Despite new shelters, homelessness issues persist in Wilkes-Barre

By Stephen Mocarsky | smocarsky@citizensvoice.com | The Citizens' Voice

Originally Published: March 28, 2025 at 3:01 PM EDT
UPDATED: March 29, 2025 at 6:16 PM EDT
copied: April 9th, 2025 at 10:45 AM EDT

A homeless encampment along the Susquehanna River that crews working for the City of Wilkes-Barre dismantled and removed on March 13, 2025. Mayor George C. Brown said the conditions at the encampment presented a danger to the public and to city first responders. (COURTESY OF THE CITY OF WILKES-BARRE)

Even with two new homeless shelters and a drop-in center in Wilkes-Barre, controversy continues in the Luzerne County seat over the issue of homelessness.

Some members of the public have spoken at city council meetings recently, asking council and the mayor to indefinitely halt sweeps on homeless encampments in the natural areas of Nesbitt and Kirby parks, calling them misguided and inhumane.

An issue that council members have intermittently brought up at their meetings over the past several months is the presence of homeless individuals gathered outside Keystone Mission’s Innovation Center for Homelessness and Poverty at East Union Street and Pennsylvania Avenue seven days a week.

Groups of at least a dozen people are gathered, sometimes blocking the sidewalk, from about 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Mayor George C. Brown has said he has reached out to management and has been assured they are working to address the issue.

Justin Behrens, Keystone Mission’s executive director, says more funding for programs to assist homeless people and more affordable housing are needed to address the homeless problem in Wilkes-Barre and across the country. (THE CITIZENS’ VOICE FILE)

Justin Behrens, Keystone’s CEO and executive director, said the drop-in center that homeless individuals utilize during the day closes around 4 p.m. so staff can convert the dining space into a sleeping area and clean the showers and other facilities that their guests utilize throughout the day. It reopens for overnight guests at 7 p.m.
Behrens said adding more space and additional staff to the second shift would solve the issue, but the obstacle is obtaining the necessary funding. Keystone officials are working to secure funding to make it a true 24-hour, seven-day-a-week shelter.

As for those gathered outside in the meantime, Behrens said, “they have a right to be there and use the sidewalk just like you and I have the right to be on the sidewalk … if they’re not causing problems and they get out of the way.”

“Is it because they look a little different and their clothes are a little dirty and that makes you scared?” Behrens said. “Look inside yourself and ask, are you judging. We need to be more understanding of their situation and let them be themselves.”

“We just need the public to understand it takes time to address,” Behrens said. “And then, if we get them off the sidewalk, what’s next? There’s always something else.”

Anthony Farah speaks about homeless encampment sweeps at a Wilkes-Barre City Council meeting on Feb. 27, 2025. (STEVE MOCARSKY / STAFF PHOTO)

Encampment issues

During public comment at a council meeting in February, Anthony Farah, a resident of Hanover Twp. and member of the Northeastern Pennsylvania Chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, recounted a July 25 sweep at Nesbitt Park that displaced about 20 homeless individuals.

“I was there on the sweep. It was very dehumanizing,” Farah said. “Thankfully, there were good people at the Volunteers of America there to help them and to move their belongings.”

“Unfortunately, there’s some word that there might be another homeless encampment sweep. These sweeps aren’t going to help anyone. It’s going to hurt people. These are our homeless community,” Farah said. “They’d rather risk their lives out in the cold than go to these abysmal shelters that we have in the city.”

Farah acknowledged last week that he hasn’t actually been inside the shelters and based his comments on what he’s heard from some homeless people who told him they don’t feel safe sleeping within a couple feet of others in a shared space.

Tony Brooks, the new chair of the Wilkes-Barre City Council, speaks during a reorganization meeting on Monday, Jan. 6, 2025. (JASON ARDAN / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)

The most vulnerable

Council Chairman Tony Brooks replied that city officials “want to be humane as possible, helping with the most vulnerable. We have put money into various shelters.”

Brown has noted that the City contributed $309,000 to help convert the former Thomas C. Thomas warehouse building into Keystone Mission’s Innovation Center and provide staffing to expand overnight accommodations to seven days a week for the first year.

He also successfully lobbied state Rep. Eddie Day Pashinski, D-Wilkes-Barre, to secure a $100,000 state grant toward the remodeling and renovations.

Brooks rattled off all of the shelters in the city — 20 beds for men at Mother Teresa’s Haven’s new location on East Jackson Street; 15 beds at Keystone Mission’s Transformation Center on Parkview Circle; 40 to 50 beds at Keystone Mission’s Innovation Center for Homelessness & Poverty on East Union Street; more than 30 beds for women at Volunteers of America’s women’s shelter, Ruth’s Place; and more than 90 beds at the Domestic Violence Service Center.

