For the first time since 2022, Montgomery County could return to a year-round homeless shelter next year as county commissioners prepare to vote Thursday on funding and a contract to implement the plan.

County commissioners are expected to vote Thursday morning on the $208 million capital improvement budget for 2025, which includes funding for a homeless shelter, and approve a lease for the shelter site at Lansdale.

The County Council will also vote on its $568 million general fund budget, which includes a 9% increase for residents on their shares of county property taxes, following stronger increases in Delaware And Chester Counties earlier this month.

If approved, the shelter will be the first year-round shelter in the county. since the Norristown Coordinated Homeless Outreach Center closed in 2022. The county currently funds several Code Blue shelters, which provide overnight shelter when temperatures or wind chills drop below freezing.

The project is a partnership between the county and Lansdale Borough and is part of a larger effort in Montgomery County to significantly increase shelter resources over the next five years.

The county’s 2025 capital improvement budget allocates $2 million for shelters for unhoused people and plans to spend $10 million total over the next five years on the project.

Earlier this year, officials counted 435 people living on the streets in Montgomery County, the highest number in a decade except for 2022. when the Norristown shelter closed its doors. But efforts to increase services and affordable housing options in the wealthy county in recent years, including a proposed affordable housing complex in Upper Gywnedd, have been accompanied by a strong resistance from the community.

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The proposed Lansdale project is estimated to cost $1.3 million, with funds coming from the $2 million allocation for shelters in the county’s capital improvement budget.

The Lansdale center is expected to house 20 to 25 people, and county officials say they hope to open it in the first half of 2025. While existing Code Blue shelters only offer short-term overnight services, the Lansdale shelter Lansdale would provide longer-term transitional housing. for homeless people in the district, said Jamila Winder, chairwoman of the Montgomery County Board of Commissioners.

Winder said she hopes the project will encourage other local governments to work with the county on similar shelters.

“This will be a model for other municipalities to follow, that you can create a homeless shelter in your municipality to help the most vulnerable among us while still having a thriving and safe community,” she said. declared.

Winder said the lack of year-round transitional housing options in Montgomery County has led to an increase in the number of encampments in the community. The county, she said, has struggled to open full-time shelters, in part because of municipalities’ refusal to allow shelters to be established within their borders.

“Anyone who has followed the complexities of creating homeless shelters in any region knows that this is NIMBYism,” she said.