Solidarity With Our Neighbors

By Ismail Smith-Wade-El, Lancaster City Council President

For the past several months, I’ve had the privilege of renovating a house on S. Duke Street in Lancaster—though some days it hardly feels like a privilege. Working every day to have a place to settle is exhausting, as any homeowner knows. While moving materials either to or from that house, earlier this summer, I met a couple: Jose and Maria.*

Jose and Maria have been panhandling downtown in Lancaster City for months. They split their time between being outside and renting a motel room, or staying with friends when they can. They take turns holding signs and soliciting odd jobs to make enough money to pay for their motel room and food. They are working every day, like the rest of us, to have a place to settle into. Getting into town to do this means taking the bus from their motel, miles outside the city, and taking it back every night. 

Jose and Maria pay $50 per night for that motel room - $1,500 in a typical month. That would be more than enough for them to rent an apartment if they ever had it all at one time. Talking to Jose, he feels pressure not to take any work that won’t pay him that day. In order to ensure they have a roof over their heads, Jose needs to have that cash in hand. That’s an additional challenge — on top of not having a permanent address, or a bank account — to holding down what most of us would consider a regular job.

We’re all aware of how much the cost of housing has increased in recent years, and how wages haven’t. From 2009 to 2017, for example, the median income for Lancaster City households that are renting went up 12-percent. Over that same time, the median rent in Lancaster increased 27.5-percent. Since then, the one-two punch of Covid-19’s health impacts and the economic impact of the shutdown has made a precarious situation more challenging. It’s not an uncommon experience in Lancaster: it’s hard for Jose to find and keep a job in his situation, and those jobs simply don’t pay enough.

Jose and Maria had an opportunity recently to put a deposit down on an apartment they can afford. They were told that if they could get the money together in time, the landlord would let them rent there — a rare find when there are so few open units, and property owners can essentially have their pick. Once they had, however, they returned to find the apartment had been rented to someone else who could pay more. That night, they still had to find a place to stay, so what had been security deposit money became motel money again. 

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When I’m not working on my house, I work for the Lancaster County Coalition to End Homelessness (Lanc Co My Home). We act as a hub for a network of partners providing services to our unhoused neighbors.

Since I started working for Lanc Co My Home, I’ve seen that network of partners and what they can accomplish for people experiencing homelessness. We’ve moved a fair few of our neighbors from sleeping outside to permanent housing. 

There are many services available for our neighbors in Lancaster County. A dedicated team of Outreach Workers, funded by the Coalition and provided by Tenfold, the Lancaster County Food Hub, and Community Services Group, meet our neighbors where they are to connect them with resources, shelter, and housing. These are caring and dedicated professionals who often find themselves working late hours or in inclement weather to make sure that our folks are safe.

There is also a network of shelters recently complemented by the addition of a 25-bed low-barrier shelter operated by the Food Hub. With emergency expansion capacity there, and several additional winter shelters which open throughout the county in the late fall, this team of partners works hard to provide places to sleep for as many people as possible.

Jose and Maria, for their part, no longer participate in shelter programs. They are focused on seeking a place to call their own, and they are frustrated by one of our community’s greatest challenges — a lack of affordable housing.

Tenfold is the primary partner in our network providing housing location and rehousing services to tenants. They also provide crisis housing to many of our most vulnerable neighbors, helping them transition to the opportunities that permanent housing provides. Their work is crucial to our network of partners, as is the work that the Lancaster County Housing & Redevelopment Authorities do. Among other efforts, they distribute emergency rental assistance funds to County households, helping thousands of Lancastrians pay back rent and preventing eviction and homelessness.

These efforts are all challenged by a lack of housing stock, with a rental vacancy rate of 3.7-percent across the county and very little of that being affordable to low-income residents. In these conditions, it is hard to make good on our values; namely, that every family should be able to secure a safe home. Many of our neighbors work hard to still find that there is no safe, affordable housing available to them. The community of partners stands behind our most vulnerable neighbors, providing help and assistance where it’s possible, but the structural conditions in our community and across the nation present a huge barrier. 

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Jose and Maria know best what they need. I spoke with them on the phone the morning of this article’s writing. They’re looking again, and Maria, “just wants someone to give [them] a chance, because everything is in the way.” They’re looking again. Despite all their frustrations, they are confident that if they believe and work hard, they’ll find something.

What can you do to help? How can you walk alongside our community as we transform homelessness? 

You can give. Lanc Co My Home uses unrestricted funds to support initiatives like our Mobile Hospitality Project, emergency shelter, and other emergency housing operations. Our partners, like Tenfold, the Food Hub and others, work tirelessly to serve our neighbors, too. They deserve your support.

You can be a part of a culture shift. We have to treat people — and talk about them — as though their success and thriving is a goal in itself, not the means to some other end. In fact, we ought to spend more time talking with them, instead of about them.

That homelessness persists is not a sign of individual moral failings on the part of neighbors. It is a sign that, as a community, we have work to do. We either fail together, or thrive together.

Raise your voice! Wherever you live in Lancaster County, and whenever you are able, advocate for affordable housing, and programs which prioritize our unhoused neighbors. Encourage property owners to be intentional about who they are renting to, and to be open to working with agencies like Tenfold, or Church World Services (just as two examples) to help provide housing to all of our neighbors. 

All that Jose and Maria want—like I want and like the rest of us want—is a place to call home. They should have that without barriers and without judgment. I believe this community has the power to provide that, for them and so many others. 

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*Jose & Maria’s names have been changed, and their story shared with their permission.