NEWLY HOMELESS
Berks seeing increase in homelessness, particularly among first-timers
It was the worst night of Gemmetta Shockley’s life.
She spent Oct. 28 in a city park, her three children cuddled together and wrapped up in her coat as they slept on a bench beside her.
Shockley didn’t join them in their slumber. She didn’t dare shut her eyes, too overcome with fear and confusion and guilt.
“I couldn’t sleep at all,” she explained. “I was worried, I was scared about what was going to happen. I was thinking, ‘What am I going to do? Where am I going to go?’”
That Saturday night was the first Shockley and her children had ever spent without a roof over their heads. It was the first time they had ever found themselves without a place to call home.
Their life on the streets would be brief, but not their experience with homelessness. The next day, the family of four was welcomed into the Opportunity House shelter, where they continue to live.
They share a single, small room, the kids sleeping in bunk beds. It’s a tight fit and strange environment, but it’s safe and warm.
It’s given her kids a place to do their homework, and a home base from which she can search for a new, better-paying job.
And the 40-year-old Shockley has tried to make it feel like home. She’s decorated the space with Christmas lights and flowers. Art created by her kids covers the walls.
“It’s been hard for them to get used to this communal living,” she said, admitting she spent a lot of time crying the first few days after they moved in. “We’re trying to adjust to a whole new life. But at least we’re not lying in a street, we’re not sleeping in a park.
“We’re trying to make the best of the situation. A lot of people take things like this for granted. I don’t. I’m not outside freezing with my children, wiping tears from their eyes.”
Living in a homeless shelter is a situation Shockley
“We’re seeing a lot of first-time homeless. It’s not the old adage of chronic drug use and mental health issues leading to chronic homelessness.”
— Jack Williams, executive director of the Berks Coalition to End Homelessness
never imagined herself facing, and certainly one that she hoped her children would never experience.
But it’s one that she and thousands of other Americans have had to deal with over the past year as homeless rates soared. And many of them, like Shockley, were facing it for the first time.
A growing problem
According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s 2023 Annual Homeless Assessment Report, roughly 653,000 people were experiencing homelessness on a single night across the country last year.
The report, which was released Dec. 15, uses data collected during point-in-time counts of people staying in shelters and on the street. Those counts are meant to be a snapshot of homelessness.
That snapshot showed an increase of about 12% — or 70,650 people — over the 2022 count.
The increase nationally, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, has been fueled largely by the number of people who became homeless for the first time in 2023. And that’s also been the case in Berks County.
“We’re seeing a lot of firsttime homeless,” said Jack Williams, executive director of the Berks Coalition to End Homelessness. “It’s not the old adage of chronic drug use and mental health issues leading to chronic homelessness.”
And the newly homeless are quickly pushing the county’s total number of homeless individuals higher and higher, a trend that most of the U.S. is also facing.
“People are using words like explosion, like crisis,” said Elise McCauley, assistant director of the Berks Coalition to End Homelessness. “And I think that’s definitely happening here.”
McCauley said the coalition is in the middle of its point-in-time count and will be collecting data through Wednesday. That means upto-date data on the number of homeless individuals isn’t quite yet available.
But, she added, during a Jan. 23 count 150 people were found to be sleeping outside. That number is up significantly from the 50 found last year.
And, McCauley said, data from local homelessness organizations show that from Oct. 1, 2022, through Sept. 30, 2023, a total of 2,051 people received services.
“We can tell you the numbers are higher than they’ve been before,” she said.
McCauley said information on the number of individuals in Berks experiencing homelessness for the first time last year won’t be available until sometime next month — as officials continue to sift through data — but in the previous year it was around 75% of the total homeless population.
“We anticipate it being similar, if not more, this year,” she said.
A housing problem
The strongest driving force behind the increase in newly homeless individuals is a lack of housing options, according to local experts.
“There’s not enough units,” McCauley said. “There’s not enough affordable units.”
That’s a situation that had been growing steadily worse before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, she said. The pandemic — or more precisely, the government response to it — actually helped matters.
Federal funding was made available for rental and mortgage assistance, and evictions were temporarily put on hold.
Williams said about 6,000 applications were submitted for rental assistance in Berks. Federal funding was able to help 4,500 of those applicants.
That funding is no longer available. But, Williams said, that doesn’t mean the need for it has vanished.
