NORRISTOWN — Sitting on a couch inside his One Montgomery Plaza office, Ken Lawrence Jr. knows exactly how he wants to spend his remaining time as a Montgomery County commissioner.
The 51-year-old Democratic chairman plans to focus his attention on tackling homelessness.
“We’re the third largest county. We’re the second wealthiest county. I think we can do more for the people who have the least, and I think it makes us a stronger county overall,” Lawrence said in an interview last week.
Lawrence announced last month that he wouldn’t seek re-election as county commissioner after serving for seven years. But, he stressed that his advocacy efforts would not waiver.
“I’m not planning to go away once I’m no longer a commissioner. I’ll still serve,” he said. “There’s other ways to serve besides being in elected office.”
Lawrence’s journey to politics
Born in Exton, Chester County, Lawrence’s family moved to Towamencin Township in 1984. His father ran his own insurance company, his mother worked at Merck Sharp & Dohme pharmaceuticals.
Lawrence graduated from North Penn High School in 1989. He went on to attend Montgomery County Community College and then Temple University where he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in political science. Lawrence got his master’s degree in public administration in 2008 from University of Pennsylvania’s Fels Institute of Government.
He spent time in the private sector working at the Chamber of Commerce for Greater Philadelphia, Merck and Temple University. Lawrence also had his own public affairs consulting company. Lawrence has lived in Plymouth Township for more than 20 years with his wife Jen, and sons Justin, 21, and Josh, 18.
Lawrence had long expressed interest in politics, interning with former Montgomery County Commissioner Joe Hoeffel and then-U.S. Rep. Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky. He worked on campaigns and had dreams of becoming a state representative in Harrisburg.
However, Lawrence didn’t become a politician himself until he was appointed to fill a seat on the Montgomery County Board of Commissioners in 2017 left vacant by now-Gov. Josh Shapiro, the former board chairman elected to serve as Pennsylvania’s attorney general.
Lawrence was then elected in 2019, and sworn in as commissioner in 2020 along with Democratic Chairwoman Val Arkoosh, and Republican Commissioner Joe Gale.
They’d go on to govern during the COVID-19 pandemic, a historic 2020 presidential election and a natural disaster with the remnants of Hurricane Ida in September 2021.
Throughout his time in office, Lawrence brought “more of a private sector approach” to the three-member board, he said, often related to transportation and personnel.
‘A real wake up’
Lawrence recalled being first exposed to homelessness in Montgomery County in the mid-1990s while volunteering with Bethlehem Baptist Church’s Interfaith Housing Program. But his shift in governmental priorities took shape the first time he participated in Montgomery County’s Point-in-Time Count, an annual initiative designed to gain insight into the local homelessness situation. He was assigned to survey parts of the county seat with the Salvation Army of Norristown four years ago. There he observed people sleeping outside under the William F. Dannehower Memorial Bridge as well as on the basketball courts at Riverfront Park.
“It was a real wake up. I think homelessness becomes invisible to a lot of us. So when you actually see it, and know it, you can’t really close your eyes to it,” he said.
Lawrence has participated in the count for the past several years, and went to Pottstown last month. In the western part of the county, his group of seven volunteers carried flashlights, which were necessary to navigate through several encampments and an abandoned warehouse during the four-hour-long count on Jan. 24.
Walking paths were caked in mud and lined with trash and other discarded items throughout the “Tent City” encampment, located in the woods just off the train tracks.
“This is intense,” Lawrence said while standing in Pottstown’s “Tent City.”
Tents and tarps designated spaces for residents, many of whom were in their tents for the night as volunteers sought to count them and inquire further about their situations.
“I’d heard about the encampments. I think until you see the encampments, you can’t really imagine,” Lawrence said. “It’s not what I expected. But to see almost communities, people living in tents on a cold January night, and knowing they weren’t camping, that that was their daily existence.”
Homelessness in Montco.
County officials have attributed economic issues related to the lack of affordable housing stock, the COVID-19 pandemic and devastating impacts from the remnants of Hurricane Ida as reasons for the recent uptick in homelessness. Current two-bedroom apartment rental listings in Montgomery County range from $925 to more than $3,600 per month, according to online listings on Zillow.
“We see all these apartment complexes going up. They are not affordable,” Lawrence said, adding that “people come here because of our great school districts, because of all the amenities there. People come here to work, but there’s got to be a spot for everyone.”
Rising cost of living in tough times were other factors that Lawrence observed.
“Food insecurity’s another issue here in Montgomery County, which I think people would be surprised, but we have a multitude of food banks. Some in the Main Line,” he said. “People are paying high rents, high mortgage; they want to be here — they want kids in the schools so they have less to spend on food. I think all these things tie in.”
