POTTSTOWN — Two High Street churches that provide free meals, essentials and services to those in need have been cited by the borough for violating the zoning code’s definition of “church” by undertaking those activities.
Oddly, although other churches in town provide many of the same services, none have reported receiving a violation notice from the borough’s licensing and inspections office.
Both Borough Manager Justin Keller and Codes and Enforcement Director Keith Place were on vacation and have not responded to Mercury queries about the rationale for the action, and why these two churches have been singled out.
Both the churches that were cited — Christ Episcopal at 316 E. High St. and Mission First, which has merged with the former First Methodist Church, at 414 E. High St. — have until July 10 to contest the citation, or to appeal to the zoning hearing board in pursuit of a zoning variance.
Should the churches fail to stop serving the needy, fail to appeal the ruling, or fail to apply for a variance, civil charges are possible, with fines of more than $500 per day, plus court costs, according to the violation notices sent to both churches by Code Enforcement Officer Winter Stokes.
Dennis Coleman, deacon at Christ Episcopal, said his church and diocese have set aside $10,000 for legal fees associated with the potential legal challenge. They have no intention of stopping services to the needy.
“We are going to speak out against this. It is a higher calling to do this work and we will not stop doing it,” he said. “This church has been here for 250 years and as long as anyone can remember, it has been of service to the community in need,” Coleman said.
As for why only these two churches have been cited, Coleman said “you have to ask yourself: Who benefits? I think the entire idea is some folks don’t want to see poor people on High Street. I think I know who’s behind this and if they are coming after us for this, I don’t think it will stop with us. There is a free meal somewhere in Pottstown every day.”
He observed that in Phoenixville, 35 homeless people sleep in a shelter there, where he served as chaplain, and Phoenixville’s business district seems just fine.
Peggy Lee-Clark is the executive of Pottstown Area Economic Development, the borough’s point person for attracting and retaining businesses. In the past, she has spoken on behalf of the business community about the impact homeless people have on downtown businesses. However, contacted Thursday she replied to a Mercury query by writing “I had nothing to do with them being cited.”
According to the June 10 letter to Mission First, three activities at Mission First are outside the zoning code’s definition of a church, which is as follows: “A building wherein persons assemble regularly for religious worship and that is used only for such purposes and for those accessory activities as are customarily associated therewith.”
“Their definition of church is so narrow, it about knocked me off my chair,” said the Rev. Vernon Ross, pastor of Bethel Community Church of Pottstown and chairman of the Pottstown Ministerium, which met Wednesday to discuss the citations.
Ross noted his church on North Keim Street, which is shared with the Jewish Congregation Hesed Shel Emet, has a food pantry, was home to one of Montgomery County’s vaccine clinics and provides clothing for the needy.
Ross said with inflation on the rise, “our numbers are through the roof. Our food pantry went from serving 50 families a week to 70 families a week just because of the cost of food.”
The three activities listed as Mission First’s violations are:
• A mental health service providing free counseling and support for families. “This is considered a social service provider.”
• A “Last week of the Month” program which supplies soap, razors, toothbrushes, deodorant, toilet paper, phone chargers and canned, packaged food items to the public.
• Providing of weekly, buffet-style meals to the public.
The letter notes “this list may not be all inclusive.”
“I could not find approvals for these uses in our records,” codes officer Winter Stokes wrote to Mission First. “It is the opinion of this office that this use has changed, by definition, and is more than that of a church.”
Paul Prince, an attorney and member of the board for Congregation Hesed Shel Emet, told the Pottstown Ministerium meeting that Pottstown’s zoning ordinance was adopted 55 years ago, and was amended in 2003 and again in 2019. As such, both church locations may be protected from something municipal lawyers call “pre-existing, non-conforming.”
In other words, you can’t use “new” zoning to cite or shut down a use that was legal before a new zoning law made it illegal.
He advised that obtaining a zoning variance from the zoning hearing board is a difficult standard to meet and the zoning hearing board if the issue gets that far, is more likely to recognize that helping those in need is “a tenant of faith and that feeding and helping people is not a business unrelated to faith.”
That perspective was certainly bolstered Friday when volunteer Edie Shean-Hammond delivered food packages from the King Street food pantry of the Cluster of Religious Communities to Christ Episcopal’s kitchen.
“For me, this is more important than attending a worship service,” she said.
Prince has tangled with the borough before when he represented the group seeking to convert an empty building on North Charlotte Street into a homeless shelter. That idea got a decidedly mixed response from the council and the public and the request was withdrawn.
Earlier however, in November 2020, the ouncil gave permission and then extended that permission, for the same group to open a winter “warming center” for homeless people in the vacant former St. Aloysius School on North Hanover Street.
Although “the homeless” are often the focus of discussion of such activity, it’s important to remember, that not everyone going to a church for a meal, shoes or a new shirt, or even a razor and some paper towels is unhoused, said Clare Schilling, Mission First’s chairperson.
Friday Mission First held a “community picnic” in front of the church and Mary Gerhard stopped by, as she often does.
