ALLENTOWN, Pa. – The City of Allentown is getting ready to clear out another homeless encampment over safety concerns.<\/p>\n
Just behind the wall in Allentown’s Fountain Park is a tent neighborhood. It’s known as “Lower Allentown”, a place Hank calls home.<\/p>\n
“We’ve been here for over a year, had no problems,” said Hank, who only wanted to be identified by his first name.<\/p>\n
He told 69 News people take pride in their living spaces, adding house numbers and even mailboxes.<\/p>\n
“That’s got a door, a doorbell, another tent on the other side,” Hank explained.<\/p>\n
But last Friday, Hank said they got an unwelcome visit.<\/p>\n
“Police said we have to be out of here, that we have to be out of here by Monday, 10 days,” said Hank.<\/p>\n
City Councilwoman Ce-Ce Gerlach said that’s not enough time.<\/p>\n
“If I were a renter, I would receive 30 days notification before I would be evicted,” said Gerlach.<\/p>\n
And she said it’s happening at a time when a major shelter is about to close for the season.<\/p>\n
“The YMCA is closing early, so we’ve got 80 people who will be sent out to fend for themselves with no place to go, no support,” Gerlach explained.<\/p>\n
Gerlach is planning to introduce a resolution at the City Council meeting Wednesday to give a little support. It calls for the City to pay for hotel rooms for people, and to find them a place where they can live in a tent legally.<\/p>\n
“We might be approaching up to a million dollars in removing people from their homes. Just imagine if we took that same million dollars and put it toward actually helping people and housing people,” said Gerlach. “Find a place for folks to go. We have to stop pushing people along with no stability, no solutions.”<\/p>\n
The City responded to 69 News in a statement, saying in part:<\/p>\n
“The encampment near Fountain Park is located within a floodplain, which poses a life safety risk to those living there… The City will continue working closely with community partners to connect individuals with available shelter.”<\/p>\n
But Hank said he’s not likely to end up in a shelter.<\/p>\n
“We’ll probably go to another spot that we’re going to get kicked out of later. So, it’s going to be an ongoing process,” said Hank.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ALLENTOWN, Pa. – The City of Allentown is getting ready to clear out another homeless encampment over safety…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":165815,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,121,120,74690,22110,74692,12300,61215,74691,74688,74689],"class_list":["post-165814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-city-council-resolution","tag-eviction","tag-floodplain-safety","tag-fountain-park","tag-homeless-encampment","tag-hotel-rooms-for-homeless","tag-tent-neighborhood","tag-ymca-shelter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165814"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165814\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/165815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}