Montco commissioners may vote Thursday to establish a $1.3M year-round homeless shelter in Lansdale
If approved, the shelter would be the first year-round shelter in the county since the Coordinated Homeless Outreach Center in Norristown closed in 2022.
For the first time since 2022, Montgomery County may regain a year-round homeless shelter next year as county commissioners prepare to vote on funding and a contract Thursday to set the plan in motion.
County commissioners are expected to vote Thursday morning on the $208 million 2025 capital improvement budget, which includes funding for a homeless shelter, and to approve a lease for the shelter site in Lansdale.
The county board will also vote on its $568 million general fund budget, which includes a 9% increase for residents on their county shares of property taxes, following steeper increases in Delaware and Chester Counties earlier this month.
If approved, the shelter would be the first year-round shelter in the county since the Coordinated Homeless Outreach Center in Norristown closed in 2022. The county currently funds several Code Blue shelters, which offer overnight housing when temperatures or wind chills drop below freezing.
The project is a partnership between the county and Lansdale borough and is part of a broader effort in Montgomery County to dramatically expand shelter resources over the next five years.
The county’s capital improvement budget for 2025 allocates $2 million for shelters for unhoused people and lays out a plan to spend $10 million total over the next five years on the project.
Earlier this year, officials counted 435 people living on the street in Montgomery County, the most in a decade aside from 2022 when the Norristown shelter closed. But efforts to increase services and affordable housing options in the affluent county in recent years, including a proposed affordable housing complex in Upper Gywnedd, have come with steep community pushback.
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The proposed Lansdale project is estimated to cost $1.3 million, with the funds coming from the $2 million allocation for shelters in the county’s capital improvement budget.
The Lansdale center is expected to house 20 to 25 individuals, and county officials say they hope to open it in the first half of 2025. Whereas existing Code Blue shelters offer only short-term overnight services, the Lansdale shelter would provide longer term transitional housing for those experiencing homelessness in the borough, said Jamila Winder, the chair of the Montgomery County board of commissioners.
Winder said she hoped the project would encourage other local governments to work with the county on similar shelters.
“That will be a model for other municipalities to follow, that you can stand up a homeless shelter in your municipality to help the most vulnerable among us while still having a thriving and safe community,” she said.
Winder said that the lack of year-round transitional housing options in Montgomery County has led to a rise in encampments across the community. The county, she said, has struggled to start full-time shelters in part due to an unwillingness within municipalities to allow for shelters within their borders.
“Anyone that’s been following the complexities of standing up homeless shelters in any area knows that it’s matched with NIMBYism,” she said.