Gerhard lives in the Sydney Pollock House senior housing tower down the street and says she has “been helped often by the people here,” including with clothing and food when money gets tight. “I don’t like to take too much, because other people have it much worse,” said Gerhard, who is legally blind and lives on the roughly $700 a month she gets from Supplemental Security Income.
Another resident of the senior housing building, who asked that her name not be used, said she stops by for canned goods too when money gets tight. “They really help me,” she said.
Money getting tight is the idea behind the “Last Week of the Month” pantry run by both churches — the idea being that the end of the month, or pay period, is often when available funds get thin for working families.
At Mission First, that idea has extended to having an outdoor refrigerator and canned food pantry that people can access when the churches are closed. Schilling says people have complained to her that “it’s an eyesore.”
Coleman said Christ Episcopal’s essentials pantry provides things like laundry supplies, even rolls of quarters, paper towels and toilet paper. “Only a small percentage of the people who come here are homeless. Let’s face it when gas is $5 a gallon, something like this is helpful for the mom who has two jobs and money is getting tight,” he said.
“This is not just a homeless issue,” said Ross. “This is a people issue. This is an issue of folks being hungry and not having the money to sustain themselves.”
None of which is to say that helping unhoused people is not a central part of the mission for Mission First or Christ Episcopal.
One of those people helped is Joseph Amos, 51, who goes by Joey.
“Being homeless is stressful,” said Amos, who is about to get kicked out of his apartment and is looking for another place to live. “This place is really helpful for people like me, not just for the food but as a place to take a moment and rest and be out of the heat or cold,” he said of the Mission First services.
“I haven’t always been homeless,” said Amos who is a welder by trade and has held down jobs at Dana and other manufacturers. “I had a house in Muhlenberg for 20 years, with three cars and four motorcycles, I had it all. Then I got divorced and things went downhill.”
Diagnosed as having bipolar disorder, anxiety disorder and schizophrenic tendencies, Amos has many struggles. Currently, he is worried about where to store his belongings while he looks for a new home.
Whatever your views on Pottstown’s homeless issues, expect them to expand in the coming year.
The same day Mission First was holding its Community Picnic was the first day that Montgomery County had no homeless shelter at all.
Situated on the grounds of the Norristown State Hospital, the 50-bed CHOC facility was the largest and only homeless space for single adults ages 18 years and older in Montgomery County and it closed June 30 when the property was conveyed to the Municipality of Norristown.
“Some of the people in that shelter were from Pottstown, and you can bet they’ll be coming back,” said Tom Niahros, who ran the warming center at St. Aloysius and was part of the group, now called Pottstown Beacon of Hope, that sought to open the shelter on North Charlotte Street.
Kayleigh Silver, the administrator of the Montgomery County Office of Housing and Community Development, told MediaNews Group recently that along with a lack of affordable housing in Montgomery County, the increased cost of living, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, and the remnants of Hurricane Ida have contributed to an increase in the homeless population.
Niahros said some of the federal funding which is helping to house people unhoused by Ida and COVID-19 in hotels and motels will expire soon, meaning more people without a place to live.
Montgomery County officials recently released the findings of the annual Point-In-Time Count, which revealed that 568 people were experiencing homelessness locally.
The count took place on Jan. 25 as more than 100 volunteers surveyed areas in and around Abington, Ambler, Ardmore, Bridgeport, Cheltenham, King of Prussia, Lansdale, Lower Merion, Norristown, Pottstown, Souderton, and Willow Grove, according to Silver, who noted the count is required by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
And just as unhoused people come from all over the region, so too does the help.
During a quick tour of Mission First’s facilities and services, a non-stop list of churches, and agencies, like the Chester County Food Pantry, fell from Schilling’s lips as she described how people come together to help those with less.
She pointed to a refrigerator procured at cost, houseware items donated to allow people moving into a new home to have plates to eat from and towels to use.
Similarly, as she unloaded bags of side dishes, snacks and condiments from the Pottstown Cluster, that would be augmented by fresh food prepared by Shenkel United Church of Christ in North Coventry, Sheen-Hammond tried to explain the interwoven nature of relief at Christ Episcopal and other Pottstown churches.
There is a lunch served every Monday at Christ Episcopal, but different churches do it each week, Coleman explained.
Shean-Hammond produced a sign-in sheet that showed on a particular day, 11 volunteers would help to provide that day’s meal. Another sheet showed that particular ham and cheese sandwich lunch will cost $289 and be paid for by the church.
“There’s one woman there, Janet Nash, she buys the food and the church reimburses her,” Shean-Hammond said.
There are some weeks when the food is prepared by a youth group in Douglassville, another by St. Theresa Catholic Church in Limerick.
Baked goods are often donated by the Giant supermarket in North Coventry and Rita Paez from Centro Cultural Latinos Unidos takes any un-eaten sandwiches or other food to people she knows who are homebound.
“Nothing is wasted,” Shean-Hammond said.
Efforts by the two churches to preserve this service for the less fortunate will not be undertaken alone.
“We stand with you, we support you,” Ross said during Wednesday’s ministerium meeting. “And we’re going to be with you until the very end.”
