ALLENTOWN, Pa. — City officials shut down three creekside homeless camps last year, each clearing following its own set of procedures and timelines.
A fourth camp was due to be cleared this month, but Mayor Matt Tuerk delayed that move amid confusion over how it was slated for eviction.
Now, Allentown City Council again is pushing to clearly define how officials and workers evaluate and clear camps.
Members tonight, April 29, are scheduled to consider Bill 21, which would establish a formal process for evicting people from camps on public property.
The proposal was introduced in early March by Councilwomen Ce-Ce Gerlach and Natalie Santos.
They introduced similar legislation in mid-October as city crews cleared camps along Jordan Creek and pushed out more than 100 people, according to residents who lived there.
That bill sought to set what Gerlach called “standard operating procedures.”
It called for city officials to conduct risk assessments for any site where more than five people are living unsheltered and work with the Commission on Homelessness throughout the evaluation process.
Its provisions also included lengthy notification periods before any actions.
The old version of the proposal — Bill 83 — would have required officials to notify the commission at least 60 days before posting trespassing notices.
Camp residents then would have been given 90 days to vacate the area.
Under Bill 21, the period between decision and eviction could be cut short.
Officials would have to notify the commission 10 days before posting notices, and residents would get 60 days to move out.
Camps deemed to be “immediate hazards” would be cleared within three days, though Gerlach and Santos’ bill urges city officials to “avoid displacement of unhoused residents without a plan for where they will relocate."
Mayor counters with policy
Bill 83 was to have been considered Dec. 17 — more than two months after its introduction — at a special meeting, but another city budget stalemate forced council to postpone.
Gerlach last year said she wants to codify the city’s homeless-camp procedures “because the [Tuerk] administration has no internal policies on how to manage all this.”
But the mayor now is offering up an internal policy — one that would provide narrower protections for encampment residents than would the bill council is set to consider.
The policy is meant to “balance [the city’s] enforcement authority with compassionate treatment of human beings,” according to a draft presented to council.
It defines encampments as “temporary outdoor accommodations including tents, tarps or other structures in which people are living that are not meant for long-term human habitation.”
Those accommodations will be deemed “abandoned” after 48 hours, the mayor’s draft policy states.
It says that when responding to encampments, city officials will coordinate with the Commission on Homelessness and the Lehigh County Department of Human Services, as well as service providers and community organizations.
‘Flood risk’?
City crews would immediately clear “emergency hazard” encampments and camps in public parks; homeless people living in high-risk locations — under bridges and in “flood prone” areas — would get 72 hours to vacate.
Tuerk last year cited flooding risks as the driving factor behind his decision to shut down homeless camps along Jordan Creek.
Maps from the Federal Emergency Management Administration show those camps were located in a “regulatory floodway.”
FEMA recommends municipalities limit development in floodways and warns of “significant threats to public safety for any inhabitants” in those areas.
“The need for search-and-rescue and other emergency operations can place an additional burden on an already overwhelmed community,” FEMA officials wrote in a November 2019 report.
On the same page of that report, FEMA says floodways can be used for “open space and recreation uses,” including campgrounds.
The Little Lehigh Creek camp, which crews were set to start clearing Monday, also is in a regulatory floodway.
Gerlach is expected to challenge the administrative policy’s flood-prone provision.
Some land where camps were cleared last year along Jordan Creek was outside of a floodplain, while other portions were in areas where FEMA projects a flood will occur every 100 or 500 years.
