PENNSYLVANIA: Families happy for a place to
call home
Bucks County Courier Times
By Winslow Mason Jr.
Originally published March 16, 2005
When Lisa Schell looks at her apartment inside Bucks County's first homeless shelter in Penndel, she smiles at her son, 2-year-old Skyler.
"The apartment is really nice and I'm really grateful," she said.
New floors and modernized kitchens and bathrooms are just some of the improvements done in the four apartments at the shelter on 349 Durham Road. The Bucks County Housing Group painted, fixed a water problem, installed a laundry room, and bought furniture for the community room. There are also plans to build a playground in the yard.
The Bucks County Commissioners steered more than $200,000 in Community Development Block Grant funding to the shelter to get rid of problems including mold, chipped paint and unsafe living conditions. The shelter shut down for six months to complete the work and re-opened in November.
Housing group officials, tenants and other well-wishers honored county Commissioners Sandra Miller, Charles Martin and Jim Cawley Tuesday with an open house to show their appreciation.
"People who are homeless are already dealing with so many issues in their lives, we think everybody deserves safe and comfortable living conditions," said Santo Gairo, the housing group's executive director.
The housing group provides temporary and transitional housing to Bucks residents with no place to live.
"Homelessness is an invisible problem in Bucks County," said development coordinator Melissa Mantz. "Not far from this shelter you can find bucolic mansions. The working poor is the fastest growing economic group in the country."
In Bucks, women with children make up a majority of the homeless cases, she said. The housing group has a seven-month waiting list for residents in need of shelter.
Without the Penndel shelter, Schell said she'd didn't know what she would do.
Schell and her husband split. With little income, Schell moved to Philadelphia temporarily, but decided she didn't want to raise her son alone in the city. Her extended family didn't have the resources to support her. She's expecting another baby this summer. She turned to the housing group.
She hopes to be out of the shelter and on her own within months. While she has temporary housing, she'll be attending classes at Bucks County Community College. She said she wants to become a forensics detective, similar to the experts featured on television crime shows such as CSI.
April Atkins has a similar story.
April lives in the shelter with her daughter Heather, 15. She also takes care of a young son during the day and oversees the care of an 18-year-old son, who lives with his father. April and her husband also split. April said her mother didn't have the resources to take in her and her children and she turned to the housing group for help.
She said she plans to be out of the shelter by April and hopes to get a permanent home for her family.
"I want a house," she said. "I would love to stay here, but I know I can't."
Mantz said the average stay for tenants at the shelter is four to eight months. Residents come to the shelter by referral from county programs such as Bucks County Children and Youth, the American Red Cross Homeless Shelter and A Woman's Place.
Getting into the shelter, though, is not easy.
Tenants must set educational and employment goals for themselves and work toward those goals while they're there. They also work with a case manager to make sure they are made aware of other programs designed to get them back on their feet.
When people think of homeless shelters, they often think of rows of cots in a small room, Mantz said. But, she added, the housing group has learned that the key to getting people back on their feet is creating an comfortable environment where they can reach their goals.
"Stability is the key," she said.
Winslow Mason Jr. can be reached at 215-949-4170 or wmason@phillyBurbs.com