A perfect storm of misery — stratospheric home prices, pandemic-stalled economy, slim resources for aid — is resulting in an epidemic of unhoused Bucks County residents. Emily Rizzo covered their plight for WHYY.

Jeffrey Weighknecht lost his job as a motorcycle technician. He then had a stroke.

Following his hospital discharge, with no place to go, he was given a list of local shelters. As a first-time homeless person, it was a resource he was unsure how to use.

He now keeps warm during the day at the Quakertown Free Library. When that closes, he trudges to his truck, runs the heater all night, and awaits dawn.

 Weighknecht is only one of about 300 Bucks County residents without a home.

The Bucks County Opportunity Council (BCOC), the county’s leading anti-poverty agency, tracks locals who are displaced or on the brink, and those numbers have risen.

Seniors are particularly vulnerable.

Their options are few, given fixed-income budget, and physical limitations that winnow the number of shelters that can accommodate them.

Rich, a 71-year-old Levittown resident, is on the cusp of eviction. He said, “When you take a person that’s had a stable life all his life, and work, and he’s had a place to stay and then he becomes homeless, he’s not qualified to handle that type of problem.

“They’re in a situation that they never was prepared for.”

More on the county’s unhoused community is at WHYY.