“I want to work as much as possible with the administration and the volunteer organizations that help the homeless population. I think it’s cruel to see people live on the streets, and the best thing to do is to help those people, and we’re trying the best we can,” Brooks said.

Farah spoke again at a March 13 meeting, noting a sweep of an encampment at Nesbitt Park earlier that day.

“I’m holding a notice here that was posted on the trees out there in Kirby Park. These people had one or two days notice that the sweep was going to resume. They were given three days notice for a March 6 sweep that was thankfully postponed because of the flooding of the Susquehanna River … and the Public Works people had determined it was unsafe to do so,” Farah said.

“We helped them because the excavators and dump trucks were coming this morning. They left with what they could. I mean, if a person establishes residency in apartments and they go through the eviction process, they get 30 days to leave the premises. These people were given three, then two days. This is inhumane,” Farah said.

He compared the sweeps to action against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

“Now, I look in my own backyard, I see the same things happening here. This needs to end,” he said.

Systemic failures

April Pahler, another member of the local Democratic Socialists chapter, said homeless encampments are a result of systemic failures in government, and that “sweeps are often justified under the guise of public safety, park beautification and health concerns. The reality of it is, sweeps cause significant harm to already-vulnerable individuals.”

“Their belongings are often discarded or bulldozed, such as today — items such as IDs and medicines and personal mementos. This loss complicates the challenges they already face, making it even more difficult for them to access services to rebuild their lives,” Pahler said.

Homelessness, Pahler said, isn’t merely a matter of choosing to live outside – it’s caused by a lack of affordable housing, a lack of mental health services and a failure of social safety nets.

“Instead of fixing an underlying issue, sweeps criminalize poverty and reinforce social stigmas around homelessness. This continuous cycle of marginalizing a population is pushing them further into the shadows, rather than providing them with adequate support they need to reintegrate back into society,” Pahler said.

Wilkes-Barre Mayor George Brown speaks at the Luzerne County Democratic Party Field Office in Wilkes-Barre on Friday, Nov. 1, 2024. (JASON ARDAN / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)

Adequate time

No city officials responded to the comments during that meeting, but the mayor addressed the issues in a phone interview Thursday.

“I think this gentleman is sensationalizing what’s going on over there,” Brown said of Farah. “It’s not happening the way he’s saying. They have adequate time.”

City Administrator Charles McCormick said city workers posted notices of a planned sweep for March 7 on trees and physically handed them out to residents of the encampments who were present on March 3. Because of weather conditions and muddy, boggy ground, they postponed that sweep to the following week, reposting notices on March 10 and conducting the sweep on March 13.

Brown said the encampment residents shouldn’t need more than a day to locate and put their important documents in their pockets and gather other things important to them.

“We give them adequate time to clear out. We also give them adequate suggestions as to where to go if they’re homeless, places to stay that offer a place for them to sleep at night. But a lot of these people want to live in that lifestyle. They want to live along the river and basically in squalor and be able to just live that life, and it’s not safe for our police, our fire department to go over there. It’s a mess over there,” Brown said.

A matter of safety

“The last couple of camps that we cleaned up, they had adequate time to move their stuff out, and then they knew that if they didn’t move it out in time, it would be removed. We had to use s bulldozer just to clean up. It was so bad back there that I couldn’t have my guys pick this stuff up by hand, that’s how bad it was, that’s how unsafe it was. I mean, dealing with feces and dealing with needles and dealing with other things that, who knows what’s back there,” Brown said.

Brown said it’s his responsibility to keep the park natural areas clean and safe for walkers, hikers and joggers who use the paths along the Susquehanna River. The area must also be safe for responders to access, fire, medical and other emergencies.

Brown said he doesn’t give more than a few days notice for sweeps because he wants the area cleaned up as soon as possible for those safety reasons after learning conditions have become extremely unsafe, while still giving adequate notice to the residents of the encampments.

“Sending my paramedics back there, sending my fire department back there at night with a flashlight, trying to walk around feces and needles just to provide services or to put out a fire, it’s a danger back there, the way that they were living. It’s a danger for other people,” Brown said.

Affordable housing

Behrens said he saw the number of overnight guests at Keystone Mission’s two Wilkes-Barre locations increase from about 55 to 71 after the most recent sweep.

“There are a lot of transients coming in, too, people from outside the county, as well as from Lackawanna County,” Behrens said.

While the sweeps play a part in the increase, an increasing lack of affordable housing and a general increase in prices for goods have also led to more homelessness, he said.

“People are struggling across the country and there are limited resources,” Behrens said. “We have people who are working and are homeless because they can’t find affordable housing.”

Editor’s Note: This story has been adjusted to correct the amount of funding the City of Wilkes-Barre contributed toward the renovations and providing overnight shelter 365 days a year at Keystone Mission. The City contributed $309,000; not $209,000 as initially reported.