NORRISTOWN — A task force convened this spring to take steps to tackling homelessness in Montgomery County.
The 46-member body is made up of a mix of community members, those who’ve previously experienced homelessness, as well as others coming from advocacy, education, government, and religious spaces, according to documents.
They’ve come together as the issue of homelessness in the state’s third most populous county appears to have hit a breaking point.
“There’s a crisis of affordable housing, and there’s a crisis of available … emergency shelter (space), and that has led to a crisis in street homelessness,” said Mark Boorse, a task force member and Access Services’ director of program development.
Lawrence hatches plan for homelessness task force
The idea to form a task force originated from Montgomery County Commissioners Chairman Ken Lawrence Jr. After announcing he would not seek re-election this fall, Lawrence said he wanted to turn his attention to the issue of homelessness in what he deemed the best use of his remaining time on the governing board.
“I don’t have all the answers. That’s why I’d like to get people around a table to talk about these solutions,” Lawrence said in a February interview.
Task force leadership includes Lawrence, county Health and Human Services Director Tamara Williams, and Kim Krauter, the Walter Group’s director of development in Pennsylvania.
“We want to be able to use the task force to identity priority initiatives that are both impactful, as well as feasible within our timeframe, and a major theme will be making sure that we really meet people where they are, and so this means making sure there are programs and a variety of resources across the county, for example, and not just in one or two municipalities,” Williams said. “It’s really using that group to identify some actionable solutions.”
Lawrence said his ultimate goal is shedding needed light on something sometimes hidden, and previously not as much discussed.
“It’s an issue that many times that people don’t want to discuss if they don’t have to see that,” Lawrence said. “I think if nothing else thus far, the task force has raised the visibility of that, and I’m looking forward as we continue to work towards getting a report on some solutions on what we need countywide.”
Getting started
The group held its inaugural meeting virtually on April 24. The Zoom session offered contextual information about homelessness and housing programs. Members also participated in breakout sessions to determine possible preliminary solutions.
“We’ve had active participation from the members of the task force, and we’ve brought a lot of people to the table who maybe hadn’t been at that table before,” Lawrence said.
For Heather Lewis, a Norristown resident who also serves as vice president of the municipal council, the task force wasn’t what she expected. Lewis said she was under the impression it would involve a “select group of people to participate, to really drill down and find some action steps.”
But when Lewis logged on that day, she saw dozens of faces on her computer screen, many of whom she soon realized didn’t have the level of background knowledge that she had.
“You have to know where to begin. You have to understand the nuances of our community versus other communities and the history of ‘nimby-ism’ and all of those things,” she said. “Time is of the essence. People’s lives are at stake, and so we don’t really have the time to bring everyone up to speed.”
Lewis said she was also surprised by the “sheer number of people” involved, as task forces “are usually smaller,” with some group participation rates typically ranging from three-to-12 members.
“To call it a ‘task force’ is probably not the accurate title to use,” she said.
Lewis added it’d be more productive to have had these meetings in an in-person environment.
“It is a convenient way to meet, but this is not a situation that’s about the masses coming together having a conversation,” she said. “It’s really about the key stakeholders, people that can make decisions.”
Complex factors
Boorse often deals with those experiencing homelessness in his work with Access Services’ Street Outreach and Street Medicine programs, which bring assistance and health care to those living outside. Acknowledging the issues surrounding homelessness and identifying the extent of the problems are a crucial step in working to solve something so complex.
“The importance I think of stating the scope of the problem is so everybody knows the urgency of it, and also has information about it,” he said. “Not everybody understands how significant or how much of a crisis this actually is.”
Officials have long attributed several reasons to the area’s uptick in homelessness including the lack of affordable housing stock, the COVID-19 pandemic and displacements from the remnants of Hurricane Ida back in September 2021.
The Coordinated Homeless Outreach Center, a 50-bed homeless shelter and resource center situated on the grounds of the Norristown State Hospital closed last June, amid the acquisition of 68 acres of state land to the municipality.
It served as the largest and only shelter for single adults in Montgomery County. Hoteling services have been made available, but no new facility has been acquired.
This comes as 357 people were found to be experiencing homelessness on a cold night in January. The annual Point-in-Time Count, a federally mandated initiative aims to get a glimpse of an area’s homelessness situation. The 2022 count recorded 568 people sleeping in emergency shelters, transitional housing or outside.
