Greene County making progress on new CCR facility
Expanded crisis services, interim housing among additions
Garrett Neese
Geographically, Greene County’s new Center for Community Resources building won’t be much of a shift — just one building to the left on High Street in Waynesburg.
Operationally, the move means an expansion of services county officials have wanted for years.
Renovations are underway at the new building, which will continue the crisis line and crisis intervention services already in use, and add 24-7 staffing and new short-term residential spaces.
The plan is to open in phases, said Brean Fuller, the county’s mental health administrator. The crisis center on the first floor would be the first to open, possibly in early 2026. Finishing all three floors could take a year and a half.
Right now, the CCR office next door cannot do walk-ins, as it is not handicapped-accessible, Fuller said.
“They came to do all encompassing crisis services,” she said. “So they do telephone services, they do mobile services. If someone is in crisis and they need someone to come out to their home, they will do that. And then they also were providing that walk-in service until they had to relocate to their current building. So we’re trying to get them back to that practice by them operating out of this new project building.”
The second floor will have 16 beds for interim housing of up to 30 days for people who need a safe place to stay, while the third floor will have another three apartment units for affordable housing.
Until now, there haven’t been any temporary housing options in Greene County, which have been sorely needed, said Board Vice Chair Betsy McClure.
“I think it’s going to be an excellent tool for many resources in the county to use for just that bit of interim help, get you on your feet, and then get you back out into society, where you don’t need to be hospitalized, you don’t need to go to jail, you just need a bit of time,” she said. “That’s what this facility will be able to give people, a little bit of time to chill out, then they’ll be evaluated.”
The third floor will consist of one efficiency apartment and two slightly larger ones, where people experiencing a housing crisis might eventually be able to move up to permanently, Fuller said.
“There’s not much of a housing market around here, and having affordable rent is crucial for individuals and for families, and we just aren’t seeing that,” she said.
Greene County’s CCR center employs four people, with calls routed to CCR offices in other counties if the crisis workers are out on the field.
With the additional housing, more staffing will likely be added, said Adam Hartwig, senior director of operations for building owner Non-Profit Development Corp.
The total cost of construction — including all three floors and the addition of a back stairwell and elevator — is expected to be around $1.9 million, Fuller said.
Initial renovations on the 118-year-old building are being funded through the county’s block grant. For additional work on the upper two floors, Fuller hopes to be able to get funding from the Pennsylvania Housing Affordability and Rehabilitation Enhancement Fund, among other sources.
“When CCR acquired the building, it was a shell,” she said. “There was no plumbing, no electricity, no flooring. You could see outside from inside. There was nothing there.”
“You could walk in there and look all the way up,” McClure added. “And no windows in the front.”
The project, which for a time had a plywood mural covering the front windows, had sparked a lot of speculation in the county, McClure said.
Even if the opening is a ways off, McClure remembers the excitement she felt when she saw people repointing the building and cutting the grass.
“Just the fact that somebody was working on that building was a good feeling,” she said. “After all the years that we’ve been planning it, waiting and hoping … we just kept thinking, ‘This is a need, and we’re going to fill this need.'”