ALLENTOWN, Pa. — Two projects on former church grounds in Allentown could breathe new life into once important but now underused properties.
The projects also could help ease an affordability crisis for at least a few dozen people.
One affordable housing project is rapidly taking shape downtown in the shadow of a historic downtown church, and work could soon get underway to convert another church’s sanctuary into apartments.
Cortex Residential leaders and local officials broke ground in November on a three-story apartment complex at Eighth and Walnut streets after a parish house next to the former St. Paul's Evangelical Lutheran Church was demolished to make room.
Crews in the past month have built much of the building’s framework, and they plan to soon start installing electrical, mechanical and plumbing infrastructure.
Construction is expected to wrap up in September, with Cortex to start the pre-leasing process in the summer, according to Jonathan Strauss, co-founder and president.
The company plans to seek out residents through online and print advertising, and the building will be “cloaked in banners … to make sure that we get the word out,” Strauss said.
First affordable build
Cortex has bought about 2,000 affordable apartments throughout the state and worked to preserve them long-term, Strauss said.
But the Walnut Square Apartments project is its first venture into building affordable housing.
The project is set to add 38 affordable units in Allentown, where 57% of renters are burdened by housing costs, according to Lehigh Valley Planning Commission.
Federal housing policies deem a household to be cost burdened if it pays more than 30% of its income on a mortgage or rent.
Someone who makes about $14,000 to $42,000 per year will qualify under the complex’s income requirements.
A single-occupant resident could pay between $350 and $1,100 per month, based on their income. Rents will be set higher for larger units with multiple earners.
Walnut Square Apartments will have “quite a few two- and three-bedroom apartments” to attract families, Strauss said.
He said bigger units are “somewhat uncommon” in affordable developments.
Cortex secured about $17 million in public funding to support the project. Most of that money — about $14.3 million — is coming in the form of low-income housing tax credits through the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency.
The PHFA has strict compliance measures that developers must satisfy to secure and keep its funding.
Those include a deed restriction to legally limit the property’s use to affordable housing for 40 years, as well as annual checks of tenants’ incomes and rents to ensure they’re not being burdened by housing costs, Strauss said.
Allentown officials chipped in $2 million of the $57 million the city received through the American Rescue Plan Act, and Lehigh County gave $650,000 of its federal coronavirus pandemic-relief funds to the project in Center City.
A gift from God’s flock
And in Allentown’s Franklin Park neighborhood, a nonprofit is working to transform a sacred space into affordable housing.
Ripple Community Inc. opened a community center in 2015 to build connections among marginalized residents, and its staff quickly “saw this recurring and ongoing need for housing support,” Executive Director Sherri Brokopp Binder said.
The group launched RCI Village, a program that subsidizes rents to make them affordable for some very low-income residents.
“We partnered with landlords to make housing available that otherwise wouldn’t have been available,” Binder said.
But "several years ago, we realized as an organization that was just not going to be a long-term, sustainable model.”
"We are able to step in and provide that really good, safe, stable housing at a really, truly, deeply affordable rate for our neighbors who need it."Sherri Brokopp Binder, Ripple Community Inc. executive director
Enter Emmanuel United Church of Christ.
Its parish, which worshipped in the Chew Street sanctuary for almost 100 years, donated its property to Ripple in August 2023.
That gift paved the way for the conversion and launched a long process to get the project approved by city officials.
The nonprofit spent much of the past few years working to secure the zoning approvals it needs to turn a century-old church into a community center, medical respite rooms and a dozen “deeply affordable” units for “people who have been priced out of the housing market altogether,” Binder said.
“We work with individuals and families who have had just devastatingly challenging lives … and still need a good and safe and stable place to call home.”
Ripple again is working to raise funds for its $8 million project. It’s so far secured commitments from Allentown, Lehigh County, the PHFA and the Federal Home Loan Bank of Pittsburgh.
Binder said he hopes to fill the funding gap by the end of the year, but no firm timeline has been set for the conversion project.
‘A drop in the bucket’
As a nonprofit and not a housing developer, Ripple can “take the profit motive out of housing," Binder said.
"We are able to step in and provide that really good, safe, stable housing at a really, truly, deeply affordable rate for our neighbors who need it."
Rents are expected to start at about $400 per month. That will help some of its clients secure an apartment “where they can really stay for the long term.”
“This project, even in creating 12 apartments, is a drop in the bucket of the broader housing needs in our community.”Ripple Community Inc. Executive Director Sherri Brokopp Binder
But “this project, even in creating 12 apartments, is a drop in the bucket of the broader housing needs in our community,” she said.
Allentown and the Lehigh Valley have a deepening housing shortage.
The city has almost 2,000 fewer units than it needs to house all of its residents, while the region is short more than 9,100 units, according to Lehigh Valley Planning Commission.
Without major intervention, those numbers are projected to grow beyond 5,000 and 54,000 by 2050.
Allentown Mayor Matt Tuerk last summer said more than 1,000 units were under construction in the city.
And planning officials last year approved eight projects that could bring more than 850 new housing units to the city.
Meanwhile, companies are proposing more than 1,000 apartments near the city’s developing Waterfront area along Riverside Drive.
And City Center is working to put up to 750 townhomes on the former Allentown State Hospital property.
Almost all of those new units are expected to be market-rate.
