Peco will clear Norristown homeless encampment, after working with advocates on ‘respectful’ relocation plan

In a coda to events that drew attention to the growing crisis of homelessness in one of Pennsylvania’s wealthiest counties, Peco plans to clear the homeless encampment on its Norristown property in September.

The energy utility has spent the last two months collaborating with anti-homelessness advocates to devise a plan that prioritized the needs of the people living in tents on the 3,000 feet of Peco-owned land along the Schuylkill River Trail — a process that advocates praised for its respectfulness and generosity.

Next month, Peco will post signs advising people on the property that they must move within 45 days — which advocates called a more-generous time frame than is usually given by private property owners seeking to sweep an encampment. In some cases, property owners don’t give notice at all.

The majority of the 15 people living on the site have already left, though about six remain, said Mark Boorse, director of program development at Access Services, a county-funded nonprofit that operates a homelessness outreach program. His organization has worked to relocate people since May — to a county shelter, among other locations — and plans to continue working with the remaining six.

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Upon learning of the encampment, Peco “was forced to figure out how to make sure we were keeping the lights on from a reliability perspective, but also to ensure that the people who are there were treated with dignity and respect,” said Doug Oliver, the utility’s senior vice president for external affairs.

In May, when Peco announced its plan to clear the site at an unspecified date, some of the people living homeless 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.

He and his wife had lived in a tent on the Peco site since the fall. Edgington said police officers have come by to warn people of the impending clear-out. “It makes you feel unstable,” Edgington added. “Things are falling apart fast.”

Still, advocates praised Peco for its willingness to listen.

“For a private landowner to be this helpful and this respectfully concerned, that’s more than what we typically see,” Boorse said.

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Ultimately, though, he said, it’s the responsibility of public officials to address the issue of homelessness and the lack of shelter and affordable housing options.

“The fact that some people are on privately owned land is a consequence of the fact that we have a crisis level of homelessness in the community and that people don’t have legal spaces where they can be,” Boorse said, adding: “People who are responsible for the community at large, this is a question for them to address. It’s not the burden of the private landowners.”

Some key factors have exacerbated homelessness in Norristown, where 21% of the population of about 35,000 people lives in poverty.

In 2021, flooding from the remnants of Hurricane Ida damaged a low-income Norristown apartment complex with about 100 units, forcing tenants to evacuate.

Last year, a 50-bed homeless shelter in Norristown was closed after the state conferred to the borough the land on which the facility sat. County social services agencies petitioned to extend the lease of what had been the only local shelter, but Norristown officials declined.

“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” for Norristown to build something that generates tax revenue, said Borough Council President Tom Lepera in late May.

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Peco’s May announcement of its intention to clear the encampment sparked a series of events that involved Lepera suggesting he would bus unhoused people to Villanova, where homeless advocate Stephanie Sena works, according to Sena and other advocates.

Lepera, a Democrat who was first elected to council in 2019 and took over the presidency in January 2022, denied suggesting he would do so.