Lansdale Scouts prompt talks about homelessness

 A visit to borough council from a local Scout troop prompted a round of talks on one of Lansdale’s toughest topics.

“The concern was about homelessness, and how people are camping in Stony Creek Park. And there’s a lot of trash,” a scout told council when asked what borough concerns they might have.

During the April 17 council meeting, council President Mary Fuller closed the night’s discussions by asking a group of scouts, on hand from local troop 414 for a merit badge requirement, if they had any issues or topics to discuss, prompting the query.

“The civic concern of the scout troop is centered around the homeless in our community — unhoused in our community, particularly at Stony Creek Park,” she said.

Borough council and officials discussed homelessness at length in 2023, building on talks that began at the county level after heavy flooding in summer 2021 damaged low-income housing near Norristown, then a county homeless shelter there was closed in 2022. Lansdale officials began talks with the county in summer 2023 to discuss the topic, and borough police updated council through the fall on how they’ve helped people found sleeping in local parks, including at Stony Creek and in the gazebo at Memorial Park, and referred them to local service agencies.

Borough police have also partnered with a mental health co-responder to help respond to those experiencing mental health challenges or other problems not typically addressed by police when they respond to calls, volunteers staffed a Code Blue shelter in town all winter providing a place to stay on chilly nights, and local residents dubbed “Lansdale Angels” have started a GoFundMe online fundraiser mean to raise money for permanent housing for those in need. Stony Creek has also come up in the conversation for a different reason: a local couple has been living in the park and documenting their experiences on social media.

Police Chief Mike Trail answered the scouts by noting it’s a question that his department grapples with every day.

“I could not think of a more contemporary and pressing question to ask in our community, and many communities within our nation,” he said.

He and his department are closely following a court case slated to be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court starting Monday that originated in Grant’s Pass, Oregon, and revolves around whether those who are homeless can be fined for sleeping outside on public lands, Trail told the scouts, prompted by a recent federal court ruling that local municipalities and police cannot stop the homeless from doing so.

“We saw the increase in unhoused individuals during the pandemic. There’s a lot of issues right now, relative to affordable housing in communities, including ours, and you’re seeing that pop up in our backyard, so to speak. So there’s a very pressing legal question,” Trail said.

“We take steps to make sure our officers are out in the parks, to make sure (our parks) are safe. We work with public works, we work with parks and recreation (staff) to make sure the parks are clean. We’ve taken significant steps to make that happen, at the gazebo and at Stony Creek Park,” he said.

“A lot of those folks who are unfortunately unhoused are brothers, sisters, moms, dads, kids, and there is a degree of respect we need to understand, and we need to work to help those folks get up on their feet, and find affordable housing,” he said.

The police chief then encouraged the scouts to watch the Supreme Court arguments on the pending case, prompting another question: Could the scouts help with the trash cleanup? Anyone who spots such trash or a possible encampment can call police or parks staff, Trail said, and Mayor Garry Herbert added that help would be appreciated, but impractical, since police must be careful when removing anything left by those homeless in a park.

“One of the things that makes this a complicated issue for us to manage, is particularly around the ownership of things, of private property,” he said.

“Part of that (Supreme Court) discussion is going to be centered around, what can we pick up, and what can we not? And when we pick it up, what do we do with it then? Because it is their property, and we can’t unlawfully seize it from them,” Herbert said.

Trail added that if police respond to a site and find “obvious trash, we throw trash out. If we find items that appear to be personal property,” they work with parks and recreation staff to collect, tag, document, and store those items, “so if somebody comes looking for it, we can get that property back to them.”

“Under the current rules, we have to hold that property for a full year, before we get rid of it, because they have to have ample time to come find it. You asked a very logical, simple question, that has a very complicated, very long answer to it,” Herbert said.

“We pick up the trash when we can find it, but we also have to help determine what is property, and what is not,” he said.

Councilman BJ Breish added another way the scouts, or anyone else, can help clean up the town. In recent years he and members of the “Friends of Lansdale Parks” Facebook group have organized trash cleanups in several local parks, and borough nonprofit Discover Lansdale and the Lansdale Lions Club are planning a similar pickup, starting at 6 p.m. on April 22 at Railroad Plaza.

“I feel like there’s a bit of a stigma associated with the homeless and the trash. Certainly, folks that are living in the parks could be creating some trash, but the trash issue goes beyond that,” he said.

“I’ve been picking up trash in the parks for years now, and there’s another level to it, or more layers to it than just it being associated with the homeless. ‘The trash problem is a homeless problem,’ they’re not the same thing. They’re two separate things, and they’re two things that certainly need to be addressed, and there’s things we can do,” he said.

Scout troops have helped with previous park cleanup events, as have other community groups, and Breish told council he’s recently obtained a measuring device to help quantify exactly how much trash the groups collect from parks or downtown streets.

“Some of the trash I was picking up was very, very old, from a very long time ago. Some of the trash might’ve been blown into the park … there’s layers to this problem, that isn’t just associated with the challenge of the unhoused,” Breish said. “The stigma that might be associated with those that are underserved in our community: the fault is not all theirs.”

Fuller closed by noting that the conversation may have taught the scouts something else they may not have anticipated.

“Perhaps we have taught the scouts a lesson: give us a simple question, and we will convolute that ’til the cows come home. That’s what government does,” she said, drawing laughs from council, staff, and the scouts.

Lansdale’s borough council next meets at 8:30 p.m. on May 1 with various committees starting at 6:30 p.m., all at the borough municipal building, 1 Vine Street. For more information visit www.Lansdale.org.

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