Two Area Residents Team Up to Aid Homeless in Lansdale

Tony Di Domizio | North Penn Now•

File photo.

Two North Penn area residents are working on getting the homeless in Lansdale off the streets, out of the parks, and into proper and safe shelter.

Sandy Salveter, of Towamencin, and Linda Rowland, of East Fifth Street in Lansdale, are pursuing $17,000 in donations from the community via GoFundMe in their goal to curb homelessness in Lansdale Borough. Their mission, which began in November, is to find permanent housing for five women and about a dozen men.

The homelessness issue increased by the end of 2022, after Montgomery County closed the only single adult shelter that July on the grounds of the Norristown State Hospital.

Thus far, as of Tuesday, $2,328 has been raised by 43 donors. Most of the donations are anonymous.

"We aim to provide permanent housing for these people. We do not ask many questions. We just provide the housing,” stated Salveter in the GoFundMe page introduction. "Our approach to the homeless follows the ‘Housing First’ model, which says that any other problems a homeless person has cannot be solved while they are living on the streets.”

On the night of Nov. 28, the forecast had the temperature dropping near 20 degrees. Alas, there were no shelters open in the borough for women, Salveter wrote.

Rowland, who feeds and clothes the borough homeless through her Facebook group "Helping the Homeless in Lansdale," suggested she and Salveter help a particular woman that night. They were able to house her in a hotel room, and then the duo set off finding an apartment for her in the borough. A few weeks later, the woman was no longer homeless.

"Needless to say, she is very grateful,” wrote Salveter.

Since Nov. 28, Rowland and Salveter have taken two homeless men off the street and housed them in hotels. They, too, are looking for housing for the two men as soon as possible, she wrote. In a Dec. 30 update, Salveter wrote that one of the men moved into an apartment that day and is now "formerly homeless.”

"Linda did a wonderful job of gathering furniture and household items for this man’s new home, so it looks very attractive right from the beginning,” wrote Salveter in her update. "Linda has a very caring and generous network of friends, who have donated beautiful furniture and furnishings for this man. And Linda’s husband was essential in this effort, too, because he brought the furniture to the apartment with his truck and engaged in the often back-breaking work (along with the apartment’s occupant) of getting the furniture up to the apartment.”

According to Salveter, $1,200 covers 25 days of housing in a studio apartment for one of the formerly homeless. Furthermore, Salveter updated the public that a rooming house manager in Lansdale may be able to provide rooms for homeless in the near future. She wrote that the rooms are scarce, but less expensive than studio apartments and one-bedroom apartments.

"So far, these efforts by Linda and me have involved only us, but to take more people off the borough streets, we need additional funding. This GoFundMe is our first attempt to find that funding,” Salveter wrote.

Funds will be used to pay for an initial hotel stay for the person removed from the street, and then support ongoing monthly costs for permanent accommodation. Donate to the GoFundMe here.

Salveter wrote she plans to contact Lansdale Borough Council to ask if they can apply for the $4 million in allocated funds from Montgomery County to help alleviate homelessness and funnel some of the money to their efforts.