WILKES-BARRE, LUZERNE COUNTY (WBRE/WYOU) — An area nonprofit that helps people experiencing homelessness is reshaping the way it operates. Keystone Mission Leadership says it's hoping to help the homeless in a new way.
Keystone Mission operates centers in Luzerne and Lackawanna counties.
Now, leadership says they are making innovative plans to address the continuing crisis here in NEPA.
Located on East Union Street, the Keystone Mission is a safe haven for those experiencing homelessness.
The center's leadership says the number of people seeking their services is continuing to grow due to outdoor encampments being shut down and people being brought in from other places.
"This facility behind me can actually house roughly anywhere between 50 to 60 people, we're already in the 70s every night," Keystone Mission Executive Director Justin Behrens said.
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Behrens is the Keystone Mission's executive director, a role he returned to a month ago. He is planning to change the way the center helps others.
"A homeless shelter is not the way to move forward. A homeless shelter is just housing an individual. That's just a band-aid to the situation. So what we're doing now is I took a totally different shift. We are now doing a work development transformation facility," Behrens explained.
Guests will now be given the option to do a transformation program.
If they choose not to, they can only sleep there for 30 days and will be given alternative options at the end of their stay.
If they want to enter the program, they can stay longer.
"Allowing them to progress and become better, through work development. Through going through the program of taking that survival mode and bringing it down into rational mode. Allowing the opportunity to succeed. Allowing the opportunity to get better, and following them along that path and that journey so that we can transform their lives," Behrens added.
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The program will be carried out in four phases: Intake, physical and mental health assessment, and workforce development.
Meaning staff will help connect people in the program to employment or help them get on a fixed income if they cannot work.
The fourth and final phase, Behrens says, allows them to succeed.
"Allowing them to go to the rational mind and bringing that rational mind out. Taking that survival mode and eliminating that survival mode. And so between those four phases, we can then get them to being stable," Behrens continued.
In addition, the Keystone Mission is planning on expanding its location on East Union Street in the coming months to make more room for the transformation center, modeling it after their smaller location in Parkview Circle.
