An empty warehouse in view of Scranton High School isn’t much to look at right now — it’s mostly open space, a concrete floor, and blank walls.
But Maureen Maher-Gray, director of the NEPA Youth Shelter, sees a blank canvas where teens in her after-school program will soon unleash their creativity.
“There’s tons of wall space, tons of things that we’ll be able to do. Even the front of the cabinets, you know, they can paint. I’m excited about that,” she said. “If we have half the work that we had at our old place from the kids who painted, I’ll be thrilled.”
The NEPA Youth Shelter is preparing to move its Teen Center into this building, its new permanent home. It’s a 3,500 square foot warehouse on Providence Road, across the street from the Glider Diner.
That’s about half the size of the center’s former home on Wyoming Avenue, but Maher-Gray has a detailed floor plan to make sure they can offer as many of their previous services as possible.
The teen center once occupied some 6,000 square feet above Meals on Wheels NEPA on Wyoming Avenue. When Meals on Wheels decided to sell that property in May of this year, Maher-Gray scrambled to find a new home.
They went months without a plan as volunteers and staff packed up, then just before their deadline to move in September, Maher-Gray received two calls.
One was offering a temporary space for them to use while the search continued. The second was from her realtor with a promising new location.
Maher-Gray said as soon as she saw where it was, she was ready to sign — Scranton High School is right down the street, and she estimates it’s the same walking distance from West Scranton High School as the Wyoming Avenue building.
“We didn’t even know it existed until they called us,” she said. “When we realized where it was … even though it’s smaller it’s like we can’t say no.”
Most of the 60 students the teen program typically serves walk to the center, so location was an important factor for Maher-Gray.
Her floor plan for the new space packs in as many of the services as they offered in the sprawling maze of their original home.
They plan to have a full kitchen with an additional paint sink for the artistically inclined students to keep art supplies clean. Contractors will add walls in one corner to recreate a recording studio.
They’ll have rooms full of donated clothing, a couch and TV with a Playstation, and even the pool table from Wyoming Avenue has a dedicated place in the plan.
“It’s beyond anything that we looked at,” Maher-Gray said. “The beauty of a blank slate is that you get to design it. You get to make it your own.”
Community Support and Awareness
In addition to the teen center, the NEPA Youth Shelter helps to find affordable housing for young people experiencing homelessness.
The shelter also owns a three-unit apartment building in Scranton, where one person, who was previously a client of the teen center, lives now. The first floor of the building is being renovated and will also have a tenant in the near future.
November is National Homeless Youth Awareness Month. According to data from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, unaccompanied youth made up 22% of people under the age of 25 experiencing homelessness in 2023.
Maher-Gray said the teen center can be an important intervention for a young person who may experience homelessness in their life.
“The reality has been that probably half of our clients in our homeless program have been clients of the center,” she said. “So they’ve gotten to know us, they know they can trust us … and they come and they tell us ‘I need help.’”
Throughout this month, Maher-Gray has been promoting National Homeless Youth Awareness Month and fundraising and collecting items for the teen center’s move.
“We’ve had tremendous response for the remodeling cost of this place,” she said. “So far we’ve raised about $30,000 and we’ve gotten a couple grants and other pledges."
Including the grants and pledges the total is about $80,000 out of the estimated $125,000 needed.
Several area organizations have collected food to stock the pantry: The Anthracite Bike Coalition bought and collected goods for the program during their annual Cranksgiving event, and students from Scranton Preparatory School held a food drive.
While the after-school program continued at the teen center’s temporary space, Maher-Gray said countless people have donated meals. One woman volunteered to cook a Thanksgiving dinner, she said.
After seeing how the community has rallied around the teen center, Maher-Gray feels that the organization has achieved a new level of awareness around the issues facing teens and young people experiencing homelessness.
“If nothing else, we have raised the awareness in Lackawanna County and actually, even in external counties. I’d had calls from Wayne County, Susquehanna (County), looking for services for their teens, especially their homeless teens,” she said. “And I still see people who are like, ‘I had no idea this existed a year ago.’”
Maher-Gray said the teen center will move out of its temporary location by Dec. 31.
“We have a lot of stuff we have to pull out of the temporary location,” she said. “We are going to spend the next couple weeks going through everything and getting rid of stuff that we can’t use.”
There is one thing she’s on the lookout for.
“We do need kitchen cabinets,” she said. “If anybody’s got some stock cabinets they want to get rid of, we would be happy to take them off your hands.”
