Allentown mayor extends homeless encampment eviction through Sept. 29

ALLENTOWN, Pa. — Residents of a homeless encampment along Jordan Creek in Allentown will have more time to move out.

City employees this month posted no-trespassing signs at the entrance to the encampment, telling residents they had until Aug. 25 to leave.

They now can remain at the site until Sept. 29, Mayor Matt Tuerk said Monday.

Local leaders announced last week that the Allentown YMCA would open its shelter by Sept. 30.

“This extension allows us to coordinate the transition so that individuals who would normally rely on the YMCA have a safe place to go the day they leave the encampment,” Tuerk said Monday in a statement.

'Safest' course of action: Mayor

The extension “balances compassion with our responsibility to protect people from foreseeable harm,” Tuerk said.

Allowing some residents to stay at the encampment for an extra month is “the safest and most humane course of action,” the mayor said.

Dozens of residents spoke last week at Allentown City Council’s meeting, with many urging Tuerk to keep the encampment open until residents have somewhere else to go.

Some criticized the mayor relying too heavily on the risk assessment and not fully weighing the risks that displacing the encampment could have on its residents.

Council passed a measure urging the mayor to extend the eviction date; members also gave administration officials 30 days to find a property where a nonprofit can provide temporary shelter to some residents of the encampment.

The eviction date will not be extended again, Tuerk said. He promised city officials “will fully vacate the site” by Sept. 29.

The city says crews will clean up sections of the camp as they are vacated, and no one else will be allowed to set up camp there before it’s shut down next month.

Allentown City Councilwoman Ce-Ce Gerlach said Tuerk's decision gives advocates "time to work with agencies to house as many people as possible and figure out sheltering solutions."

She credited residents, business owners, activists, doctors and outreach workers for demanding officials extend the eviction "so that a more compassionate, well planned approach can be taken."

"The power of the people made this happen," she said, adding they sent "a clear message that our unsheltered neighbors deserve dignity."

"Pushing people around doesn't solve homelessness; it makes it worse," Gerlach said.

Flood risk

Tuerk ordered the camp’s closure after fire officials deemed it a risk to residents’ safety because it’s in a flood zone.

Deputy Fire Chief Christian Williams last week said he was compelled to raise his concerns about the camp’s location with Tuerk after a catastrophic flood killed more than 100 people in Texas in July.

Tuerk previously directed Allentown workers to help clean up the camp rather than clear it.

But the floodplain analysis and potentially dangerous weather changed the conditions that underpinned that decision, Tuerk told LehighValleyNews.com.

“We are entering hurricane season; we're entering a period of unpredictable weather and a period of extreme weather,” he said.

“We don’t want to put ourselves in a position where we’re fishing somebody out of that creek."

Hurricane season started June 1 in the Atlantic basin and runs through Nov. 30, though some tropical cyclone activity is sometimes recorded before and after those dates.

The peak of the Atlantic hurricane season is Sept. 10, with most activity from mid-August to mid-October.

Lawsuit continues

Tuerk has repeatedly said the encampment's ongoing eviction is not related to landlord/developer Nat Hyman's lawsuit against the city.

In that suit, Hyman says the Jordan Creek encampment is making his neighboring properties “less attractive and less valuable.”

Jason Addy

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Attorneys for Hyman and city officials are set to be in court Aug. 25, the same day residents were initially told the encampment would be shut down.

Court records show a status conference is scheduled for 10:15 a.m. that day in front of Judge Douglas Reichley, who rejected the city’s bid to have Hyman’s lawsuit dismissed.

The suit is the first legal challenge to Tuerk's order for city workers to clean rather than clear homeless encampments, a directive he issued this spring at the camp along Jordan Creek.