Two of Keystone Mission’s three homeless shelters in Wilkes-Barre and Scranton will close their doors sometime in the next four to five weeks, and 75% of the staff will be laid off.
Increasing costs and decreases in donations and volunteers led the board of directors to make the difficult decision, Justin Behrens, former CEO and executive director of the nonprofit, said in a phone interview Tuesday morning.
“I came back … to the mission as the interim executive director (around February), and my goal was to get it back on track and try to keep things afloat. It came about a month ago that I realized that the board needed to start making a decision of what’s the direction of the mission, to keep it sustainable,” Behrens said. “The board, after debating, making decisions among themselves, came to the conclusion that we are going to sell the Scranton building and close down the East Union Street building, and we are going to keep open the Sherman Hills building for operation.”
Behrens said Keystone Mission will reduce staff from 21 employees to six.
“We’re working on trying to get them jobs somewhere else so they’re not really laid off, they’re just working for somebody else,” Behrens said. “I have my HR director and operations manager in charge of resume building, getting recruiting out there so that we’re not just laying people off, we’re helping them find other jobs.”
Keystone has been operating a day shelter with programming for individuals experiencing homelessness, located at 12 W. Olive St. in Scranton, and currently known as The Innovation Center for Homelessness and Poverty, since 2007. The nonprofit opened a facility of the same name in leased space at the former Thomas C. Thomas Building at 90 E. Union St. in Wilkes-Barre in October 2023, and that facility doubles as an overnight shelter for up to about 50 homeless individuals.
Keystone’s 15-bed Transformation Center for males, located in a building at 290 Parkview Circle within the Sherman Hills apartment complex in Wilkes-Barre that was donated anonymously to Keystone in 2008, will continue operating.
Keystone Mission in Scranton on Tuesday, June 17, 2025. (REBECCA PARTICKA/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)
What about the homeless?
“The interesting thing about Scranton is that there are already services that are duplicating what we do there,” Behrens said, citing Community Intervention Center, which offers a day room and programming for displaced and homeless individuals. “Something that’s very important to understand is that, even though we’re closing down, it’s not going to put a strain on the system.”
Eileen Wilson, CIC’s executive director, said the center has seen more people come when Keystone closed its day room a few months ago and are prepared to provide services when the Scranton center closes.
“We have excellent relationships with the city of Scranton, Lackawanna County and with all of our fellow nonprofit providers, and since we knew of the impending closure, we’ve all been working together and planning to meet any need that could potentially be left over with them closing,” she said.
Keystone abandoned plans announced in 2019 to open an overnight homeless shelter on Wyoming Avenue in Scranton after nearby property owners voiced opposition and then appealed to the court a zoning decision favorable to the nonprofit.
Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti’s Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Over the next three to four weeks, Keystone staff will work to get homeless individuals that had been utilizing the East Union Street facility “either placed in (other) shelters or connected back with family, whatever it takes to get them where they need to go,” Behrens said.
Catholic Social Services operates a 20-bed shelter for men, and Volunteers of America operates Ruth’s Place, an approximately 30-bed shelter for women, just a couple blocks from the East Union Street facility.
Those who relied on the innovation center in Scranton were disappointed to hear of its closure. Tyler Worden, who is homeless, relied on the center to get mail and other necessities.
“The fact that they help the community in the way that they do with clothing, food,” Worden said. “They get mail and tents and they help us. That was a big help because a lot of us can’t afford P.O. boxes and we don’t have addresses so to have that as a community resource was pretty good.”
Justin Behrens, Keystone Mission’s executive director, says more funding for programs to assist homeless people and more affordable housing are needed to address the homeless problem in Wilkes-Barre and across the country. (CITIZENS’ VOICE FILE)
A strategic plan
Behrens said the mayors of both Scranton and Wilkes-Barre are aware of the closings, and he plans to meet with Wilkes-Barre Mayor George C. Brown about developing “a strategic plan of how we’re going to close this down and transition the homeless into places so they’re not just on the streets.”
Brown said he was disappointed that the facilities would close and also that no one from Keystone called to inform him, especially after the City of Wilkes-Barre had invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in the East Union Street facility. Brown said he called Behrens after hearing about the plans from a reporter.
Brown noted that the City donated $214,000 toward the remodeling of the warehouse section of the Thomas C. Thomas building into a facility for homeless individuals, and he had asked Danielle O. Keith-Alexandre, Keystone’s executive director at the time, what it would take for Keystone to house individuals overnight 365 days a year instead of only housing them in church basements during freezing weather through a Code Blue program.
City officials granted Keystone another $109,500 — the amount Keith-Alexandre quoted with a promise to include funding for 365-day overnight shelter into the annual budget.
It remains unclear what will happen to the Code Blue program in Scranton. Brown said he and his staff will work to find a suitable locations for a Code Blue program in Wilkes-Barre.
A perfect storm
Behrens said the financial difficulties that led to the planned closures and layoffs are a result of “a perfect storm.”
“We were losing donations at a drastically larger degree than we’ve lost before. On top of that, grant holders were not awarding grants as much as they were before. It’s a common theme across the whole country. … Rather than getting to the point that we become bankrupt, we had to make tough decisions,” Behrens said.
“And now, my job is to execute those decisions. It was just the perfect storm. Volunteering has dropped down. Everything has just gone down,” except costs, he said. “Expenses have gone up — salaries, staffing, there’s so many factors.”
Behrens said that beginning last June, Keystone provided programming and meals during the day, then closed the facility for a couple hours each day to clean it and convert it into an overnight shelter 365 days a year after receiving the $109,500 for that purpose.
But, city residents and council members complained that homeless individuals were loitering outside the center, waiting for it to reopen for overnight accommodations, on a daily basis. To appease them and enable the shelter to be open 24 hours a day, Behrens said he had to add more staff.
Dealing with a stigma
“I keep saying this: above everything, we need to change the attitude of how people think, the way people are. There’s a very large stigma in this country against the homeless. People are willing to donate towards children, they’re willing to donate towards seniors, but, when it comes to a homeless man pushing a shopping cart, that’s the last on their list to donate to,” Behrens said.
Behrens said people in general are scared of homeless individuals without good reason.
“These people have a story to tell … and it’s not that they’re a drug user, it’s not that they’re addicted to drugs or they’re a criminal. It’s maybe they lost their house in a fire. There’s one gentleman that’s in our shelter that his wife has cancer and is in a home and he has to pay all the money to take care of her and that has left him with no home. That person’s not an alcoholic, that person’s not a drug user. That could be any one of us,” Behrens said.
“We gotta stop being judgmental. We gotta stop putting up this barrier that, oh, we gotta keep them off the streets because they’re ruining our neighborhoods, they’re ruining our area. Maybe we need to start taking care of our neighbors. Maybe we need to start taking care of our brothers and sisters. That’s the piece that I think is truly missing in this country, and Wilkes-Barre is not immune.”
Staff Writer Christine Lee contributed to this story.