Peco completes its clear-out of a homeless encampment on its Norristown land
Over the past few months, advocates have worked with Peco to relocate the roughly two dozen people living in the encampment.
Peco began clearing a homeless encampment on its Norristown property Friday, the culmination of a two-month process that homelessness advocates praise as humane.
Throughout the summer, the utility worked with advocates to come up with a plan to relocate the roughly two dozen unhoused people living there and give them ample notice of the coming sweep.
Earlier Friday morning, when Peco did its final walk-through with Access Services, a homelessness outreach nonprofit, one person was living in the encampment. Access Services helped find her a new place to go.
By midday, all that was left of the encampment were signs that people had once lived there: disbanded tents, a shopping cart on its side, mirrors resting against rocks and trees. Crates and pallets lay around a makeshift firepit.
Crews mowed the lawn in order for Peco to bring in dumpsters for cleanup work to begin Monday.
The work will last about four weeks, Peco spokesperson Greg Smore said.
Some people who used to live in the encampment have moved to permanent housing, while others have shifted to other encampments or temporary housing at a hotel in Horsham, said Mike Kingsley, who runs a Norristown nonprofit that provides services to unhoused people.
Peco posted signs in August on the site, near the Schuylkill, giving people 45 days notice of its plans to sweep the area ― more time than property owners generally give when planning to sweep an encampment. In some cases, property owners don’t give notice at all.
Peco has said it needed to clear the site because it was important for its operations to be able to access it.
In May, when Peco announced its plan to clear the site at an unspecified date, some people living on the property criticized the prospect of a sweep.
“They’re moving us around like we’re dirt,” Adam Edgington, 41, a former salesman, said at the time.
The question of how to address homelessness in Norristown has been acrimonious and divisive. While the borough is located in wealthy Montgomery County, 21% of its population of about 35,000 people live in poverty.
Norristown Council President Thomas Lepera has said he seeks to “increase the tax base by attracting new homebuyers with disposable income” and sees building affordable housing and homeless shelters as antithetical to this goal.
But homelessness advocates, such as Stephanie Sena, who teaches at the Charles Widger School of Law at Villanova University, have criticized Norristown officials’ unwillingness to add affordable housing. The lack of affordable housing, Sena has said, is “the root of homelessness.”
Earlier this week, emails obtained through public records requests revealed that Norristown officials had turned down federal funding because of requirements to build affordable housing for people with disabilities and low incomes.
Norristown officials have declined to build a homeless shelter after a 50-bed shelter, the only one in the area, was closed last year. Lepera said the land would be better used to build something that would generate tax revenue for Norristown.
Kingsley hopes officials will change their minds.
“We need to get to the point where we’re ready to build a shelter,” he said. “Regardless of not wanting the homeless in Norristown, they’re going to be there. They’re always going to be.”