Three months after 85 Litzenberger House residents signed a petition calling for improved safety along the South Bethlehem Greenway, residents say some conditions have improved, but questions remain about the unhoused population along the trail.<\/p>\n
Litzenberger House, a 100-unit low-income housing building operated by the Bethlehem Housing Authority, sits directly behind a pavilion on the Greenway.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The petition, presented to Bethlehem City Council and Bethlehem Housing Authority in July, called to make the Greenway safer for residents and other members of the public. According to petition organizer Krisann Drust-Lustig, a Litzenberger resident, the petition was prompted by a June 28 stabbing <\/a>on the Greenway.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Greenway is a two mile paved trail built upon a former railroad between Third and Fourth streets. It serves as a place for community members to walk, run and bike.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cOver the years, people without homes have used (the pavilion) as their place to sleep at night,\u201d\u00a0 Drust-Lustig said. \u201cIt deters people from walking on the Greenway.\u201d<\/p>\n She said many people experiencing homelessness have been friendly, but some encounters have left residents feeling unsafe. She said some residents have been verbally accosted by unhoused individuals on the Greenway.<\/p>\n Drust-Lustig said Litzenberger House residents used to walk along the Greenway to get to the grocery store, but recently, residents have felt unsafe walking the trail without another person accompanying them.\u00a0<\/p>\n She said residents\u2019 concerns were further exacerbated by the stabbing in June.<\/p>\n \u201cThis was too close to home for us,\u201d Drust-Lustig said. \u201cEver since then, we\u2019ve been upset.\u201d<\/p>\n She said in the months since the petition, she\u2019s noticed an increased police presence on the Greenway and hasn\u2019t seen any unhoused individuals living under the pavilion. Still, she said residents are concerned for their safety.<\/p>\n Captain William Audelo of the Bethlehem Police Department said incidents that occur on the Greenway don\u2019t always have the trail itself listed as its address. He said the Greenway isn\u2019t a roadway that uses block numbers or fixed addresses to identify locations, so reports may use cross streets.<\/p>\n He said 10 crimes were specifically documented on the Greenway from January to Oct. 27, most of which occurred on the western portion of the trail.\u00a0<\/p>\n The crimes included three assault cases, two drug possessions, one robbery, one public intoxication and three city ordinance violations.<\/p>\n Audelo said quality of life issues and arrests on the Greenway are most common, citing residents who imbibe on Greenway benches.\u00a0<\/p>\n He said the unhoused population frequents the area because of the benches and the ability to charge their devices on with electrical outlets.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe were receiving complaints in August regarding some of the individuals that weren\u2019t utilizing the space as intended, whether that be drinking or possibly sleeping on the benches,\u201d Audelo said. \u201cWe did increase our presence in August and September, which leads to higher offense numbers because you are proactively going out and making those arrests.\u201d<\/p>\n Audelo said the Bethlehem Police Department has taken additional steps to turn off the electrical accessibility for some of the city-owned outlets in the area to decrease the draw to those specific spots.<\/p>\n Justin Amann, chair of City Council\u2019s public safety committee, said homelessness is a complex social and economic issue.<\/p>\n \u201cHomelessness is not a crime,\u201d he said. \u201cWe have to approach unhoused individuals with the compassion that they deserve, and connect them with outreach teams, shelter options and social services rather than defaulting to criminalization.\u201d<\/p>\n He said this approach shouldn\u2019t come at the expense of residents\u2019 safety.<\/p>\n \u201cEvery resident deserves to feel completely safe walking on our trails,\u201d Amann said. \u201cLaw enforcement and public safety efforts must remain focused on targeting illegal behavior and active threats, not selectively policing people based on their housing status.\u201d<\/p>\n Amann said balancing compassion with decisive public safety measures requires coordination between city leadership, law enforcement and local social services. Part of that, he said, is being careful about how the unhoused population is viewed.<\/p>\n \u201cWe can\u2019t assume that crimes are happening just because people are homeless and that the crimes that are existing are only being done by people who are unhoused,\u201d Amann said. \u201cI think that\u2019s an unfair assumption \u2014 it certainly could be that they are victims of crimes as well.\u201d<\/p>\n Karen Pooley, a professor of practice of political science at Lehigh, said since the COVID-19 pandemic there have been growing concerns about the unhoused population and their need for services, but at the same time, the number of encampments around the Lehigh Valley have decreased.<\/p>\n On Dec. 15, 2025, city authorities shut down a homeless encampment along the Lehigh River on railroad land owned by Norfolk Southern Railway.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cIf people felt that on the Greenway there was an increase in some unhoused population, I could see that being directly related to some of the encampment clearouts that we saw in Allentown and as well as by the railroad company in Bethlehem,\u201d Amann said.<\/p>\n Audelo said unhoused members who were moved from the Norfolk Southern property, would most likely not have gone to the Greenway. He said police find those residents prefer forested areas away from other people.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we did the clearance of the encampment last year, we tried our best to find them alternative housing, whether it be temporary or permanent, mental health evaluation and treatment and substance abuse treatment as well,\u201d Audelo said. \u201cSome individuals took us up on that offer.\u201d<\/p>\n Pooley said the debate over how to address homelessness has shifted in recent years. She said for the last decade, the general consensus was a \u201chousing first\u201d approach: get people inside, then work on services.\u00a0<\/p>\n She said the consensus has changed in the last year to prioritize services first and housing second.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s been a shift in what kinds of support services are covered by federal policy and that flows through states and localities,\u201d Pooley said. \u201cThere\u2019s been an additional pinch on housing for folks who are also needing supportive services.\u201d<\/p>\n She said the challenge comes from coordinating those services with a limited number of places that exist for unhoused people to stay.<\/p>\n The Point-in-Time Assessment<\/a> is an annual assessment conducted on a single night in January to estimate the number of people experiencing homelessness in an area. In 2025, the assessment identified 764 people experiencing homelessness across Lehigh and Northampton counties, a 10.8% increase from 2024 and a 53.1% increase from 2020<\/a>.<\/p>\n According to Pooley, Bethlehem is in the planning and fundraising stage for an emergency shelter, which she described as a long-term, multimillion dollar effort.<\/p>\n In the meantime, she points to resources such as New Bethany for food and housing, and The Essentials Cafe, a pay-what-you-can restaurant run out of the Moravian Church.\u00a0<\/p>\n Drust-Lustig said the residents of the Litzenberger House are no strangers to the Lehigh Valley\u2019s housing challenges, as there is a two year waiting period to receive housing through Bethlehem Housing Authority.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI would love to see more low income housing,\u201d Drust-Lustig said. \u201cWhen I say low income, I think affordable housing should be governed by your income.\u201d<\/p>\n She said residents also want better communication from the City Council and Housing Authority.<\/p>\n Drust-Lustig said the Litzenberger residents are waiting to receive the outreach meeting City Council promised, and would like to see an annual meeting with local representatives to discuss the Greenway\u2019s safety and security.<\/p>\n \u201cWe want the Greenway to be more safe for all people of the city of Bethlehem,\u201d Drust-Lustig said. \u201cI\u2019m so excited about our voices getting out there, and I was very happy with the response. Now we want to see it carried through.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Three months after 85 Litzenberger House residents signed a petition calling for improved safety along the South Bethlehem…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":318454,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[54417,6223,153,155,154,4602],"class_list":["post-318453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-7-min-read","tag-analysis","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-south-side"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318453","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=318453"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318453\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/318454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=318453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=318453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=318453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}