ALLENTOWN, Pa. \u2014 Mayor Matt Tuerk and his administration have the month of May to whip up a \u201cmore robust\u201d policy for how the city will clear homeless camps.<\/p>\n
Councilwoman Ce-Ce Gerlach for the past six months has pushed for what she calls overdue \u201cstandard operating procedures” for encampment evictions.<\/p>\n
Allentown City Council on Wednesday considered Bill 21, which she introduced alongside Councilwoman Natalie Santos to improve communication among officials and established clear procedures.<\/p>\n
It detailed how city officials should evaluate camps and work with homeless residents while laying out \u201cclear timelines [and] clear expectations.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mayor Matt Tuerk said more officials should have been involved in the process that led to eviction notices being posted at the camp last week.<\/p>\n
Bill 21 was the second version of the ordinance Gerlach introduced alongside Councilwoman Natalie Santos. They proposed a similar bill in mid-October as crews worked to clear homeless camps along Jordan Creek.<\/p>\n
Gerlach said Wednesday she received a wealth of feedback on the bill from the Commission on Homelessness and her colleagues on council last year, but heard nothing from Tuerk\u2019s administration.<\/p>\n
Gerlach said she made \u201cso many amendments\u201d to the first bill that she had to reintroduce the legislation in early March as \u201can entirely new ordinance.\u201d<\/p>\n
‘Compassionate treatment’<\/p>\n
Gerlach said she was prepared to lobby her colleagues to vote Wednesday on Bill 21.<\/p>\n
But she agreed to give Tuerk\u2019s administration one more chance to draft its own policy that will work in tandem with some form of the ordinance she and Santos proposed.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe now have a managing director who wants to engage in a collaborative process. That’s what I’ve wanted from the beginning. I think that\u2019s progress \u2014 slow progress, but progress.\u201d<\/p>\n
City Councilwoman Ce-Ce Gerlach<\/p>\n
The details about how to implement an ordinance should be laid out in an administrative policy and not the ordinance, Gerlach said.<\/p>\n
The councilwoman said she wants to give Frank Kane, the city\u2019s new managing director, an opportunity to show the administration\u2019s stated commitment to \u201cbalance [its] enforcement authority with compassionate treatment of human beings.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe now have a managing director who wants to engage in a collaborative process,” Gerlach said. <\/p>\n
“That’s what I’ve wanted from the beginning. I think that\u2019s progress \u2014 slow progress, but progress.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Allentown YMCA’s expanded 80-bed shelter served 108 people this winter. They all must figure out a new place to go.<\/p>\n
‘Being part of the solution’<\/p>\n
Kane immediately was thrust into the fallout from the decision to post eviction notices at a homeless camp along Little Lehigh Creek in early April, several days before he started.<\/p>\n
\u201cI appreciate the extra little bit of time because, for me, it’s a very new process to look at this policy,\u201d Kane told council. <\/p>\n
\u201cBut I can guarantee that we’ll get the right people together. \u2026 The mayor is looking forward to being part of the solution.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cActions speak louder than words.”<\/p>\n
Allentown Councilwoman Ce-Ce Gerlach<\/p>\n
Kane agreed to Gerlach\u2019s request to provide council with a full-fledged administrative policy on encampment evictions by June 1.<\/p>\n
\u201cActions speak louder than words,\u201d Gerlach said when asked whether she trusted the administration to follow through on that promise.<\/p>\n
The city\u2019s second-in-command also agreed Wednesday to council\u2019s bid to halt any evictions until council and the mayor can work out a policy and ordinance.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe plan no evacuations. There\u2019s nothing that I\u2019m aware of that\u2019s on the horizon,\u201d Kane said, though he asked for leeway to address \u201cemergency\u201d hazards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ALLENTOWN, Pa. \u2014 Mayor Matt Tuerk and his administration have the month of May to whip up a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":92522,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,2748,2457,121,80790,30804,120,3553],"class_list":["post-181176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-city-council","tag-allentown-encampment","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-homeless-camp","tag-allentown-homelessness","tag-allentown-news","tag-mayor-matt-tuerk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181176","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=181176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181176\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}