Shelter Stakes
As homelessness surged, Allegheny County and Pittsburgh scrambled, and those without shelter tried to adapt.
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The operator of a Downtown shelter, set to close early next week, asked Allegheny County Council to determine what will happen to people who do not have any alternative shelter.
Representatives of Downtown businesses, though, countered that the shelter was not effectively serving the community.
Council held a 6 p.m. hearing, which extended until around 11 p.m., to discuss the closure of the shelter in the Smithfield United Church of Christ, drawing a crowd including business owners, shelter guests and the general public.
The shelter opened for the winter in November, and the county extended its operations past the usual closure date of March 15. It has been full most nights, and testimony before council suggested that it often sheltered people past the maximum capacity of 145.
In May, the Allegheny County Department of Human Services [ACDHS] announced the Smithfield shelter would close at the end of June. Fliers were posted on the shelter doors June 9, informing shelter residents the closure was scheduled for June 21.
Aubrey Plesh, the founder of Team PSBG, which operates the shelter, said that during a recent 30-day period, 600 people used the shelter’s services. Plesh noted that while ACDHS has pledged to find alternative shelter for 125 regular shelter guests, there was no plan in place for the remaining 475 people.
Representatives of business and tourism interests warned that the shelter’s continued existence would damage the Downtown economy.
Jerad Bacher, CEO of Visit Pittsburgh, told council that the business community believes the shelter is “not serving the needs of the community,” citing what he called a “strong uptick of complaints” about aggressive panhandling, aggression and violence.
He added that business owners are having trouble hiring workers because of the perceived safety issues.
Plesh said the closure did not make sense to her. She said that when the closure was announced by ACDHS, her team had been in the process of discussing long-term plans to keep the shelter open for an extended amount of time.
“This closure is a regression,” Plesh said.
County officials reported Thursday evening that more than 50 of the 125 people who have been identified as regularly using the shelter have accepted accommodations at other shelters. The county forecasts that space for the rest of the regulars will open at other shelters early next week.
The Smithfield shelter is one of Downtown’s two “low-barrier” shelters. The other, Second Avenue Commons, opened in November to provide year-round service. Low-barrier shelters are meant to provide people who are displaced and homeless with a space to sleep without having to satisfy entry requirements like being sober or having identification.
Plesh said people have a right to shelter without barriers. “So for Team PSBG, anybody who shows up to Smithfield and wants to come in, we have a job to keep them from being outside. At any cost.”
Finding housing fast isn’t easy
People who have gotten used to Smithfield’s extremely low barrier to entry will soon have to contend with requirements like getting an identification or birth certificate, a process that can take weeks or months, according to Devon Goetze, director of housing services for Auberle, a nonprofit organization.
In an interview, Goetze said Auberle set up shop early this month in the Downtown library on Smithfield Street to help people find housing before the shelter’s closure. She had learned about the impending closure during a Homeless Advisory Board meeting and then reached out to Team PSBG.
Goetze said the majority of the people who need help finding housing do not have “vital documents,” which they can typically help them obtain but the process can take weeks — and Smithfield could close in less than a week.
“At this point, we’re running out of time and we thought we had until the 30th of June to do this,” Goetze said. “We thought we may have had an opportunity to get people in housing but, with this new date, we won’t be able to get anyone into housing. At this point, it’s just impossible.”
She said that if housing outreach were to work, it would have had to have started much earlier.
“We would have had to have started this in October or November for this to be a real solution,” Goetze said. “Some of these places have a three-month waitlist and a six-month waitlist for housing. if we had that time, we would have been able to get 50% housed.”
The county stated that ACDHS staff have been visiting the shelter to understand the needs of the shelter users and others who are unhoused. The department said it has responded by:
- Launching last week a mobile crisis team focused on providing behavioral health supports Downtown on weekdays from 2 to 9 p.m. in partnership with resolve Crisis Services;
- Piloting a van service between shelters and other service provider locations, starting earlier this week;
- And, longer term, moving 900 people into permanent housing over the past year and dedicating $48 million annually to addressing homelessness (not counting other non-ACDHS funding sources).
Downtown business involved in shelter talks
Leading up to the closure announcement, ACDHS held meetings every Thursday with outreach workers and people representing business interests, including members of the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership, according to Jeremy Waldrup, the partnership’s president and CEO.
“It’s been a pretty big group at times,” Waldrup said in an interview. “The shelter is not working for anyone right now.”
“The county has been taking a careful look to see where these shelter clients historically stayed and is there an opportunity to put them there,” he said. “While this hasn’t been done in a public venue, this has been intentional work with county, police and a bunch of different individuals interested in providing dignified space for individuals.”
He said ACDHS decided to delay announcing the closure of the shelter after service providers advised the Thursday meeting group.
“There’s a transient group in [Smithfield],” he said. “You’re not dealing with the same folks every day so giving them too much of a heads-up isn’t worthwhile.”
Growing homelessness in Pittsburgh
Over the last year, the city and county have attempted to address problems around people being displaced, with efforts ranging from opening more emergency shelters to funding affordable housing.
In May, Mayor Ed Gainey held a meeting with around 70 social, healthcare and outreach workers to gain insight into what these “frontline workers” saw as challenges facing the vulnerable populations they serve.
During the meeting, some of the attendants warned that the number of people experiencing homelessness would increase during the summer.
Several weeks later, the city previewed a draft policy on when and if a tent encampment will be shut down by authorities.
Eric Jankiewicz is PublicSource’s economic development reporter and can be reached at ericj@publicsource.org or on Twitter @ericjankiewicz.
Lucas Dufalla contributed.
Our process:
Reporting on homelessness requires journalists to adhere to standards of accuracy and fairness while mitigating harm, avoiding retraumatization and respecting privacy and agency.
In preparation for this story, PublicSource journalists reviewed resources including Street Sense Media’s guide to reporting on homelessness. To sum up Street Sense Media’s guidelines, we sought to give people living in shelters or tents the same respect we would give sources who live in stable housing.
