{"id":127294,"date":"2026-03-02T10:55:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-02T10:55:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/127294\/"},"modified":"2026-03-02T10:55:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-02T10:55:10","slug":"philadelphia-working-to-create-1000-more-long-term-homeless-shelter-beds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/127294\/","title":{"rendered":"Philadelphia working to create 1,000 more long-term homeless shelter beds."},"content":{"rendered":"

Love Philly? So do we. Let\u2019s be friends. The Billy Penn newsletter keeps you informed about everything Philly, with a quirky vibe of healthy skepticism and persistent optimism. Join us and sign up today.<\/a><\/p>\n

Philadelphia\u2019s new push to get to \u201ca functional zero in homelessness\u201d \u2014 meaning no one seeking shelter is turned away for lack of space \u2014 will depend in large part on creating enough new beds in existing buildings and upgrading shelters to make them more welcoming, officials say.<\/p>\n

Not only does the city not have enough beds, especially during crush times like January\u2019s stretch of below-freezing days, but unsatisfactory conditions<\/a> sometimes turn people off from going to shelters at all, said Cheryl Hill, executive director of the Office of Homeless Services.<\/p>\n

The agency\u2019s last Point-in-Time or PIT count<\/a>, in January 2025, found 1,178 people living on the street and another 4,438 in some kind of shelter. The follow-up count took place last Wednesday night through Thursday morning, with the results to be released later this year.<\/p>\n

As OHS works to improve facilities, Hill said she\u2019s inspired by the example of Riverview Wellness Village<\/a>, a long-term residential drug recovery center the city opened a year ago after spending $54 million to renovate a campus it owns in Northeast Philadelphia.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"A four-person bedroom at Philadelphia\u2019s newly renovated Riverview Wellness Village. Jan. 8, 2025. (Meir Rinde\/Billy Penn)<\/p>\n

\u201cYou walk into those rooms, and it feels more like a dorm room or an apartment that somebody would want to live in, and not a shelter,\u201d she said. \u201cYou should be able to walk in and put your own artwork up, your own pictures, and really be proud of where you\u2019re living while you\u2019re there, because even though it\u2019s a shelter, while you\u2019re living there that is your home, and it should feel like a home environment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mayor Cherelle Parker announced in December that she intended to create 1,000 more long-term shelter beds<\/a>, which would increase the stock of beds in public and private shelters by roughly a third, to about 3,900.<\/p>\n

The first big project will convert a city-owned building on Old York Road in Logan into a shelter and create 350 beds for families and single adults. Hill said prep work is currently under way there.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt almost is too simple. In unsheltered homelessness, you need somewhere for people to go,\u201d she said. \u201cWe\u2019re not saying you will never see anyone sleeping on the streets, but the idea is that if that person is ready to come in, or needs to come in, there\u2019s somewhere for them to go.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shelter funding waxes and wanes<\/p>\n

Hill joined the Parker administration in September 2024 after serving as senior vice president of supportive housing operations at Project HOME, a leading shelter provider in Philadelphia, and working at the Atlanta Housing Authority.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The start of her tenure coincided with an increase in homelessness. From 2021 to 2023, the city\u2019s counts found between 700 and 800 unsheltered people each year, but the figure jumped to 976 in 2024 and climbed again last year. The number living in shelters also rose, from 3,602 in 2021 to 4,215 in 2024.<\/p>\n

The number of people on the street and in encampments<\/a> surged during the pandemic, but so did funding for shelters, which kept the homeless counts relatively stable, Hill said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Some of those emergency dollars eventually went away, and demand for shelter rose due to factors like the emergence of the animal tranquilizer xylazine<\/a> in the drug supply, she said. Xylazine causes slow-healing wounds and can lead to amputations, boosting demand for shelters that can accommodate unhoused drug users with complicated medical needs, especially in Kensington.<\/p>\n

\"\"An encampment of people experiencing homelessness spread out from the Somerset El stop in Kensington. August 4, 2023. (Ali Mohsen\/Billy Penn)<\/p>\n