“If we did it again today, we’d have another 6,000 applications,” he said.
That’s largely due to rental rates across the county rising steeply over the past several years, McCauley said. The current average rent for a two-bedroom apartment in the county is around $1,500 and for a three-bedroom apartment the average is just over $1,800.
Prices like those can be hard to afford, even in a family with two working parents. To put it into perspective, someone working 40 hours a week making the state minimum wage of $7.25 per hour takes home about $930 per month after taxes.
At $15 per hour, someone working 40 hours a week brings home a little over $1,900 per month after taxes.
High rent and not enough income is exactly what led Shockley to her current life in a shelter.
Back in 2020 she got divorced from her husband and he left the apartment where the family was living. Shockley said she hasn’t received any financial support from him for his children or from the father of her eldest child, which meant she was on her own to pay the rent.
She had a job washing dishes at a local restaurant, but it didn’t pay well. She used the federal rental assistance for a while, but after it ran out and her landlord hiked her rent she was forced to move out.
“Rent was high, electric and gas were high,” she said. “And I had nothing. I wasn’t making enough money.”
She and her kids moved around, staying in whatever places she could find. They lived in a friend’s basement for a while, in her stepbrother’s living room for a time and even in her car for a bit.
But none of the situations was tenable, and some became unsafe.
That’s how she found herself, along with her kids, on the streets. And that’s why they ended up at Opportunity House.
Shockley said she has met a host of other people since moving into the shelter who have stories similar to her own. They have jobs, they work hard, but they just can’t afford a place of their own.
“Landlords can double rent if they want to,” she said. “I don’t think that’s fair. Even if you work a fulltime job it’s hard to keep up.”
The reason landlords can raise rents so steeply is because they’re able to find someone to pay it. There are such a limited number of housing units in the county, McCauley said, that the market is all out of whack.
And many landlords suffered during the pandemic, unable to evict non-paying tenants. So now they’re trying to make up for lost time by taking advantage of an eager market.
The result is the cost of housing has risen 74% since 2010. Wages, on the other hand, have only gone up 55% over that same span.
Berks County Commissioner Chairman Christian Leinbach said county officials are keenly aware of the problem.
“The housing issue is a national problem, there’s no doubt,” he said. “And it’s a little more serious here in Berks County, in some ways. Overall, there are very few available units.”
As a result, Leinbach said, rental rates are often exceeding mortgage rates.
Leinbach said the issue isn’t just with low-cost housing. Instead, he said, it’s an overall availability problem.
“There’s not enough housing overall,” he said. “So people who would be buying at the high end drop down a category, and people in that category drop down a category. And what ends up happening is the working poor at the bottom get knocked out.”
With COVID eviction protections gone and inflation lifting the prices of everything from groceries to clothing to gas, many low-end renters have found themselves priced out of their homes. And once they’re out, getting back into one can be difficult.
Williams explained that landlords are reluctant to rent to people with evictions on their record, and many require large up-front payments for apartments — first and last months’ rent, or maybe even more. And they can be picky about who they rent to because the demand is much higher than the supply.
“It’s been a perfect storm,” he said. “People are living paycheck to paycheck and there’s just no units.”
Fixing the problem
When asked what can be done to combat the growing homelessness problem in Berks, Leinbach was quick to point out the battle is already valiantly being fought.
“What stands out to me is what a great job our partners do addressing homelessness,” he said. “We have partners who respond immediately. When they’re aware of a need, they’re out there addressing it aggressively.”
But that doesn’t mean more can’t be done.
The biggest need, Williams said, is resources. He said federal, state, county and local governments need to make fighting homelessness a priority, dedicating to it and helping to create a comprehensive battle plan.
“We have to get out of the fireman approach, putting out fires as they come,” Williams said. “If we continue to ignore it and we don’t allocate the resources — you think it’s a problem now?
“And we’re not going to solve it unless everyone gets involved.”
McCauley said fixing the problem will require addressing both short-term and long-term needs.
In the short term, with frigid winter weather already here, there needs to be places for people to go to stay safe and warm.
“Places like Hope Rescue Mission and Opportunity House are helping people, but they’re not equipped to help the numbers we’re seeing,” she said. “There’s just no place for people to go. And we’ve had people die of exposure — this is a very real problem.”
