Allentown City Council is calling for a pause on any sweeps of homeless encampments until an official city policy on how to handle camp evacuations is in place.
Frank Kane, Allentown’s managing director, said the city would agree to those terms, barring any life-threatening emergencies that would require an evacuation. He also said there are no plans to evacuate any encampments in the near future.
Council and the city administration agreed to a June 1 deadline to formulate that policy on how Allentown will handle homeless encampments in the future.
The temporary moratorium comes as the city received widespread criticism earlier this month for posting signs ordering the evacuation of a homeless encampment near Fountain Park.
Members of City Council and homeless nonprofit providers said they were not notified enough in advance about the plans to evacuate that encampment, and were left to scramble to help people who had nowhere else to go.
In response, Allentown Mayor Matt Tuerk said plans to evacuate the encampment were “premature” and temporarily paused the site clearing, allowing the nine residents to remain living there for now.
Allentown City Council member Ce-Ce Gerlach introduced an ordinance earlier this year which would have laid out official procedures that the city must follow when clearing homeless people from an encampment.
Those procedures include: giving homeless people at least 30 days advanced notice prior to forcibly sweeping the area; only allowing encampments to be swept when there is a risk to people’s lives and safety; and coordinating with homeless service providers to conduct a risk assessment of each encampment prior to making any decisions.
That ordinance was up for a vote on Wednesday, but Gerlach voluntarily withdrew it, and instead voted for the moratorium to allow the city to formulate its own policies that both Council and city officials could agree on.
“We don’t even know, and do not understand the chain of command in situations like this one,” said City Council President Cynthia Mota. “And when this happened, what we see is confusion, and a lot of finger pointing. Everyone is trying to do something, but without the structure, it’s not coordinated, and it’s not effective. We have policies for many other areas of city operations. This should not be different, especially when it involves people’s lives.”
Gerlach said she would push for an ordinance that codifies the city’s policy. While city policies can change depending on who is in office, an ordinance becomes city law, which must be followed unless City Council amends it, she argued.
“I’m withdrawing the ordinance, like I said, and giving the administration time to step up,” Gerlach said. “It was publicly agreed upon, that in the month of May, that they will come up, working collaboratively with all of us, with a better policy. It was stated by several council persons that we — many of us — would like to codify that policy (in law).”
Reporter Lindsay Weber can be reached at Liweber@mcall.com.