Dozens call Pottstown’s ‘Tent City’ home. A railroad company wants them gone

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Robert McKennon Jr. recently celebrated his 52nd birthday. There were no cakes and candles. He spent his day outside in Pottstown’s unhoused encampment known as “Tent City.”

For two and a half years, he has been living in the stretch of forest on the western edge of the borough. At its peak, Tent City has provided tree-covered shelter to upwards of 30 unhoused neighbors. Sometimes, there are as few as six. There’s a portable toilet and a shower tucked away behind a tarp. These amenities were donated.

“It’s getting better,” McKennon said. “It was getting better.”

On Nov. 25, yellow signs were taped to trees ordering residents to leave. Tent City sits on Norfolk Southern Corporation property, adjacent to Montgomery County Community College’s satellite campus, bordering College Drive and the railroad tracks just on the edge of the Schuylkill River.

The company wants them gone by Jan. 2. All “unauthorized” materials and structures will be removed. All personal property will be disposed of.

The endeavor to clear the area is part of a broader organized effort to sweep the encampment and offer short-term housing at a nearby hotel.

“In the past, in the absence of an alternative shelter, many of Pottstown’s homeless individuals have set up temporary encampments on property owned by the rail company, creating a potentially dangerous situation for those living along and near active tracks,” said Jeremy Shoemaker, Norfolk Southern regional executive director for state relations in a statement. “We’re proud to be a part of the solution here in Pottstown, and we’re grateful to all our partners for making this effort a reality.”

Reading-based homeless service provider Opportunity House is leading the intake efforts at Tent City. In a statement to WHYY News, the organization said the approach was made possible by support from “local private funders” and Norfolk Southern.

“We are happy to lend some support to get through the winter and are happy to work with the Borough, Montgomery County, Norfolk Southern, The Deviators, the Pottstown Cluster of Religious Communities, and Pottstown’s other service providers in hopes of not just getting people out of the woods but headed toward health and productive lives,” said Modesto Fiume, executive director of Opportunity House, in a statement.

Short-term housing fails to quell concerns of a ‘set up’

There are 20 hotel rooms available for 40 Tent City residents through the beginning of spring. McKennon said he scored a bed. There’s just one problem.

“Personally, I think it’s a setup,” McKennon said. “We weren’t in that hotel room [for] one week. Thirteen people have been kicked out because of hotel policy and 11 people have been arrested. Warrant squad came door-to-door looking for people.”

He squashed any notion of this being a good faith effort or even a Band-Aid solution. Gesturing around the camp, McKennon said some of his neighbors need medical attention. Others need counseling.

Citing the recent City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, McKennon said the United States Supreme Court gave communities such as Pottstown free reign to criminalize homelessness. Pottstown was sued in 2023 over plans to sweep an encampment on public property along the river.

The Supreme Court decision nullified a lower court ruling. Since then, the borough has cleared numerous encampments on public land, pushing unhoused people from one place to another.

According to Opportunity House, the cohort of collaborators is working on a plan to extend short-term housing services until Pottstown Beacon of Hope is able to build a permanent shelter in 2025.

McKennon doesn’t buy it. But without money for lawyers to fight on his behalf, all he can do is protect his personal belongings. He’s brought some of the items to his hotel room.

“The tarps, the tents and stuff, I’ll get into storage if I can find a cheap place,” he said. “Stay in the hotel until April and hopefully I can find another patch of woods before April comes, another big patch of woods where I can go and they won’t bother me.”

Mark Boorse, director of community development with Access Services, said there’s been a lot of anxiety about the uncertainty of the housing effort.

“You build up your tent site over time and so when you lose that where you give that up, then you’re starting from scratch again — and that’s hard for people to imagine themselves doing,” Boorse said. “That survival piece is really hard.”

Access Services provides street outreach services for unhoused people in Montgomery County. Boorse estimated that 120 people are unhoused in Pottstown.

He said Tent City has broken an unwritten rule: a social contract about how unhoused people must navigate the public eye.

“There’s an emphasis on getting rid of visible homelessness when really that doesn’t solve the issue of why there’s an increase of homelessness itself and what to do about the fact that it’s on the rise, the numbers are higher and that it has reached a crisis proportion,” Boorse said.

He said the public has a fundamental misunderstanding regarding increasing homelessness in Philadelphia’s suburbs.

“The reason we have a crisis of homelessness is because we have a crisis in housing,” Boorse said. “People can’t afford to pay for their own place to live.”

He said a long-term solution requires policy changes around housing and direct community action.

Pottstown encampment sweeps extend beyond Tent City

In addition to Tent City, Norfolk Southern has ordered smaller encampments on their property around the borough to close. Another stretch of tents runs parallel to the tracks alongside High Street. People moved to the area to escape the flood prone region along the river.

Jeffrey Baer, 51, has lived in Pottstown for his entire life. He became unhoused eight months ago and set up camp in the flat settlement.

He said he and his neighbors are often harassed by local teenagers who hurl rocks at their tents.

“I’m very disappointed. It makes me cry, actually, that I have no help from my township. I’m appalled,” Baer said.

Baer’s neighbor, 31-year-old Shane Messner, has a bigger dilemma. Recently, he saved a damaged abandoned piano. He dismantled the instrument and put it back together again. Fellow encampment residents helped paint it.

“It was inspiring to people and had something positive back here where there’s so much negative,” Messner said. “It was the diamond in the rough.”

He now has to find a new home for the piano before he must leave on Jan. 2. Messner plans on donating it to another unhoused musician who lives in an encampment unaffected by the sweeps. Boorse brought the residents water, socks and Poptarts.

Messner said he would celebrate his birthday on Thanksgiving this year.

While playing the piano, Messner joked that residents could sing “Happy Birthday” and place a candle on a Poptart.