Last year’s Point-in-Time Count report revealed 568 people were staying in emergency shelters, transitional housing projects or outside in Montgomery County.
“The last couple of years have been particularly hard. I think there’s lots of reasons why people end up homeless or unhoused,” Lawrence said. “There’s substance use disorders; there’s economic distress.”
“I don’t think the pandemic helped. Hurricane Ida, a lot of the housing that got knocked out of Norristown and Bridgeport was some of the most affordable housing in the county,” he continued. “It wasn’t replaced.”
Fewer shelters
Additionally, the Coordinated Homeless Outreach Center, the county’s largest and only homeless shelter for single adults, closed earlier this summer. Previously located on the grounds of the Norristown State Hospital, the portion of land that held the facility overseen by Philadelphia-based Resources for Human Development, which served as a resource center and 50-bed shelter, was conveyed from the state to the Municipality of Norristown.
“There’s been a lot over the past couple of months about the shelter closing, and we’re working very hard to replace that,” Lawrence said. “We’ve been housing people in hotels during that, but the fact that there was really only one shelter in a county of 800,000 — that’s a little ridiculous, too.”
“We need more shelters. That’s an immediate issue,” Lawrence said. “We need more affordable housing, which is going to take a little bit longer to get to, but we need to look at ways to figure out why people are ending up homeless, and then can we address that.”
Plans to tackle homelessness
Lawrence stressed his intentions to have a “laser vision focus to this issue” with less than a year until the end of his term. But in the meantime, he’d like to gather key stakeholders well versed in the issue of homeless locally.
“I don’t have all the answers. That’s why I’d like to get people around a table to talk about these solutions,” he said.
Advocates stress that homelessness is present throughout Montgomery County, but it looks different from town to borough to municipality.
“One of the things I’d like to do is to have a task force of municipal leaders, of our faith community, the nonprofit sector, county government, state government, feds, and come together with some kind of plan on how we can address some of the immediate concerns, but then the long-term concerns as well,” he said. “Ultimately, I think the goal is that someone doesn’t end up sleeping outside — we’re playing catch-up on that now.”
Lawrence acknowledged a “creep in the numbers” throughout the public health crisis, and estimated that more than 400 people are “sleeping on the streets now.”
He suggested devising an “intersectional team” of services representatives from several agencies including the county’s Courts, Drug and Alcohol and Housing departments.
“I think we need to take a more holistic approach. It’s not just a county problem, and when I say that, I say county government problem,” Lawrence said. “We need our local municipalities to provide more affordable housing — I think they’re calling it workforce housing. I think the best thing you can do to help homelessness is try to prevent it.”
Norristown and Pottstown have historically dealt with high concentrations of homelessness.
“I know also that everyone who is homeless in Norristown and Pottstown isn’t from Norristown and Pottstown,” Lawrence said. “Often they end up coming to Norristown or Pottstown because there’s other social service agencies there where they can get a meal, where they can get some kind of services.
“In Norristown, we have the (Norristown) Transportation Center. People come out even from Philadelphia for that,” he continued. “So the perception comes [that] there’s only homeless in Norristown or Pottstown, but then it becomes on those governments to take up that burden.”
Norristown and Pottstown officials have expressed frustrations surrounding both the stigma and the financial burden of bearing the largest share of the county’s homeless population, and Lawrence agreed.
“I tell them they’re right, and I think we need to do a better job of talking to some of these other municipalities,” Lawrence said. “Once again, we can’t always tell them what to do, and wave a wand and make them, but [we can] make sure that they’re aware and that there’s a recognition that we’re all in this together.”
While a homeless shelter isn’t necessarily required in every community, Lawrence stressed that accessibility is key, along with more Code Blue shelters spread throughout the county. He added that it starts with getting everyone on the same page.
“I’m hopeful,” he said. “I think some are more likely than others. It’s difficult conversations, but it would be great if all 62 municipalities had some sort of affordable housing.”
What’s next?
When faced with the question of what comes next for Lawrence, he was candid in his response.
“I really don’t know. I’ve had people approach me, and I’ve been putting it off because I want to focus on this work for the next 11 months,” Lawrence said.
How much progress can be made by the end of the year?
“I think we can get a lot done,” Lawrence said. “I’ve seen what we got done when we’ve had an issue that we’ve focused on. I saw it during the pandemic. I saw it with Hurricane Ida.”
And Lawrence said he’s ready to get to work.
“I think it’s a life or death situation when you’re living outdoors,” he said. “So everyone that we can get into some kind of transitional housing or help or get into a treatment facility, I think we’re saving lives there.”
