby residents raised concerns and objections about the purpose of the property.

AJ Jones, who has lived in Pottstown since 1990, said during public comment that he has and will continue to oppose the construction of the shelter.

“I came to Pottstown because I like the community. Pottstown unfortunately has had some stumbles and we’ve already seen some evidence of what happens in homeless shelters — not just in Pottstown, abroad,” Jones said. “So I have concerns about that.”

One resident criticized the shelter for having the potential to lower his home value. Another community member questioned the shelter’s walking-distance proximity to a playground in Stowe.

The meeting wasn’t intended to be a Q&A. Nevertheless, Boorse, who also works as director of community development with Access Services, listened. The organization provides street outreach services for unhoused people in Montgomery County.

He’s spent a great deal of time forming relationships with the people who find themselves sleeping outside or in their cars.

“A lot of the things that people have concerns about when they see people being outside, we share those concerns,” Boorse said. “We don’t think that people should see trash outside. We don’t think people should have to live outside in spaces that were not really intended for that. We agree on those things. The solution to that is helping people get inside.”

Boorse believes the public’s concern is rooted in fear. Pottstown Beacon of Hope has looked around at regional shelters that succeeded in places such as Kennett Square, Phoenixville and Reading.

“A lot of the focus in many spaces is getting rid of visible homelessness rather than addressing the problem of it. And the communities who have done a good job at solving for that — for creating housing opportunities for people, creating housing that people can pay for themselves, creating spaces for people to be inside — their communities get stronger faster,” Boorse said.

According to Boorse, the traditional emergency shelter approach usually focuses on placing unhoused people in a centralized place that is often removed from their support system. He believes it creates a set of “twin problems” — dislocating people from their network and excluding the community from the equation.

In his view, Pottstown Beacon of Hope is a local response to helping neighbors experiencing homelessness. He commended a similar endeavor set to break ground in Lansdale this year.