Sarah Taylor (right) posing with a group of volunteers at a Philly House Community Service project.
According to Philadelphia’s Office of Homeless Service, homelessness in the city increased by 5.2% in 2023, which is the second year in a row that the homeless population rose.
With homelessness in Philadelphia on the rise, it is easy to look at the crisis as a hopeless situation. However, organizations such as Philly House in Center City, are fighting for rehabilitation and independence for homeless men in the city.
Philly House was established in 1878 by John Wanamaker and remains the largest and longest-running homeless shelter for men in Philadelphia. The organization began by serving homeless men breakfasts on Sunday mornings but has expanded over time with a mission of providing mental, physical, and financial resources for homeless men to gain independence and form a community.
Sarah Taylor, a cook at Philly House, started working as a way to become more involved with the city, but she stayed because of the connections and family that she found at Philly House.
Do you think that the state and federal government is providing adequate resources and funding to help homelessness?
No. Every year, although to many, it seems like funding has increased, it’s actually the same number, just redistributed. We are facing a higher crisis of homelessness in Philadelphia every year. Philly House is currently the only men’s shelter in the city, and we are the only place that provides 3 meals a day for anyone who needs it, as well as caseworkers, actual housing, and work programs for our guests and people that live with us. The current funding for places that open their doors for Code Blues and Code Reds, the threshold for when these places can get funding and when they will accept people is too low.
What do you hope for the future for your organization to reach more people who may need the resources?
Right now, we are often always at capacity. The only thing to provide our housing or our programs with social workers would be to expand and open another location, which would be wonderful. But currently, we are still struggling with funding and having enough money to provide meals and services for the people that live there, so more fundraising or more similar brother or sister locations would be nice, but it’s a struggle to provide for the people that we have and there is not enough space in the inn currently.
Do you have any stories of rehabilitation from formerly homeless people that have been through Philly House?
We focus a lot on both rehabilitation and creating clear pathways and taking actual steps towards independence and working on one’s own. So, the different levels of our program and the different floors in our building correspond to different programs that the men are in. There is temporary housing, like on the first couple floors; we work with social workers to get permits. These men can get passes to come in and out at different times to maintain jobs, we connect them with social workers to obtain jobs and to maintain them, to get transportation to and from. We also do spiritual health checkups and visits and try to just make sure they’re happy and healthy and able to get to work consistently. Then they are able to move up in the levels; they live in a more apartment-style area of the shelter, apartment is used very loosely there, but they slowly work their way up to a more independent state, more consistent jobs, and then we also work with our housing correspondents to find them housing eventually. So, once they have a stable job, they can work within Philly House at some points, they get their stable job outside and get their working permits, and then we can work our way up to housing and we try to get them out and hit the ground running.
How do you allocate your resources and where do you receive your funding?
Our resources are spread across a variety of our programs. Obviously, we receive some federal and state funding, but we rely very heavily on our donors and fundraising.
How has your experience working at Philly House colored your understanding of the city?
Working at Philly House, you hear so many stories and it’s a privilege because you get to interact with many strong individuals, often with very difficult pasts and histories. You firsthand experience generational trauma and the issues of the city, but also how the city can so easily sweep people under the rug and ignore them. A lot of the members of our Philly House community suffer from disabilities, mental illnesses, have suffered from drug addiction issues, and have been imprisoned at one point in their life. All of these things prevent people from getting housing. In the city of Philadelphia, you can be denied housing for a criminal record and in other people’s leases, they can be rejected housing for even having a former convict in their house, meaning, even if some of our men have served their time, have gotten out of prison and have been out for years, they can’t go home to visit their families for Christmas because that risks their families leases or their home security. So, it’s eye-opening. Also, the homeless population in Philadelphia is extremely skewed towards black and brown men, and although women and children do also need aid, we are the only male shelter, and there is so little help for men in the city. A lot of our population are older or above the age of 60, so these are your grandfathers and great-grandfathers living on the streets unable to get a meal. I’ve met people who have immigrated, worked hard, and gotten in bicycle accidents while working their third job and now they’re separated from their families and they’ve waited for months to get in our doors because we’re simply the only ones with our doors open, but we’re always full.
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