{"id":404344,"date":"2025-11-25T20:19:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-25T20:19:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/404344\/"},"modified":"2025-11-25T20:19:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-25T20:19:11","slug":"philly-house-serves-thanksgiving-for-homeless-after-damage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/404344\/","title":{"rendered":"Philly House serves Thanksgiving for homeless after damage"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to cover? <a href=\"#Section1\">Let us know!<\/a>\n<\/p>\n<p>Philly House, Philadelphia\u2019s longest-running homeless shelter of 146 years, is now serving the homeless population from a mobile kitchen in the shelter\u2019s parking lot. This change comes after an August building inspection found water damage in the kitchen, causing the floorboards to be removed, rendering their kitchen unusable.\n<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is the first Thanksgiving in which we\u2019re not going to be able to serve walk-ins,\u201d said the Rev. Jeremy Montgomery, president and CEO of Philly House.\n<\/p>\n<p>With no help from insurance, which only covers \u201csudden\u201d circumstances, Philly House must pay the full $300,000 to replace the floor directly out of pocket. For now, the shelter uses a mobile kitchen with a walk-in fridge.\n  <\/p>\n<p>Before the damage, Philly House was able to accommodate up to 600 people for every meal. The shelter serves a public lunch and dinner, while breakfast is for registered guests only.\n<\/p>\n<p>\u201cRight now, we\u2019re even limited to 120. \u2026 And so we\u2019ve had to keep close tabs on those who are walking in our doors because we run out of food,\u201d Montgomery said. \u201cWe pride ourselves on always being open 365 days of the year and some of these individuals I only get to see once a year. So, I never miss a Thanksgiving myself being at Philly House. \u2026 It\u2019s going to be really disappointing this year to have to refer them to other opportunities to be at other tables.\u201d\n<\/p>\n<p>Registered residents only<\/p>\n<p>This Thanksgiving, Philly House will only be able to serve registered residents who are currently employed. It\u2019s a dramatic shift from previous years when they could serve walk-ins.\n<\/p>\n<p>To maintain a traditional Thanksgiving for all, the holiday meal served every year is turkey, mashed potatoes, corn, casserole and pie. It is expected that Philly House\u2019s kitchen will remain under construction until late January, affecting Christmas as well.\n<\/p>\n<p>Michael Johnson, director of donor experience, is optimistic considering the unforeseen circumstances.\n<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe good news is that even with a mobile kitchen, we are still able to serve folks and we are still able to get meals out every day, even for walk-ins,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cIt just means that on some of the bigger things, like Thanksgiving Day or Christmas Day, we\u2019re not able to serve quite as many. And that\u2019s hard. That\u2019s hard on us because we really do feel strongly this purpose of reminding everyone that God does not make disposable people.\u201d\n        <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":404345,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5132],"tags":[5229,191002,1448,2830,1311,44599,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-404344","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-homelessness-in-greater-philadelphia","10":"tag-pa","11":"tag-pennsylvania","12":"tag-philadelphia","13":"tag-thanksgiving","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-united-states-of-america","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","18":"tag-us","19":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115612193035554272","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=404344"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404344\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/404345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=404344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=404344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=404344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}