Eight years ago, while fleeing from domestic violence, Evette Quinones Morales found herself sleeping in her car or bouncing between friends’ couches. In other words, homeless.
Eventually, she was able to turn her life around once she was placed in housing at the Third Street Alliance in Easton.
“Homelessness is not who people are,” Quinones Morales said. “It is a situation they are in, and with the right support, people can and do rebuild.”
The pending evacuation of Allentown’s Jordan Creek encampment, and recent news of Norfolk Southern’s request for Bethlehem to empty a similar camp on land the company owns along the Lehigh River, has heightened awareness of the plight of Lehigh Valley’s homeless population — both “visible” homelessness, where people are living on the streets or in tents in the woods or parks, and “invisible” homelessness like Quinones Morales, people who have some form of shelter, whether they live in their cars, couch surf or bounce between shelters.
“It is important to recognize a full spectrum of homelessness, both visible and invisible, and to challenge stereotypes that prevent us from seeing the humanity and complexity in each person’s story,” said Christina DiPierro, co-chair of the Allentown Commission on Homelessness and program coordinator at Valley Youth House.
The Lehigh Valley’s 2025 “point in time” count, which is conducted at the beginning of January and aims to get an accurate count of how many homeless people are in the region, counted 763 people, including both adults and children, as homeless in the Lehigh Valley. That’s an increase of nearly 100 people in two years, according to that data.
This week, the Allentown Commission on Homelessness hosted what it described as a “community conversation” with dozens of leaders and advocates to discuss strategies and solutions to help people access safe and affordable homes.
Andrene Brown-Nowell, president of the Allentown School Board, said a lack of proper coordination between agencies hinders people’s ability to seek help.
“We noticed that that was a recurring factor with everything, whether it was a lack of documentation that people do not have; rent stabilization; partner communication; case management; no main, online system to check who is getting rental assistance — all of those things are a system issue,” Brown-Nowell said. “So we need to break the system apart to put it back together.”
Critical to helping people who find themselves without a home is immediately being able to relocate them to somewhere safe to stay — whether it is a safe camping site with amenities like showers and electricity access, an emergency shelter or transitional housing. Cities like Rockford, Illinois, and Detroit have made strides in decreasing their homeless populations by connecting people to housing and other resources like substance abuse and mental health treatment, DiPierro said.
However, emergency shelter is, by definition, not permanent, so people who lack stable housing also need proper case management to help them find a permanent, stable home.
“Once you sustain [emergency housing], then transfer them out to something better,” said Brenda Robinson, a member of Lehigh Valley Stands Up. “If you pay $50 a month, I would stay there too forever. So we need management to transfer them out of that.”
Participants also encouraged the larger community to see homeless people as their neighbors and members of their community. Saying hello, getting to know them or volunteering with agencies that help the homeless population can go a long way toward destigmatizing homelessness and making homeless people feel humanized, not demonized.
“That understanding of treating someone like a human being, and thinking about who they are. They are not a homeless person that you don’t want in your hotel. They are a human being that needs a place to live,” said the Rev. Cynthia Rader Geyer, pastor at Redeemer Evangelical Lutheran Church in Allentown.
Building enough resources to house people will require time, land, money and collaboration across the Lehigh Valley region and among governments, nonprofits and for-profit companies, advocates said. Tuesday’s discussion — with leaders in those spaces discussing the problem and possible solutions together in one room — marked an important first step.
“Here is the good news: you guys all showed up today,” DiPierro said. “You showed up as a community to collaborate, and that’s the only way that we’re going to make a difference.”
The communitywide discussion came on the heels of an extended deadline for estimated 100 homeless people living along the Jordan Creek to evacuate. Allentown is allowing people camping along the creek to remain until Sept. 29, reversing an earlier decision to evacuate the homeless encampment by Aug. 25. The new date aligns with plans to open the Allentown warming shelter at the YMCA on Sept. 30, roughly two months ahead of schedule, to accommodate homeless residents.
The city in early August announced it would evacuate the camp after officials determined the area poses “significant danger” to those living there. Specifically, the area is in a flood zone, which could threaten the residents’ lives if a flood occurred.
The evacuation sparked outrage among homeless residents and their advocates, who said the city should not clear the encampment without giving people an alternative place to go.
Sebastian Zawierucha, a member of the Lehigh Valley Democratic Socialists of America, said he was concerned about the looming eviction of people living on the creek who may have nowhere else to go, as well as the prospect of police using force against residents who refuse to move. Zawierucha and a small group of protesters gathered last week outside of Allentown City Hall to demand that the leaders halt the evacuation of the encampment entirely.
“My concern is with the still planned eviction coming up next month, how will that be carried out by the city?” he said. “Are people’s lives going to be threatened and further destabilized?”
DiPierro said she “did not have the answer” about exactly how the city might hypothetically remove people who have not yet relocated by the deadline.
Allentown Mayor Matt Tuerk said the city is committed to collaborating across the Lehigh Valley to tackle homelessness. A “service hub” with members of city agencies and nonprofits is set up at near the Jordan Creek encampment twice a week to help connect people there to relocation and other resources, he said.
Reporter Lindsay Weber can be reached at Liweber@mcall.com.
