ALLENTOWN, Pa. \u2014 Homeless encampment sweeps in Allentown have been temporarily paused as city leaders work to develop new policies addressing homelessness.<\/p>\n
Allentown City Council on Wednesday heard from residents and reviewed a proposed ordinance from Councilmember Ce-Ce Gerlach that would have required a 60-day notice before clearing encampments and aimed to standardize how the city handles homeless camps.<\/p>\n
Gerlach later withdrew the ordinance after receiving assurances that city officials would work collaboratively to draft a new policy.<\/p>\n
Council approved a pause on encampment sweeps through June 1 to allow time for discussions and policy development.<\/p>\n
According to Gerlach, it is rare for all seven council members to agree on a single issue, but members were unified in supporting the pause and working toward a solution.<\/p>\n
She said she has already begun meeting with city officials, including the managing director, to discuss next steps.<\/p>\n
\u201cI met today with the managing director as well as another member of council. We went through the policy. We both brought up some concerns and some ideas,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Gerlach added that if no proposal is brought forward by the June 1 deadline, she plans to reintroduce her ordinance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ALLENTOWN, Pa. \u2014 Homeless encampment sweeps in Allentown have been temporarily paused as city leaders work to develop…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":180845,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[214,119,121,120,232,4958],"class_list":["post-180844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-_homepage_top_stories","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-allentown-area","tag-city_township_county_councils"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180844","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=180844"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180844\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/180845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}