They used to sit with other former mental patients from Norristown State Hospital at the bus stop on the other side of Swede Street - until the Downtown Business Association complained that the benches there were being used "as a kind of home." The borough removed them.
Last month, he was kicked out of a boarding house that he had lived in for several years. He was taken in by the Salvation Army and now shares a small back room with about 10 other men.
In August, she was sitting alone, holding $4 she had saved for Saturday night bingo, her only recreation. A young man grabbed the cash and fled as she looked on helplessly.
Their best protection is each other. When they eat at soup kitchens, as they do nearly every day, he feeds her.
"I wanted to marry her," he said, "but the people at the hospital told me she wouldn't get no (assistance) check."
Jacob Sandler and Helen Czarmonski's bleak, impoverished existence is shared by many former mental patients living in Norristown.
Indeed, indigent former mental patients have become as familiar a part of Norristown's landscape as the Montgomery County Courthouse itself - standing in line at church soup kitchens, nursing 35-cent cups of coffee at Lou's Sandwich Shop, begging for cigarettes and spare change along Main Street.
Although it is not unusual to see ex-patients struggling to survive in urban areas - a situation that has fueled a nationwide debate over the policy of deinstitutionalization - Norristown stands out because of the large number of former patients in the borough, which has 34,000 people.
About 1,000 former mental patients live in the Norristown area, with the majority residing in the borough, according to Mary Q. Frantz, administrator of the Montgomery County Office of Mental Health/Mental Retardation.
In contrast, Philadelphia, which has a population 50 times the size of Norristown, has 6,228 known ex-patients.
