Allegheny County shares winter plan to provide shelter and housing for homeless people
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — Homeless encampments are back again and growing in number, along with frustration in the community.
As temperatures drop, Allegheny County unveiled its winter plan to provide shelter and housing. The city removed an encampment on First Avenue last week but won't remove others without a credible offer of housing for each person.
The county concedes despite its efforts, there's still not enough.
"If we could wave a wand and have sufficient, 24/7, 365 shelter beds, we would," Erin Dalton, head of the Allegheny County Department of Human Services. "But this year we will continue to rely on these overflow beds."
On Wednesday, the Second Avenue Shelter will open up 40 additional overflow beds to give some people a place to sleep at night. But Dalton concedes that still leaves between 150 to 200 people living outside without an offer of round-the-clock shelter.
KDKA-TV's Andy Sheehan: "DHS gets about $40 million a year to deal with homeless, and there's a public frustration that this situation hasn't been remedied to a greater extent."
Dalton: "Obviously, this is a national problem. And the issue of encampments, while certainly an issue of homelessness, is a little more complicated than that."
Of those living in tents, Dalton said many suffer from addiction and mental health problems and prefer living outside. She says many who've been resettled in shelters have gone back to their tents. The solution, she says, is securing or developing more permanent, affordable housing.
"If the question is do we have 200 additional beds of shelter, we do not. Not everyone would take those offers, but they would take officers of housing if we could make that happen," Dalton said.
The DHS does not build affordable housing but offers landlords one month's rent and other incentives to rent to homeless people. Still, securing more affordable housing is a slow process and Pittsburgh City Council members are calling for more immediate solutions like retrofitting a large building.
"I don't care who buys the building," Pittsburgh City Councilperson Theresa Kail-Smith said. "I just feel like get a building, identify a building, start bringing people off the street, getting the wrap-around services."
Something Dalton says she would support.
"Let's get a number of those buildings online. I wouldn't use it for shelter," Dalton said. "I would use it for deeply affordable, subsidized housing so people can exit shelter and into community."
Dalton says everyone living in the street will have emergency shelters available to them when the temperature becomes frigid, but it appears these encampments will remain through the winter months and into next spring.
