{"id":92521,"date":"2026-01-21T13:18:06","date_gmt":"2026-01-21T13:18:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/92521\/"},"modified":"2026-01-21T13:18:06","modified_gmt":"2026-01-21T13:18:06","slug":"100k-to-support-homeless-services-in-allentown-in-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/92521\/","title":{"rendered":"$100K to support homeless services in Allentown in 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>ALLENTOWN, Pa. \u2014 A last-minute amendment to the city\u2019s 2026 budget is set to provide some basic support for homeless residents after a monthslong battle between officials put that funding in jeopardy.<\/p>\n<p>Allentown City Council last week unanimously voted to spend $100,000 on a host of short-term initiatives and services.<\/p>\n<p>    \u201cWe can&#8217;t say we want people to uplift themselves and pull themselves up by the bootstraps and then not give them some straps to pull up.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Allentown City Councilwoman Ce-Ce Gerlach, on Nov. 7<\/p>\n<p>Half will be used to temporarily house people in hotels, an alternative to a shelter for people facing imminent homelessness.<\/p>\n<p>That money would let about 75 households each spend five nights in a room, at an average rate of $125 per night, Councilwoman Ce-Ce Gerlach said last year.<\/p>\n<p>The city will use more than $21,000 to buy water stations and outdoor restrooms, which were among the most common requests from residents of several city homeless encampments that were bulldozed last year.<\/p>\n<p>Officials earmarked $10,000 to shelter pets, which often stop homeless people from seeking or accepting help or going to a shelter.<\/p>\n<p>Specificity needed<\/p>\n<p>Also, $10,000 will cover laundry services.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHow do you hold down a job if you smell, if your clothes are dirty?\u201d Gerlach said Nov. 7 as council weighed <a class=\"Link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.lehighvalleynews.com\/allentown\/homeless-advocates-urge-allentown-leaders-to-show-courage-and-compassion-with-2026-budget\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">the $100,000 funding request<\/a> from the Commission on Homelessness. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe can&#8217;t say we want people to uplift themselves and pull themselves up by the bootstraps and then not give them some straps to pull up.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>    \u201cThis is really spelling it out exactly how that $100,000 should be spent to make the most impact with the unsheltered community.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Christina DiPierro, who runs Allentown\u2019s Commission on Homelessness<\/p>\n<p>Officials plan to use the rest \u2014 $8,500 \u2014 to buy gift cards for volunteers who help them establish a Homeless Advisory Board.<\/p>\n<p>Previous budgets allocated $100,000 for \u201chomeless services,\u201d but their lack of specificity caused issues with spending that money, according to Christina DiPierro, who runs Allentown\u2019s Commission on Homelessness.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is really spelling it out exactly how that $100,000 should be spent to make the most impact with the unsheltered community,\u201d DiPierro said.<\/p>\n<p>Advocates say the six-figure investment could save up to seven times that amount in prevented emergency medical care, law enforcement and shelter costs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ALLENTOWN, Pa. \u2014 A last-minute amendment to the city\u2019s 2026 budget is set to provide some basic support&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":92522,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,3179,121,2458,282,120,45546],"class_list":{"0":"post-92521","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-allentown","8":"tag-allentown","9":"tag-allentown-budget","10":"tag-allentown-headlines","11":"tag-allentown-homeless","12":"tag-allentown-housing","13":"tag-allentown-news","14":"tag-allentown-shelter"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92521","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=92521"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92521\/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=92521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}