This story is part of The Morning Call’s new initiative called “Your Call,” which allows you, the readers, to ask the questions you want answered. Today’s story received the most votes in an online poll as we give you a greater voice in what news is covered in the Lehigh Valley region.
In 2007, the Mayor’s Commission on Homelessness found 272 housing units needed to be built to help our Allentown homeless. None have. Why not?
Like all urban areas, Allentown has battled homelessness with a mix of public and private programs. Some are professionally staffed and funded by the local, state and federal governments. Others are run by volunteers and paid for largely through donations.
In 2007, Allentown’s Commission To End Chronic Homelessness — composed of elected officials and community leaders from the city, Lehigh County government, social service agencies, churches, and hospitals — unveiled an ambitious plan to solve the problem by 2017.
“Chronic Homelessness,” as defined by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, refers to the plight of someone with a disabling condition — mental illness, addiction or a medical problem — who has been continually homeless for a year or more or has had at least four episodes of homelessness in three years.
The report called the lack of available housing “a significant barrier” for the chronically homeless, who have no income or are extremely low-income and are dependent on housing subsidies.
The report cited a 2005 survey by the Lehigh Valley Coalition on Affordable Housing showing nearly 2,600 men, women and children were being housed in emergency and short-term shelters across the region, and the primary reason for their homelessness was the inability to pay rent.
The commission never called for building a specific number of housing units to help the homeless. Rather, it recommended creating “as many possible forms of affordable, accessible permanent housing units.”
It also recommended strengthening existing services, such as eviction prevention programs, tenant education, rental assistance and job training.
One of the commission’s practical aims was to close the makeshift homeless camps on city and county land and relocate the residents to shelters or permanent housing units.
That initiative came to fruition, with long-established encampments cleared from beneath the Eighth Street Bridge and other areas. The commission established more than 140 housing units, which were administered by agencies including the Lehigh Conference of Churches, Lehigh County, New Bethany Ministries, Catholic Charities and the Salvation Army.
The commission no longer exists. In 2015, two years before the end of its timetable, it was absorbed into the Lehigh Valley Regional Homeless Advisory Board, which serves Lehigh and Northampton counties.
At that time, a homeless census counted 2,500 people, including 644 children, housed in the region’s emergency shelters and short-term transitional shelters.
That was only about 100 fewer than were counted in the 2005 survey, demonstrating the stubborn resistance of the homelessness problem in the face of coordinated efforts.
Those efforts predated the homelessness commission, of course, and they continue today. This year, for example, the homeless advisory board adopted Connect To Home, which provides a phone hotline and in-person services to connect homeless people — or those threatened by imminent homelessness — with shelter services. The phone numbers, both toll-free, are 2-1-1 or 855-567-5341.
The 2-1-1 service can also connect callers with a host of other services, including assistance with landlord-tenant disputes that threaten to lead to eviction.
The Community Action Committee of the Lehigh Valley remains a clearinghouse for rental assistance and similar needs. Lehigh County maintains a list of agencies that can help, as does Northampton County.
Morning Call reporter Daniel Patrick Sheehan can be reached at 610-820-6598 or dsheehan@mcall.com.
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