In a presentation during a March commissioners’ meeting, Williams noted the county has 162 “year-round emergency shelter beds” available. However, she acknowledged how the the lack of affordable housing stock contributes to the capacity issue.
Williams added that both the “deeply subsidized housing units” and “119 units of permanent supportive housing” are filled.
“Nobody said why … you have a waiting list of four months for people?” Lewis said. “Or why it took them a year to put a disabled woman into housing, and why they thought it was OK to give a disabled woman in a wheelchair with an adult disabled son a tent. So they don’t talk about that — they just talk about policy and procedure.”
Lewis was referring to 63-year-old Cheryl Spaulding, a woman who’d been staying in a tent for nearly one year in a wooded area just beyond the path of the Schuylkill River Trail. Spaulding moved into her new apartment in Norristown on June 20. Her adult son, also homeless with mental health issues, received assistance.
“How do you not find them housing immediately? Elderly woman lived in a tent for a year. That’s shameful,” Lewis told MediaNews Group following a June 20 council work session.
Status update of task force: How is it going?
The homelessness task force has met three times so far. Williams expressed confidence in the group’s ability to “identify some major themes in terms of priorities” and expect to “identify anywhere from one-to-three initiatives or projects that would be supported by the task force.”
A county spokesperson outlined the following goals members are undertaking as part of the task force: Understanding the current landscape of homelessness in Montgomery County; reviewing existing resources and programs; assessing outcomes of existing programs; identifying additional innovative strategies and evidence-based practices; identifying and prioritizing solutions; quickly implementing solutions, monitor outcomes, and make adjustments as needed; and developing plans for replication of successful interventions.
Boorse noted several including the need to increase sheltering capacity, find more affordable housing stock, cultivate more relationships with people and agencies that can help.
“There’s an increasing gap between the numbers of people that are stuck outside, and our capacity as a county to help them be inside —even on the short term to get them stability,” Boorse said. “So I think that’s understood. I think that’s recognized.”
With so many personalities at play, some wonder what those meetings look like?
“The hard part, the hard work of any sort of community effort is the alignment of interests. We don’t have to agree,” Boorse said.
“People are aware I think that there’s places in the county where the conversation around what to do about homelessness has been contentious,” Boorse said. “And so the question for the task force is how does it bring people into alignment directionally, toward a vision, common vision, and then how does it bring people relationally into alignment — meaning we respect each other’s differences, but we can figure out how to work productively and effectively together.”
With an anticipated conclusion date at the end of November, it begs the question of how much progress can be made.
“Six months is certainly not enough time … especially with the learning curve for the number of people on there,” Lewis said. “So you spend three months getting people up to speed, and understanding what the programs, and what the availability is, and then you got three months to do what? Brainstorm on what you’re going to do or what policies need to be changed.”
Boorse stressed the importance of being realistic in terms of what the group can accomplish. He recalled something he’s thought of time and again.
“The experience of homelessness is relentlessly hard and inherently dangerous and so some of these things are things that just take a while to sort out,” Boorse said. “You can’t just have sheltering overnight, and you can’t have affordable housing even in a short period of time, and so the question remains what happens while all these good ideas are being worked on and while good progress is being made?”
“I don’t want to diminish that in any way. The question remains we have increasing numbers of people outside and that does not look like it’s going to diminish on its own,” he continued. “I believe that there is going to continue to be the increases that we’ve seen which are pretty sharp [and] are going to continue in this direction.”
He emphasized the need to come up with “operational short term” ideas that “don’t require (a) huge amount of money” to address.
“I think we’re in that process of figuring out how do we align? In the meantime I think there are some things that are starting to emerge as focal points for the work of the task force,” Boorse said.
Issues go beyond housing
Others acknowledged that the issues of homelessness do not only revolve around housing. Lawrence insisted that “we need more mental health treatment beds. We need more treatment centers for drug addiction.”
Boorse noted how “gaps” can appear “when we rely either solely or heavily on the service sector.” Owen Camuso, regional director of Resources for Human Development, a Philadelphia-based nonprofit that oversaw CHOC’s operations, knows the importance of these service sectors all too well.
“We still have safety net services, but they’re kind of fractured now because we’re operating not under normal circumstances,” he continued. “We need to get back to operating at normal circumstances so we can strengthen that safety net in Montgomery County, and we need everybody to work towards those goals, not just take care of those problems.”
