Lancaster County Food Hub to open a homeless outreach center in the city

• By Jade Campos/LNP | LancasterOnline

The Lancaster County Food Hub will soon be home to a new outreach center in Lancaster where unhoused people can come together as a community to find resources.

The nonprofit began renovation of its North Queen Street building in February, turning a former storage area on the second floor into a communal space for unsheltered people to connect with outreach workers and receive medical treatment.

The center is set to open in September, according to Food Hub Executive Director Paige McFarling.

The floor has 5,000 square feet of what is now fairly empty space, McFarling said, but soon it will be furnished and the walls lined with maps of Lancaster city and county with colored dots to highlight essential services, including caseworkers and free community meals.

“This is where you come to navigate Lancaster. This is where you come to find a friend,” McFarling said. “We can help.”

The $1 million project was funded with a state grant and private donations from community foundations including High Foundation and Armstrong Foundation.

The center will serve as a hub where outreach workers across the county can gather to easily connect with clients, McFarling said. Organizations like Blueprints for Addiction Recovery, Tenfold and Conestoga Valley SEEDS have met at the Food Hub on a weekly basis since February 2024 to discuss the best ways to serve the homeless community, she said.

Veterans Affairs, adult protective services, and behavioral health and developmental services also will make stops at the Food Hub’s new outreach center.

The center’s technology desk will allow people to look for jobs and connect with caseworkers online.

One room of the outreach center will be equipped with a medical bed, where people can get checkups with doctors and dentists. A refrigerator is also available to store any medications that need to be kept cold, such as insulin.

McFarling said the Food Hub will contract with outside providers for the medical services.

The center also has several bathrooms as well as a shower that is accessible to people with disabilities. McFarling noted Refresh Lancaster, a shower truck run by Lancaster EMS, will continue to drop by the Food Hub on a regular basis, as it does now.

A glass door leads to the roof of the building that McFarling said will eventually become a deck where people can easily step outside to get some fresh air. Trauma-informed care requires open spaces, she said, so the deck will make that possible.

“This will not just be an outdoor entertainment deck, but it is where you can come to deescalate a situation, to just help somebody take a deep breath,” McFarling said.

Daytime shelter

A portion of the outreach center eventually will be dedicated to a few shelter beds, though McFarling said the beds will not be available by the time the rest of the space opens in September. Staff plan to start with bunk beds that can fit six people, though McFarling said the room eventually could hold 12 people.

The Food Hub’s shelter space will not function like a traditional, overnight shelter, such as the county’s 80-bed shelter across the street at Otterbein United Methodist Church on East Clay Street. Instead, the beds will be available during the day for people working night shifts to sleep.

McFarling said the hope is to partner with local businesses that have unhoused employees or are willing to hire the unhoused to secure beds for their workers.

The space also could help out during extreme heat and cold when the county declares Code Red and Code Blue emergencies, McFarling said. During extreme weather, the county asks resource providers to extend their hours and services if possible.

McFarling said she’s unsure whether the Food Hub will have the staffing necessary by this winter to operate during Code Blue alerts.

Food Hub renovations will continue past the fall, as the nonprofit plans to expand its lobby to better serve every person who comes through its doors. McFarling estimated the nonprofit currently serves around 200 people in a given day, between the clothing bank, food distribution and outreach services.

The county is expected to open its own wraparound services center in 2026 on South Prince Street. The multimillion project will include a day center, a technology area, shelter beds and permanent housing.