Homelessness Coalition

A little background first… I have lived in the borough of Pennsburg for 8-1/2 years. Pennsburg is east of the township of East Greenville and west of the borough of Red Hill. Main Street runs through all 3 little towns and collectively we are known as the Upper Perkiomen (Perk for short) Valley. When I say little towns, I mean little literally. Before I moved here, a resident of Pennsburg called it “Tumbleweed Town” and, while there aren’t dirt streets, horses and saloons and barbershop poles, there is a quaintness that takes centuries into its facades. The buildings that line Main Street can be as old as over 200 years, as is the building I live in. In order to give you an idea of “old”, the electrical system in my apartment is made up of a fuse box and 3 fuses for the entire apartment. Obviously, some upgrades have been made to accommodate appliances that require 220V, but I promise you that the only upgrades that have ever been made were strictly done so out of need or governmental rules. My walls are made of chicken wire and horse-hair plaster (Alien Tape has been a godsend!) and you can feel the unevenness by running your hand along the wall. We finally got a second fast food chain after the pandemic was over. The only chain pizza to us is Dominos, located in East Greenville, though we are blessed to have a few independent pizza and sub shops. We have two grocery stores of regional name, and the less than 15-year-old Walmart, also in East Greenville, is a super store, so it can count as a grocery store as well. The majority of consumption of alcohol occurs at one of the two fire houses and the VFW post.

Now, with a better understanding of the Podunk area that I call home, I was recently impressed when Pennsburg undertook the task of creating a code blue shelter for the homeless. Now if you don’t know what a code blue shelter is (for any readers who live in an area of constantly balmy weather), a Code Blue shelter is a temporary place of safety for people experiencing extreme cold weather.  Code Blue is a policy implemented by the Department of Homeless Services when the temperature drops to 32°F or below, including wind chill, between 4 PM and 8 AM.  During a Code Blue, shelters provide essential services like hot meals and bedding, and people can access them without undergoing the usual intake and eligibility procedures.

I found this out on social media, realized it was located less than 8 blocks away from me, and yep, my heart was right there. I made my first contact, introducing myself and offering services to seek out donations of needed items, especially personal care and hygiene products for the visitors – I can get my hands on hotel-sized shampoos, lotions, soaps, toothbrushes and toothpaste pretty easily after all – and offered my intrinsic experience in folding bed and bath linens used during a visitor’s stay. I was thanked but told those needs were already being met.

What they need most is volunteers to be at the shelter overnight when it is open and in operation. Because of my sleep and energy issues, that’s obviously not a place where I make a good fit. And being a ‘volunteer’ has strings attached. First, the volunteer has to have a criminal clearance report done, at his/her own cost (It was $25 10 years ago; not sure what the cost is now). Then there are commitments to training sessions (I’m in favor of them and knowing/having rules helps both the volunteers and the guests they serve). I know about the criminal clearance report and costs because there was a time I was interested in working as a volunteer at the library (Me, surround myself with books? Egad!). I understand that a lot of people may volunteer but not follow through, and the library can’t afford to be paying fees for potential volunteers without knowing if they’ll stay. But then, and again now, it seems to me that once the volunteer has put in a set amount of hours in volunteer work, that cost should be reimbursed. Volunteers work for free, so money not spent on wages is saved and can provide this fee.

Whoops, got a little bit off the subject there. Other than volunteers, the coalition has received a large amount of support, big and small, from many different directions. They have their primary presence on Facebook and, from there, created a wish list on Amazon. (I got a little internally pissy about some of the things on that list, but that’s another story.) A church in a town southwest of East Greenville recently voted to issue a check in the amount of $2,000 to support this ministry. The church that owns the ‘house’ that the shelter is using had its parishioners gather non-perishable food snacks under their Tree of Giving, and the amount received was HUGE!

But other than still needing to fill volunteer spaces, the committee handling this coalition has really organized everything, and there have been several nights that the shelter has been open and in operation. Of course, curious me would like to be that proverbial ‘fly on the wall’ to see how everything operates. If there comes a way that I can help, I’ll be right there; for now, I’ll just enjoy knowing that our Podunk little borough has stepped up to help our fellow humans in a very big way!