The opening of the city\u2019s Philly Home at Girard shelter in 2024 and other new or expanded facilities kept the number of unsheltered people from increasing even further, Hill said. After this year\u2019s federally mandated PIT count was initially postponed because of extreme cold weather, she said she was looking forward to seeing the findings of the rescheduled event.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe look at data such as the Point-in-Time Count to really help inform us about trends that may be happening in the city, whether the numbers are increasing, whether the chronicity \u2014 how long people are staying homeless \u2014 has increased, so looking at that data to be able to inform policies and decisions on what we need to do next,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s count will \u201cshow us if what we\u2019ve been doing is working,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Running out of beds, and chairs<\/p>\n

The resources the city is aiming to expand are long-term shelter beds where people can stay until they\u2019re ready to move on, Hill said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

They\u2019re in shelters leased by the city and operated by contracted providers such as SELF Inc., Project HOME, and Prevention Point, or owned and run by providers with city funding. Some may also be in privately funded shelters.<\/p>\n

The city has different types of spaces that accommodate families with children, couples, single individuals, and people with pets, she said. All of the shelters offer some type of case management, with staffers who help residents access health care and other services out in the community, including pathways to a permanent home.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe goal is ultimately to find housing for individuals, whether it\u2019s something that we help them acquire or they\u2019re able to find on their own,\u201d Hill said. \u201cEverybody\u2019s goal plan is different in the steps they need to take.\u201d<\/p>\n

The work to get people on that path \u2014 and simply to provide them a safe place to stay in the first place \u2014 has been challenged by the bed shortage.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to be able to say, if you\u2019re ready to come in, we have a bed for you,\u201d she said. During cold snaps, however, service providers run out of beds and have to resort to offering chairs indoors. \u201cSometimes that even reaches a capacity, and we\u2019re not able to help everyone that we want to help.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Health care at home<\/p>\n

In addition to reopening the building on Old York Road, OHS plans to convert spaces that have been used for temporary winter accommodation into year-round, long-term shelters, Hill said. That\u2019s the plan for Philly Home at Girard, which has separate long-term shelter floors and wellness\/drug treatment floors.<\/p>\n

Other facilities targeted for expansion include the Salvation Army\u2019s Eliza Shirley House shelter for families with children at 216 N. Broad St., and Walker Hall, a shelter\u00a0at 600 E. Luzerne St.<\/p>\n

The agency is also looking into providing more health care services inside shelters, in collaboration with Jefferson Health and other organizations, Hill said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIndividuals will use emergency rooms as a warming center, or as kind of a shelter, getting some of their needs met,\u201d she said. \u201cIf we can provide services where they are \u2014 getting individuals into more preventative services for their health care \u2014 that will hopefully reduce some of the need and the strain on the various emergency room services at the different hospitals.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hill said she did not yet know how much the 1,000-bed expansion and other initiatives will cost. The city is spending about $40 million on shelters in the 2026 fiscal year that runs through June, and \u201cexpenses for everything\u201d have been increasing, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe past couple years, we\u2019ve just noticed that it\u2019s more expensive. Food services has gotten more expensive, and making sure that we\u2019re not deferring maintenance in those buildings, so that we\u2019re keeping the buildings up to quality,\u201d she said. \u201cWe are constantly analyzing the cost and seeing how we can make sure that we\u2019re being fiscally responsible, but also creating a sustainable model.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Love Philly? So do we. Let\u2019s be friends. The Billy Penn newsletter keeps you informed about everything Philly,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":127295,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[9537,564,391,4736,42206,69,71,70,23741,59350,59351],"class_list":{"0":"post-127294","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-cherelle-parker","9":"tag-featured","10":"tag-homelessness","11":"tag-housing","12":"tag-office-of-homeless-services","13":"tag-philadelphia","14":"tag-philadelphia-headlines","15":"tag-philadelphia-news","16":"tag-prevention-point","17":"tag-project-home","18":"tag-riverview-wellness-village"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127294\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/127295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}