Lansdale sees progress against homelessness with 2 new facilities

Borough officials are heading into 2025 with a pair of tangible victories in the long-discussed struggle against homelessness in the area.

Council members closed the year by thanking county officials, local staff and volunteers who laid the groundwork for a new transitional housing facility for homeless persons in the borough, and a Code Blue shelter for homeless women.

How can we help?

“Hats off to this community. One of the pieces of information I shared, was that our community was really behind us,” said council President Mary Fuller.

“We really weren’t hearing negative comments. People stepped up to say, ‘What can we do to help? What can our community do?’ And we heard that, loud and clear,” she said.

Homelessness in the area has been a near-constant topic in recent years, building on discussions that began at the county level after heavy flooding in summer 2021 damaged low-income housing near Norristown, then the only county homeless shelter there was closed in 2022.

Lansdale officials took up talks with the county in summer 2023 on the topic, and borough police updated council through that fall on how they’ve helped people found sleeping in local parks, including at Stony Creek Park and in the gazebo at Memorial Park, and referred them to local service agencies.

“This season particularly, we’ve seen throughout the year the problem has increased. More and more people are unhoused. Short-term solutions, for the winter season, are great — in the form of the Code Blue shelter that already exists, and now the Code Blue shelter at the Wissahickon Building, but those end when the seasons change, and then people are still unhoused,” Fuller said.

The town has deployed a mental health co-responder to help those experiencing mental health challenges or other problems not typically addressed by police when they respond to calls, volunteers staff a Code Blue shelter in town all winter providing a place for men to stay on chilly nights, and local residents have mobilized on social media to raise money for permanent housing for those in need.

In July 2024, borough police updated the public on a U.S. Supreme Court decision regarding whether a municipality can ban people from sleeping or camping in public areas, such as sidewalks and parks, residents outlined their own private efforts to help via social media, and those living in the park described their situations and suggestions while county activists pushed a petition calling for local action.

    Donated food and packaging supplies sit on a counter below “Code Blue” fliers and signage at the shelter for men in Lansdale on Wednesday, Dec. 4, 2024.
 By Dan Sokil | The Reporter   

Talks get started

In early August, police reported the gazebo at Memorial Park had been cleared and the tenants relocated ahead of the town’s Founders Day and Festival of the Arts there on Aug. 24, and that same month Mayor Garry Herbert gave a look behind the scenes, detailing in his Mayoral Musings column on local news site North Penn Now how “Lansdale stepped up” to offer a site to the county, but no agreement had yet been reached. In the subsequent months, volunteers began training for the town’s Code Blue shelter for men in October, with the first calls to staff the shelter overnight coming in mid-November.

In early December, council’s parks committee gave the OK for use of the Wissahickon Parks building at Main Street and Lakeview Drive, for use as a shelter for women, then just weeks later county and borough officials signed off on an agreement to use a building just blocks away, at Main and North Wales Road, as a supportive short-term housing site starting in 2025.

During the final council meeting of the year, Fuller and several colleagues thanked all involved.

“I think the bets would’ve been against us, getting a Code Blue shelter (for women) open for this winter, and for some kind of extra solutions moving forward, but here we are,” Fuller said.

‘Proud of this town’

Councilman BJ Breish, who has volunteered at the shelter and called on other communities to step up, echoed the compliments, thanking Fuller, Herbert, and council Vice President Meg Currie Teoh for their efforts, plus others.

“A lot of people came to the table to make this happen,” he said. “Folks in the community encouraged us to look for real solutions. It’s been challenging, it’s been frustrating, it’s taken a lot of time — you want to take action quickly, but these things take time, and it takes all of those folks and their involvement in the process,” he said.

Teoh, whose public safety committee fielded frequent complaints about those living in parks, added her own thanks.

“We hear about a lot of municipalities throughout the county saying ‘Let’s try to do something, maybe we can open a shelter.’ And then their council meetings and Facebook pages become just shouting matches and ugliness,” she said.

    Name tags meant to identify belongings from men staying at the Lansdale Code Blue shelter are seen on a bulletin board on Wednesday, Dec. 4, 2024.
 By Dan Sokil | The Reporter   

“I was just so blown away by, as soon as the news broke that the Code Blue (women’s site) was opening, the only comments we heard were ‘How can we help?’ It made me so proud of this town. It was truly an honor to be part of this process — things like this are why I wanted to be on council in the first place, to speak for those who don’t necessarily have a voice,” Teoh said.

Rapid rehousing

Herbert added his own “deep gratitude” to the council members and borough staff who made the “necessary addition to our community” of the code blue women’s shelter happen, and added in a fresh Mayoral Musings column some specifics about what the community will, and will not, see at the county site.

“First, let me clarify what this new facility is — and what it is not. The rapid rehousing facility is not a permanent shelter; it is a transitional space designed to help unhoused individuals secure stable, long-term housing elsewhere in the county,” Herbert said.

“With an estimated occupancy of around 20 people at a time, and an average stay of 45 days, this facility is a practical solution to help those in need find permanent homes while minimizing disruption to the surrounding area,” he said.

The site was chosen in part because of its proximity to essential services like Manna on Main Street, public transportation access, and because it’s “surrounded by mostly non-residential buildings,” the mayor added.

“Rest assured, like any other tenant in Lansdale, the facility is required to comply with all borough codes to ensure property values and neighborhood standards are upheld. If these requirements are not met, appropriate action will be taken,” he said.

“Over half of those experiencing homelessness are employed, many working tirelessly to support families while struggling to keep a roof over their heads. They are parents reading bedtime stories in parked cars, teenagers studying for exams in dim light, and seniors who have given decades of service only to find themselves priced out of their homes,” Herbert said.

“These are not strangers, they are our neighbors, and their plight demands our attention. Let us recognize the truth: they are far more likely to suffer harm than to cause it. They need protection, not rejection,” he said.

As of Dec. 31, organizers have said they expect to need to staff both shelters for Code Blue nights from Jan. 1 through Jan. 4, and the shelters cannot open if all shifts are not filled.

Anyone interested in assisting at either Code Blue shelter can call organizer Mark Lanan at (215) 272-4979, contact [email protected] or follow “Code Blue Shelter – Lansdale, PA” on Facebook for more information.

This article appears courtesy of a content share agreement between North Penn Now and The Reporter. To read more stories like this, visit https://www.thereporteronline.com