157-page document<\/a> that outlines strategies to accelerate the growth of the Lehigh Valley’s housing supply across four specific areas: construction and development; finance; land use and regulation; and collaboration and partnership.<\/p>\n“Throughout the process, it really became clear that there is no one silver bullet,” Seitz said. “There’s not one supreme housing solution, and there’s no single organization or industry that can solve the housing crisis on its own.”<\/p>\n
The event concluded with a 12-person panel discussion, featuring representatives from organizations like Greater Lehigh Valley Realtors, Peron Development, Lehigh County Authority, Workforce Board Lehigh Valley and Penn Community Bank.<\/p>\n
During the hour-plus conversation, they touched on everything from strengthening local infrastructure to expanding housing construction technology to facilitating adaptive reuses for existing buildings and accelerating project reviews on the local level, all in the name of finding ways for all Lehigh Valley municipalities to help cure the housing deficit.<\/p>\n
The point was made several times that what works for one municipality won’t work for another. For example, Heidelberg Township Manager Dawn Didra, one of the panel members, said her rural community prefers density over sprawl, in an effort to preserve as much farmland as possible. One solution they’ve introduced is allowing accessory apartments or dwelling units on existing lots.<\/p>\n
“Density doesn’t have to be scary. We can find ways to be creative,” Didra said. So far, though, only two such units have gone up in Heidelberg Township.<\/p>\n
Meantime, Bethlehem, which doesn’t have a lot of undeveloped land left, is focusing on improving its existing housing stock and looking for opportunities for infill development, said Cathy Fletcher, the city’s director of planning and zoning.<\/p>\n
In his remarks, Wes Hiatt, of Lehigh University’s Small Cities Lab, acknowledged that many residents fear change and don’t want their towns transformed by what they may see as an overabundance of new development. “Something we think a lot about at the Small Cities Lab is how to visualize that change and make it tangible and real for folks and kind of lower the temperature on what change might be,” he said.<\/p>\n
It was probably inevitable that the concept of NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) would come up, and it did. Several panelists referenced it, including former Bethlehem Mayor John Callahan, who now works for Peron Development.<\/p>\n
Callahan jokingly threw in a couple more acronyms – CAVE (Citizens Against Virtually Everything) people; and BANANAs (Build Almost Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone)- while acknowledging the need for smart development: “What we need to do as developers is build good projects because for every 10 good ones, if there’s one bad one out there, that’s the one everyone’s going to point to and say, ‘we don’t want that,’ right? So, understanding just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UPPER SAUCON TWP., Pa.- A deep-dive into the Lehigh Valley’s housing challenges has been under way for nearly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":272735,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[214,119,121,120,232,433],"class_list":["post-272734","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-lehigh-county"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272734","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=272734"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272734\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/272735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/6a8f23360df27.image.jpg\")
<\/p>\n