ALLENTOWN, Pa. — More than 100 people who have used the city's only winter shelter in recent months must find a new place to lay their heads.
And soon they'll be joined by at least nine others who have been living outside a few blocks away, with city crews set to continue last year's creekside-camp clearings next week.
The Allentown YMCA closed its shelter for the season Thursday morning, though officials have said it will reopen Sunday through Tuesday under Code Blue protocols, with temperatures set to plummet below freezing.
The Y's expanded 80-bed shelter served 108 people this winter.
Forty-six were homeless for the first time and 57 became homeless after the shelter's early opening at the end of September, according to Danielle Mineo, who has served as Allentown's unhoused services coordinator since June.
They all must figure out a new place to go, with the YMCA's shelter no longer an option.
“I’m just grateful for everything. You don’t want to be wandering around the streets.”Edgardo Antonio Caraballo
About a dozen people were gathered outside the shelter about 90 minutes before it opened for the final time Wednesday night.
Among them was Edgardo Antonio Caraballo, a 58-year-old man from Puerto Rico who had nothing but gratitude for the shelter and its staff.
“I’m just grateful for everything,” Caraballo said, also thanking Allentown churches for helping him and other homeless people get through the winter.
“You don’t want to be wandering around the streets.”
“I feel good about myself,” Caraballo said Wednesday, even though he said he did not have a plan for where he’d go the next night.
Revisiting safe camping?
Several others said they’d likely look to set up tents wherever they can find a decent spot, with few other options available.
And Allentown's Commission on Homelessness is pushing city and county leaders to quickly find that spot and revisit “safe camping,” an initiative that found success in Harrisburg last year.
There, Marsha Curry-Nixon established the “Miracle Community” in August on a 3-acre gravel lot where tractor-trailers recently had parked.
It offers tents and a safe space to stay for about 100 people.
Many of those who moved to the Miracle Community were pushed out of a nearby encampment, known as Tent City, so the state Transportation Department can widen Interstate 83.
Residents at the space get a tent and an almost-200-square-foot plot, along with access to an array of services from nearby nonprofits, and a budding sense of community, Curry-Nixon told LehighValleyNews.com last year.
They also can use the property for their mailing address, a major hurdle many homeless people face while trying to secure IDs and other important documents for employment, housing and more.
Advocates pushed Allentown officials to find a similar site in the city where people could stay without fear of eviction. And several people living in camps last fall said they’ve been “safe camping” for years.
'Literally no place for people'
Council in September gave Tuerk 30 days to find a suitable location for safe camping.
The mayor initially said he was “cautiously optimistic”; later that month, he told council the city owns no property that could support safe camping.
Talks about safe camping “kind of just got shelved” after that, Allentown Commission on Homelessness Co-Chairwoman Christina DiPierro said during the group’s meeting Wednesday.
“Moving people around from place to place is not right. Having no solution behind it is not right.”Christina DiPierro, co-chairwoman of Allentown's Commission on Homelessness
The commission this week sent a letter to Tuerk and Lehigh County Executive Josh Siegel, asking the city and county leaders to immediately identify “a specific plot of land where individuals can reside legally without fear of being swept or ticketed.”
“A designated, stable location is the only way to prevent the dangerous scattering of this population into hidden or unsafe areas,” the commission said in its letter.
And it would ensure continued medical care and connection to services for those who stay there, the commission said.
“Moving people around from place to place is not right,” Co-Chairwoman Christina DiPierro said during the commission’s meeting Wednesday. “Having no solution behind it is not right.”
“There is literally no place for people to lay their heads down in the city of Allentown,” she said.
Siegel’s administration is exploring a project to convert the vacant corrections center into temporary housing for about 400 people.
But she warned it’s in “the very early stages” and not “clear cut” as it would require extensive intermunicipal cooperation.
Councilwoman Ce-Ce Gerlach, who led the body’s push for a safe-camping study last year, urged county officials “bypass the red tape” and work faster to find a “short-term, emergency solution.”
“To say that … there’s no parking lot that exists, there’s no land that exists where people can temporarily put their tent — I don't buy that,” Gerlach said.
A safe camping spot would be “another Band-Aid,” she said.
“But if you get a wound, you put a Band-Aid on, and then you go get surgery,” Gerlach said. “That's where we're at right now.”
