Demand for Help Has Doubled
Monroe County's homeless population is small by national standards, in the low hundreds. The number of people asking for help is not.
Why it matters: Street2Feet, the county's only daytime shelter and outreach center for homeless adults, has served more than 275 people so far this year, more than double last year's total, with one or two new faces walking in the door daily.
The cause: Director Leslie Perryman points to "inflation and the housing market," not any single crisis. Translation: rent went up, wages didn't, and the gap between the two is where people fall through.
• 106: people found living unsheltered in the county's last one-night count, which is widely considered an undercount.
• $57,388: the county's entire homeless assistance funding this year, split among five agencies.
• $6,444: Street2Feet's share of it, to serve 275-plus people.
• 149 reactions, nearly 300 comments: on a local Facebook photo of trash at the latest camp. Posts about people actually helping get a fraction of that.
Where they are: The county set aside a lot behind Glen Park in Stroudsburg as an official encampment in late 2024. It drew complaints and was cleared in 2025. The latest camp showed up this month near a Stroudsburg cemetery, on PennDOT land that belongs to neither the county nor the borough.
Where the churches come in: Stroudsburg Wesleyan Church runs the Wesleyan Inn, the area's cold-weather shelter, with room for up to 40 guests a night starting Nov. 1. Manager Peter Mankin's rule: "We will not turn anyone away, everyone is welcome."
What works: Chester County, right here in Pennsylvania, hit "functional zero" for chronic homelessness for two months this past winter. The number has since crept back up, but the lesson holds: it didn't outspend the problem. It out-organized it.
The bottom line: This problem isn't going away anytime soon. Facebook and other forums fan the flames of outrage; but they offer little in the way of actual solutions. Perhaps if we spent less energy demonizing the homeless, and instead look for practical solutions, we could all win.
Go deeper: The full Special Report on Substack breaks it into three stories: Monroe County Homelessness: By the Numbers; How Monroe County Is Responding; and Pennsylvania and Beyond: Lessons for Monroe County. Inside: how Chester County pulled it off, the county's full funding breakdown, the detective-and-peer-specialist team answering overdose calls, and what a night at the Wesleyan Inn looks like. Read the full Special Report: monroeunfiltered.substack.com/p/monroe-unfiltered-special-report