Late last month some good news came on that front when City Council approved spending $400,000 in federal American Rescue Plan Act money to convert a former convent at 1500 Eckert Ave. into a temporary family shelter.
The shelter has 25 usable rooms to house homeless families, and will remain open until April.
Another positive move from the city is that council has once again provided COVID funding to the Berks Coalition to End Homelessness to provide hotel rooms for homeless families this winter.
Last year, the coalition was able to house 200 people in hotel rooms between November and April. It’s anticipated a similar number will be assisted this winter.
“But that’s COVID money and just addresses this year,” McCauley pointed out. “It’s all temporary.”
McCauley also said having temporary shelter is only useful if people living on the street know it’s available. She said she would like the county or city to create a Code Blue ordinance that would provide funding for street teams to do outreach.
Such an ordinance could also provide for additional emergency shelters, opening up churches and fire halls and publicly owned buildings.
Leinbach cautioned that a Code Blue ordinance might not have the impact that some hope it would. For starters, he said, street teams can’t force people to leave the streets for the safety of a shelter.
And, Leinbach said, emergency shelters would have to be staffed. With organizations focused on homelessness already stretched thin, that could be a challenge.
Other potential tools in fighting homelessness look toward making more permanent impacts.
McCauley said she would like to see more protection put in place for renters. That could include something like a tenant bill of rights — which could be enacted at the municipal or state level — that could do things like limit the size of rent hikes or force landlords to accept Section 8 vouchers or add additional eviction protections.
Rachael Bertolet, continuity of care manager for the Berks Coalition to End Homelessness, said another helpful idea would be to create a day center that would provide people experiencing homelessness a place to go during the day.
Nothing like that exists in the county, she said, which means a lot of homeless individuals spend their days at places like public libraries.
“But you can’t take a shower at the library, you can’t wash your clothes,” she said. “And if you’re not showered and your clothes are dirty, you can’t go out and get a job.”
Leinbach said a day center is an idea he can get behind. He said he has had discussions with leaders of local organizations about the need for two — one in north Reading and one in south Reading.
The centers would be a place for people to stay warm in winter or cool in the hot summer months and serve as a site to offer health care and other social services.
Leinbach said the county is not interested in building and running day centers, but would be open to providing funding to organizations more equipped to run them.
“I need the people I trust in that arena to tell me this is what we need to be doing, here’s the plan,” he said. “I’m not interested in having ribbon cuttings. I’m interested in lives being changed long term.
“And whatever we need to do to make that happen, we’ll do it.”
Of course, the number one thing that needs to be done to combat homelessness is to address the housing shortage.
“The only way to solve homelessness is with housing,” Bertolet said. “Housing everywhere is expensive. We need low-barrier, non-congregant, affordable housing.”
Leinbach agreed housing is a major need that has to be addressed, adding the county has already begun doing so. He said one of the major planks of the county’s Imagine Berks strategic economic development plan is housing.
“We recognize that housing across the board is a problem, and specifically affordable housing,” he said. “We’re actively and aggressively working on that.”
That county has hired a housing director for the Berks County Redevelopment Authority, and is looking at using grant funding to help support housing projects.
“We’re ready, we’re very committed,” he said.
County officials are also working behind the scenes to encourage local municipalities that control zoning and the approval of development plans to recognize the importance of creating more housing in the county.
“Our planning department will help them, but we have no right or authority to dictate to any municipalities what they can or cannot do in regards to housing or subdivisions,” Leinbach said.
Shockley said having an affordable housing option would be life-changing for her and her children.
“If I was able to find a place for them it would just be tears, tears of joy,” she said. “My kids deserve that. Kids shouldn’t have to worry about whether they’ll have a place to live tomorrow, or whether they will have food.
“I just want to be able to cook breakfast for them, to have a barbecue, to sit on the couch with them watching TV and eating popcorn,” she continued. “My kids want that again, they really do. And I will work as hard as I can to get that for them.”
Any of the potential solutions, either short-term or long-term, will require a concerted effort to put in place. And, McCauley said, that means homelessness needs to be on the forefront of everyone’s minds.
“It feels sometimes like this is an afterthought,” she said. “It’s affecting so many people, it can’t be an afterthought anymore.”
Williams said he would encourage people to contact their local and state officials and push for them to provide funding and other support for programs and organizations helping to fight homelessness.
“And don’t take ‘no’ for an answer,” he said.