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NEPA organizations struggle with rising rates of homelessness

A guest heads out for the day from Keystone Mission's 365 Overnight Shelter in Wilkes-Barre.
Alexander Monelli
/
WVIA News
A guest heads out for the day from Keystone Mission's 365 Overnight Shelter in Wilkes-Barre.

Every night, Diana Delgado sees firsthand how the number of people in need of shelter keeps rising.

She takes it as a challenge to learn the names of as many guests as she can at Keystone Mission in Wilkes-Barre .

“I have bragging rights. Let’s say I get 70 guests, I would say I know 60 names at least,” she said. “I like to interact with each and every one of them.”

Keystone Mission’s 365 Overnight Shelter opened in summer 2024, a year when the federal housing department says rates of homelessness hit record levels for nearly every population.

Danielle Keith-Alexandre, former CEO of Keystone Mission.
Sarah Scinto
/
WVIA News
Danielle Keith-Alexandre, former CEO of Keystone Mission.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development found the number of people experiencing homelessness in the US increased by more than 18% in 2024. In Pennsylvania, they reported a 12% increase, with more than 14,000 people experiencing homelessness during the 2024 point-in-time count.

Former Keystone Mission CEO Danielle Keith-Alexandre says the results of the report are playing out in Northeastern Pennsylvania.

“We’re experiencing it here every single day,” she said.

Key Report Findings

The 2024 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development compiles nationwide results of a point-in-time survey completed in the last 10 days of January each year.

WVIA News contacted the department to discuss how the 2025 count would be performed. That request had not been returned by this week.

The 2024 report showed homelessness among people in families with children, individuals, individuals with chronic patterns of homelessness, people staying in unsheltered locations, people staying in sheltered locations, and unaccompanied youth all reached the highest recorded numbers in 2024.

Veterans were the only population to show a continued decline in homelessness. According to the report, the number of veterans experiencing homelessness declined by eight percent between 2023 and 2024. That’s down 55 percent since data collection about veteran homelessness began in 2009.

People in families with children had the largest single-year increase in homelessness, according to the report, with an increase of 39 percent from 2023 to 2024.

In Pennsylvania, the total number of all people experiencing homelessness was 14,088, a 12.2% increase between 2023 and 2024.

Shelter offerings try to keep up with the need

Keystone Mission opened the 365 Overnight shelter in the Wilkes-Barre Innovation Center for Homelessness and Poverty in June 2024. They can house around 70 people each night and offer daytime programs along with meals.

In December 2024, Catholic Social Services of the Diocese of Scranton also opened a permanent location for its Mother Teresa’s Haven Shelter in Wilkes-Barre. The formerly nomadic shelter provides beds for 20 men.

The new Mother Teresa's Haven Mens shelter in Wilkes-Barre.
AIMEE DILGER
/
WVIA News
The new Mother Teresa's Haven Mens shelter in Wilkes-Barre.

The Wilkes-Barre Innovation Center for Homelessness and Poverty offers guests not only beds, but lunch during the day, access to showers and laundry machines, and the ability to use the location as an address while guests work toward stable housing, connect with other resources, or achieve basic things like getting a new ID.

“Those are things that we like to address first,” Keith-Alexandre said. “It may seem small or insignificant…but for someone who doesn’t have it, that is something that we consider of greatest and utmost importance so that they can go and just get the things that they need.”

In Scranton, the NEPA Youth Shelter runs up against housing costs frequently. The shelter has one apartment building in the city with three units.

A rack of clothes for teens to browse is set up in the NEPA Youth Shelter's temporary space for its after-school program.
Sarah Scinto
/
WVIA News
A rack of clothes for teens to browse is set up in the NEPA Youth Shelter's temporary space for its after-school program.

Founder and Executive Director Maureen Maher-Gray works to keep rent on those units affordable - around $900 per month.

“If I had won that $1 billion lottery, I would buy as many apartment buildings as I could around here and turn them into lower-income housing,” she said. “Our kids are working three jobs to try to make ends meet, and they need an apartment they can afford.”

The NEPA Youth Shelter runs a teen center and after-school program for students at Scranton and West Scranton High Schools.

Maher-Gray says many of the teens who come to the center become clients of the shelter’s housing program. Outside of the apartment units, Maher-Gray works to find clients of the housing program an affordable place to live before they become homeless.

Luis Torres was one of the first people in the housing program. When he was 17 and had “just moved to Scranton,” his aunt kicked him out. He’d been coming to the teen center after school for some time and knew he could ask Maher-Gray for help.

“It really did help me get on my feet,” he said. “At that time, I had nobody to help me.”

Maureen Maher-Gray, director of NEPA Youth Shelter, stands in the empty space that will soon permanently house the organization's Teen Center and after-school program.
Sarah Scinto
/
WVIA News
Maureen Maher-Gray, director of NEPA Youth Shelter, stands in the empty space that will soon permanently house the organization's Teen Center and after-school program.

Torres does maintenance at the teen center now. They’re preparing to move from a temporary space into a new, permanent home near Scranton High School. Torres said if he hadn’t been familiar with the teen center, he may not have known where to go for help.

“There’s so many times that I didn’t even have food and I was able to come here and grab snacks and food, or I didn’t have clothes to wear and I would come here and grab some clothes,” he said. “Whatever I needed…Miss Maureen (Maher-Gray) would make it happen for me, and she also does for the kids.”

Support needed to continue

Since founding the NEPA Youth Shelter in 2017, Maher-Gray has seen plenty of resistance to affordable housing in Scranton.

“The common phrase is ‘not in my backyard’... and I find that very disappointing,” she said. “Low-income people have no less a right to housing, affordable housing, than other people.”

Keith-Alexandre said Keystone Mission tries to look for apartments in the $700 per month range for its guests, but that has become increasingly difficult. A lack of affordable housing in the area, she says, is one of the reasons they’ve seen an “uptick” in guests seeking shelter at night.

“There needs to be more affordable housing. You have individuals at this level where even if they do get a job, the job that they have is not enough to sustain…the monthly rent a lot of the landlords are asking for,” she said. “That is what, at times, keeps them from getting into housing sooner.”

Tony Mattero discusses the Keystone Mission.
Aimee Dilger
/
WVIA News
Tony Mattero, a guest, discusses the Keystone Mission.

It took some time, but Keith Giannotti said he was able to find an apartment with the help of Keystone Mission. He stopped by for lunch on one of his last days as a guest of the Wilkes-Barre center.

“It was a rough road, real rough,” he said. “They gave me… the courage, the power, the enlightenment to find myself again and, you know, lead me back to where I’ve got to go.”

Delgado was also once a guest at Keystone Mission. She credits the organization with changing her life.

“Unless you are there, you wouldn’t understand,” she said. “They provided support in every sense when other programs did not help me. They were there.”

As housing costs and other prices continue to rise, Keith-Alexandre says organizations like Keystone Mission need the community’s support - not only financially, but also to decrease stigmas that lead people to overlook those experiencing homelessness.

“These individuals who are unsheltered or are homeless, they are members of the community as well,” she said. “And from what we have seen, they are working really, really hard.”

For more on this story, watch Keystone Edition Reports: Homelessness in NEPA, which aired on WVIA-TV or streaming at wvia.org.

Sarah Scinto is the local host of Morning Edition on WVIA. She is a Connecticut native and graduate of King’s College in Wilkes-Barre, and has previously covered Northeastern Pennsylvania for The Scranton Times-Tribune, The Citizens’ Voice and Greater Pittston Progress.

You can email Sarah at sarahscinto@wvia.org
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