BETHLEHEM, Pa. — Bethlehem officials shared the city’s work toward making housing more affordable during a community meeting Wednesday night.
More than 60 residents, housing advocates and other stakeholders showed up at Northampton Community College’s Fowler Center for an update from the city’s consultants.
- Bethlehem city officials on Wednesday shared with a community meeting the city's work to make housing more affordable
- Officials and consultants said they expected the audience knows the city is in a housing crisis
- City officials and consultants now will develop strategies to expand affordable housing, to be presented at a March 7 meeting
To develop solutions, the city’s consultants from Reinvestment Fund, Atria Planning and Collabo first examined the city’s housing market.
Both city officials and their consultants expected the audience wouldn’t be surprised by their findings, first presented to a city council committee Tuesday, that the city is deep in a housing crisis.
“What you think is happening as far as rents and sales prices and things like that — it is happening in the city,” Mayor J. William Reynolds said.
During parts of the presentation, audience members could respond to questions on their phones in real time. For example, early in the evening, presenters asked the audience whether the city should spend on affordable housing.
It being a housing meeting, an overwhelming majority said yes.
Affordable housing a concern
Another question showed more than half of the people in attendance showed up because they are “concerned about the lack of available housing affordable to Bethlehem residents.”
Later in the meeting, the consultants polled the audience on their preferred use of housing money, mirroring a survey for all city residents fielded starting last year.
Those in attendance selected “affordable homeownership” as a priority, followed closely by “addressing homelessness.”
Building more student housing finished last.
“What you think is happening as far as rents and sales prices and things like that — it is happening in the city.”Bethlehem Mayor J. William Reynolds
After the presentation, several audience members pitched ideas for ways to address the crisis, such as using struggling malls for housing or redeveloping parts of Bethlehem Steel’s campus into new units.
What can they do to help?
Others — such as Lindsey Altvater Clifton, associate pastor of Formation and Justice at First Presbyterian Church of Bethlehem — asked what they could do to help.
“I'm trying to wrap my brain around this from a community organizing standpoint,” Clifton said. “What are the possibilities and opportunities?”
Bethlehem resident Annalisa Kelly-Cavotta said after the meeting that she volunteers at the city’s emergency shelter during the winter.
“I do see that some newer faces have been coming in lately, and a lot younger," Kelly-Cavotta said. "You know, it's frightening to know that they are making a decent income, but they're still not able to afford where they live.
“It was nice to see the turnout tonight, you know, to see that there's so many people that are interested in this topic. Doing this study and providing us with that information is a starting point, and I'm looking forward to seeing what they'll be able to tell us in the next couple of months.”
Developing strategies next
The assessments shared Wednesday show the city’s housing market in a state of crisis. Nearly a third of the city’s households are facing challenges affording housing.
Households making less than 80% of the city’s median income cannot generally afford to buy housing anywhere in Bethlehem, according to Tuesday’s presentation.
Renters in the same income bracket are all but shut out from the rental market without finding roommates or spending more than a third of their income on housing, according to the presentation.
With the assessments complete, city officials and their consultants now will develop specific strategies for expanding affordable housing and present them at a March 7 meeting of city council’s Community Development Committee.