Plan for tackling issues after task force wraps
Looking ahead, some task force members share their thoughts about the next steps.
“I hope at the end of this task force’s life cycle that there is momentum to carry this kind of work forward on county level — because it’s important to have it on a county level,” Boorse said. “I understand the value of having a time limit really focused effort. I’m hoping that it can be a sustained effort over time even after the task force ends in this iteration.”
Lewis amassed perspective throughout her time as an elected official, social worker and advocate running the Reuniting Family Bail Fund.
“I mean I’m willing to offer it to the people that are willing to do something, or can do something, and that’s the leadership,” Lewis said, who acknowledged that my time is limited on council, Ken Lawrence’s time is limited as a commissioner.”
“So the folks that are driving this aren’t going to be in these positions after the end of this year,” she continued. “I don’t know who’s going to continue the fight, and how, and to what degree?”
But in the meantime, Lewis reflected on the conversations long had by a select few in Lower Merion Township, Norristown and Pottstown. While more have stepped up to participate, she still hoped for quality over quantity of membership, specifically with attendance from leadership throughout the county’s 62 boroughs, municipalities and townships.
“If the task force was made up of every administrator for those communities, I’d be ok with it because at least they’re the right people that need to be in the room,” she said. “You’re literally preaching to the choir with this task force.”
“We need people that can make the decisions, to change their ordinances, to incentivize developers to come and build affordable housing in their community,” she continued. “That’s what needs to happen.”
Membership
According to documents obtained by MediaNews Group, participation in the county’s homelessness task force includes representatives from the area’s political leaders at the state and federal level. They include the offices of U.S. Rep. Madeleine Dean, D-4th Dist., state Sen. Amanda Cappeletti, D-17th Dist., state Sen. Tracy Pennycuick, D-24th Dist., state Rep. Matt Bradford, D-70th Dist., state Rep. Joe Ciresi, D-146th, and state Rep. Greg Scott, D-54th Dist.
Task force members include North Penn School District Superintendent Todd Bauer; Mark Boorse, Access Services’ director of program Development, and vice president of the Board of Directors for Pottstown Beacon of Hope; Owen Camuso, regional director of Resources for Human Development Behavioral Health and Housing Division; Upper Moreland Township Manager Matt Candland; Christina Cozart, Pottstown School District’s residency coordinator/homeless liaison; Norristown Area School District Superintendent Christopher Dormer; Lansdale Borough Manager John Ernst; Brandon Ford, Springfield Township president of Consortium of Communities; Andrea Galambos, administrator of the Montgomery County Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Performance and Planning; Joel Johnson, of the Montgomery County Housing Authority; Norristown Municipal Administrator Crandall Jones; Pottstown Borough Manager Justin Keller; Alina Kitchell , federal programs coordinator for Agora Cyber School; Lower Merion Township Commissioner Shawn Kraemer; Kim Krauter, landlord/developer for the Walters Group; Montgomery County Commissioners’ Chairman Ken Lawrence Jr.; Kristin Frederick Leonard, of the Colonial Area Anti-Racism and Social Equity Alliance; Heather Lewis, county resident; Upper Moreland Township Commissioner Cheryl Lockard.
Also, Montgomery County Prothonotary Noah Marlier; North Wales Mayor Neil McDevitt; Mike McKenna, director of elementary education and homeless programs for North Penn School District; Dottie Miller, PA Democratic State Committee Southeast Caucus chair; Casey Molitor, Norristown Area School District director of student services; Montgomery County Deputy Chief Operating Officer Barbara O’Malley; Holly Parker, of the Tri County Network; Patricia Patterson, of CPW Rotary Club; Abington Township Commissioner Lori Schreiber; CADCOM Chief Financial Officer Sandy Sharma; Kayleigh Silver, administrator of the Montgomery County Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Housing and Community Development; Anna-Marie Slivinski, county resident; Montgomery County Chief Operating Officer Lee Soltysiak; Deborah Spence, county resident; Lower Merion Township Commissioner Anthony Stevenson.
And, Beth Sturman, president of Your Way Home and executive director of Laurel House; James Walters, administrator of the Montgomery County Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Integrative Services; Montgomery County Department of Health and Human Services Director Tamara Williams; Montgomery County Commissioners Vice Chairwoman Jamila Winder; Rev. Marlene Wood, faith-based provider; and Montgomery County Commerce Director Dave Zellers.
