ALLENTOWN, Pa. \u2014 A panel discussion Sunday in the city\u2019s West End shined light on the myriad reasons many in the Lehigh Valley \u2014 and far beyond \u2014 are caught up in a housing crisis.<\/p>\n
Population growth in the region has generated a swell in demand for housing, which isn\u2019t being built fast enough to keep pace, according to panelists at Congregation Keneseth Israel.<\/p>\n
Advocates say a lack of housing supply at all price points is pushing higher-income households to \u201cbuy down\u201d and acquire homes that could be attainable for lower-income buyers or remain in their homes. <\/p>\n
That limits the number of homes available to middle-income earners, who then compete against \u2014 and beat \u2014 low-income homebuyer hopefuls.<\/p>\n
The housing crisis is \u201ca challenge that we don\u2019t have to tolerate.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rabbi Shoshanah Tornberg<\/p>\n
Abby Goldfarb, who leads the Lehigh Conference of Churches and co-chairs Allentown\u2019s Commission on Homelessness, showed statistics that laid bare the depth of the crisis to more than 50 guests at the forum titled “From Homeless to Housing.”<\/p>\n
The Lehigh Valley has about 16,000 fewer housing units than it needs for households with incomes under $25,000; and the region is almost 35,000 housing units short of what it needs for households with annual incomes over $100,000, according to Lehigh Valley Planning Commission figures.<\/p>\n
About 192,000 people in the Lehigh Valley \u2014 more than a quarter of the region’s population \u2014 are \u201ccost-burdened\u201d by spending more than 30% of their incomes on housing; that includes more than half of renters and almost a quarter of homeowners, the LVPC\u2019s statistics show.<\/p>\n
Prevention is key, panelists say<\/p>\n
Rabbi Shoshanah Tornberg opened the discussion by noting many Allentown residents are \u201cone missed paycheck\u201d from being forced to experience homelessness.<\/p>\n
She called the housing crisis \u201ca challenge that we don\u2019t have to tolerate.\u201d<\/p>\n
Panelists later highlighted that some landlords are tossing people out of housing for missing just one rent payment.<\/p>\n
Helping residents replace or overcome a temporary loss of income is among the most effective and efficient ways to address the housing crisis, panelists said.<\/p>\n
\u201cPrevention is the best way to solve homelessness.”<\/p>\n
Roslyn Kuba, executive director of Family Promise of the Lehigh Valley<\/p>\n
It\u2019s cheaper for a nonprofit to cover a rent payment than to help a family find a new home after being evicted, according to panelist Roslyn Kuba, executive director of Family Promise of Lehigh Valley.<\/p>\n
Evictions put families back at the mercy of the housing market, and they\u2019re often required to provide a down payment or security deposit in addition to several months\u2019 rent to secure a new lease, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cPrevention is the best way to solve homelessness,\u201d Kuba said.<\/p>\n
Allentown is one of five municipalities in the state where the Federal Home Loan Bank of Pittsburgh runs an eviction-prevention training program, which works to help local landlords and district magistrate judges understand \u201cthe alternatives to just (putting) people out on the streets,\u201d panelist Fred Ba\u00f1uelos said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBack when I bought my first home, my only competition was, really, the other home buyers. But now we’re competing against Corporate America. They’re buying into our neighborhoods.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fred Ba\u00f1uelos, Allentown Housing Authority chairman and community investment manager for Federal Home Loan Bank of Pittsburgh<\/p>\n
Ba\u00f1uelos serves as community investment manager for Federal Home Loan Bank of Pittsburgh, board member at the Housing Alliance for Pennsylvania and chairman of the Allentown Housing Authority.<\/p>\n
He noted that many potential first-time homeowners are being priced out of the market by high interest rates and buyers with better backing.<\/p>\n
\u201cBack when I bought my first home, my only competition was, really, the other home buyers,\u201d Ba\u00f1uelos said. \u201cBut now we’re competing against corporate America. They’re buying into our neighborhoods.\u201d<\/p>\n
Calls for collaboration<\/p>\n
Ba\u00f1uelos and other panelists urged leaders in municipalities throughout Lehigh and Northampton counties to do more to help curb homelessness in the region\u2019s three cities.<\/p>\n
Allentown Councilwoman Ce-Ce Gerlach called for officials to \u201cdevelop some shared values, shared goals, shared metrics (and) shared policy.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt does no good to decriminalize homelessness in Allentown\u201d if other municipalities are ticketing people for sleeping outside, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got to have a regional approach,\u201d Gerlach said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s really about every community doing their fair share,\u201d Ba\u00f1uelos said. Without widespread collaboration, Allentown, Bethlehem and Easton will \u201ctake (on) the burden of every other community.\u201d<\/p>\n
Panelist Jonathan Strauss spoke to the complexity of building affordable housing in the Lehigh Valley.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of things that have to go right to be able to build new affordable housing.”<\/p>\n
Jonathan Strauss, principal of Cortex Residential<\/p>\n
He leads the affordable housing development company Cortex Residential, which broke ground last month on a 38-unit complex at South Eighth and Walnut streets.<\/p>\n
The project is mostly funded by tax credits from the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency \u2014 funding that took years to secure.<\/p>\n
The process to get an affordable housing complex from the planning stage to reality is \u201ca monumental task,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of things that have to go right to be able to build new affordable housing,\u201d Strauss said.<\/p>\n
Cortex also has acquired more than 500 apartments, where they\u2019ve renewed contracts \u201cthat extended the affordability \u2026 of those communities for an additional 30 years,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Gerlach called on her fellow elected officials to match their pro-housing \u201crhetoric\u201d with legislation and urged them to \u201cbe bold with the policies that we\u2019re passing.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe cannot, especially in the political world, continue to say that affordable housing and homelessness is a No. 1 priority and then not pass policy to back that up,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ALLENTOWN, Pa. \u2014 A panel discussion Sunday in the city\u2019s West End shined light on the myriad reasons…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":55627,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,30803,121,30804,282,120,30806,30805],"class_list":{"0":"post-55626","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-allentown","8":"tag-allentown","9":"tag-allentown-apartments","10":"tag-allentown-headlines","11":"tag-allentown-homelessness","12":"tag-allentown-housing","13":"tag-allentown-news","14":"tag-housing-crisis","15":"tag-lehigh-valley-housing"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55626","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=55626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55626\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}