West Chester gets a new family shelter: ‘We will not turn our eyes away from homelessness’

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The Friends Association unveiled a new, 10-unit family shelter and office building in West Chester on Wednesday afternoon.

The multilevel space located at 825 Paoli Pike is an expansion of low-barrier, emergency housing in Pennsylvania’s wealthiest county by the local nonprofit.

Dozens of Chester County officials, local leaders and social service advocates gathered for Wednesday’s ribbon-cutting ceremony and tour of the facility.

“This is not just a ribbon cutting — it’s a declaration that we will not turn our eyes away from homelessness,” Friends Association CEO Joyce Chester said during her remarks. “We will not pretend it doesn’t exist. We know that it does. We will treat that situation with dignity, respect and honor. And this is one of the ways that we can do it.”

The Chester County Department of Community Development awarded $3.2 million in federal grant money to Friends Association to buy and renovate the building. The space is now ready for use and the Friends Association has no mortgage, allowing it to focus its resources on its goal.

“We’re looking forward to saying ‘Welcome home,’” Chester said.

The commitment from the county government is the single-largest grant ever awarded by the department.

“As we’re having this discussion on the federal level over whether these programs are worth it or whether this money is worth it, I think Chester County is proving that it is worth it — and these lives are worth helping,” Chester County Commissioner Josh Maxwell said.

The top two floors of the new building consist of two- and three-bedroom apartments. Friends Association already operates the Family Center — a six-unit shelter in the heart of the borough. The expansion allows the nonprofit to serve up to 16 families.

“It is our intent that this facility will alleviate any street homelessness for families,” said Dolores Colligan, director of the county Department of Community Development. “We should not have any family in Chester County sleeping outside in a car or in a place not met for human habitation. So, we’re very proud of this.”

Anyone experiencing homelessness in the county enters the coordinated entry system — the Human Needs Network of Chester County. Accessing that point is as simple as dialing 211.

Resource navigators engage callers with a set of questions to figure out where to place them. Chester County tries to connect each person with a matching set of resources, using a “person-centered approach,” Colligan said. However, there is a long line to get into permanent supportive housing.

“We might have 70 people on that list at any given time that needs to get into a shelter,” Commissioner Eric Roe said.

Colligan told WHYY News that there is not enough affordable housing anywhere in the country, let alone Chester County. Changes at the federal level could put an additional squeeze on capacity.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development allocates $2.4 million in Continuum of Care program funding annually to Chester County, according to Colligan. The county spends about $1.8 million of those dollars on permanent supportive housing assistance for roughly 75 households.

Under the Trump administration, HUD has proposed capping the amount counties can spend on permanent housing solutions at 30% — which, if implemented, would severely hamper Chester County’s ability to provide assistance.

“If that funding were cut at 1.8 that goes into [permanent supportive housing] would come down to like $650,000,” Colligan said. “So, a significant loss of funding just for permanent housing and then you got to figure that could mean up towards 40 of those families losing housing that they have been in for many, many, many, many years.”

For now, HUD has shelved those proposed changes to its guidelines.