Winter shelter deep in North Side opens amid concerns

The former McNaugher Education Center in Perry South on Monday, Dec. 2, 2024. The former school is now a community resources mall and the new Allegheny County emergency winter shelter. (Photo by Stephanie Strasburg/PublicSource)The Allegheny County Department of Human Services is prepared to transport unhoused people from Downtown — where many previously sheltered during the winter — to a former school in Perry South. City human relations officials question the decision.by Eric Jankiewicz, PublicSourceAllegheny County has broken with tradition and commissioned a new winter shelter in Perry South, taking a service for people who are homeless that had long been Downtown to the North Side’s interior — a decision criticized by a Pittsburgh agency tasked with civil rights enforcement and investigating discrimination. On Oct. 21, the county’s Department of Human Services [ACDHS] announced the opening of the new winter shelter on Maple Avenue, in the former McNaugher Education Center school building in partnership with the North Side Partnership Project and Community Family Advocates. It opened on Dec. 6.“New shelters aren’t going into Highland Park, Shadyside, Oakland, and of course not Downtown,” said Chris Soult, deputy director of the city’s Commission on Human Relations, during an interview. “These are places where...