Dozens of homeless people in Allentown scrambled to move their belongings from the encampment along Jordan Creek before public works staff came to bulldoze the area Monday morning.
At 8 a.m., as public works employees and police officers were stationed near the intersection of Sumner Avenue and North Third Street, Michael Wilson and two companions brought cartfuls of boxes, blankets, clothes and other personal items to the street curb.
Wilson, who is homeless but living elsewhere in Allentown, said he was helping Lesley Simonetty move her belongings from her campsite before it was bulldozed. Simonetty said she has leukemia and was unable to move her belongings on her own.
“This is my home,” Simonetty said as tears fell from her eyes. “It is really depressing.”
About an hour later, public works staff began bulldozing the area. Police officers cordoned off the area with yellow crime scene tape as Simonetty and Wilson watched from the curb, surrounded by a mattress, tent and all the personal belongings they could salvage before the clean-up began.
By 4 p.m., only a handful of people remained as they loaded up their belongings, or waited for a U-Haul truck to arrive. Signs posted by the city warned people to not trespass near the creek.
Tyrone Mertz, 58, a commercial painter who had lived alongside Jordan Creek since the end of July, called his camp his “sanctuary.” He fed the ducks there.
“I love the animals,” he said, at one point hugging a neighbor’s dog.
Mertz said he’s unsure where he will go. He has criminal convictions, which he said makes it difficult to be accepted into shelters.
In early August, Allentown announced its intention to clear the Jordan Creek encampment, which has long been a site for people with nowhere else to go. The city originally set an evacuation deadline of Aug. 25, but pushed the deadline back to Sept. 29 after facing pushback from residents and nonprofits that help homeless people.
The city ordered the evacuation after officials determined the area poses “significant danger” to those living there due to it being in a flood zone. The evacuation order came after a series of deadly flash floods elsewhere in the country this summer. However, the evacuation sparked outrage among some community advocates, who said that forcing people to leave what they consider their home is also possibly harmful and unsafe.
Some social science studies have shown that sweeping homeless encampments harms homeless people’s health for several reasons, including increasing their stress, anxiety, depression and distrust of authority. Homeless people may also lose valuable or important belongings after being forcibly displaced, and they may lose contact with street outreach or medical workers that provide them with health care and other resources, studies show.
The new evacuation date coincided with the opening of the Allentown YMCA warming station, which is open 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. nightly and has 80 beds available for people looking for somewhere to sleep.
The warming station usually opens in mid-November to house people during the colder months, but opened early this year to help accommodate the displaced homeless residents, with funding assistance from Allentown, the Lehigh Valley Community Foundation and the United Way.
Some now-former Jordan Creek camp residents plan to go to the warming shelter, like Dana Bell, who said he has been living at the camp since early April. The YMCA allows each person to bring a limited amount of their belongings with them, so Bell said he would store most of his belongings at a friend’s place in the meantime.
At 7 p.m. as the YMCA warming station began its intake process, around 25 people were lined up to receive a warm meal, shower and a place to sleep for the night. The station is a lifeline for Adrianna Rose Taylor, who became homeless around a year ago after being kicked out of her family’s home for drug use. Now sober, she said she hopes to only be at the station for about a week because she secured a job recently and expects to receive her first paycheck soon.
“Life is looking up,” Taylor said.
But others, for one reason or another, said they are unable or unwilling to sleep at the station. Some said they had plans to camp elsewhere, or to try to find shelter with a friend or family member.
Wilson said another friend rented a U-Haul to bring all of Simonetty’s belongings to the camp where he lives, which is near the long-abandoned Banana Joe’s building on Hamilton Street. Wilson said he is unwilling to stay at the YMCA because he said he has witnessed sexual harassment there.
The YMCA has safety protocols in place, including metal detector screenings and a background check for violent crime in the past five years, as well as any sex offender history, according to Tami Unger, Allentown YMCA branch director.
Wilson, who became homeless in October, said he feels the city “misled” homeless residents.
Real estate developer Nat Hyman filed a lawsuit against the city in April, claiming the camp was harming his property and tenants, and seeking a judge’s order forcing the city to clear the area.
At that time, city spokesperson Genesis Ortega said the city was “addressing community needs with compassion and collaboration” and continuing to “work on long-term solutions to support vulnerable populations while maintaining public spaces for all residents.” The evacuation notice did not come until four months after the lawsuit was filed.
The city’s Commission on Homelessness organized several community clean-ups in the area over the summer, clearing out junk, abandoned camp sites and hazardous materials like needles.
Wilson said he and his neighbors also worked hard to clean and secure the area, and installed security lights so people could see their surroundings when it gets dark, but that did not prevent the city from issuing the evacuation notice.
“They don’t care about our lives. We are all trying to get back on our feet, and they are just kicking us out,” Wilson said.
Alana Zima has been living along the Jordan Creek for only around three weeks, after relocating from a different camp where she felt unsafe. She said she became homeless after being kicked out of her sister’s home for her drug use, though she said she has since gotten sober.
She said the community of homeless people in the area are “tight knit,” but people are struggling to figure out what to do next now that they have been displaced.
“I hate this,” Zima said, looking around at about a dozen of her neighbors and the piles of their belongings. “This [camp] has been here forever.”
She said she plans to contact her grandmother or brother to see if she can stay with them. She is waiting on approval for Social Security income and is earning a computer science degree from Strayer University. But in the meantime, she has no income and no other options.
Even though residents of the encampment have a sense of camaraderie, the evacuation had many people on edge. Several residents said that two people at the camp got into an argument that ended with a stabbing overnight, although no one suffered life-threatening injuries. A police spokesperson confirmed those details but could not release any more information due to the ongoing investigation.
Wilson just last year said he was living in a three-bedroom home in Schuylkill County with his son, daughter and now ex-wife. He said he became homeless in October after losing his landscaping job when he had surgery to remove a digestive blockage, and was unable to continue working.
“People don’t know what it’s like,” Wilson said. “This could happen to anyone, people just don’t know. This could happen to you, it could happen to anyone.”
Morning Call reporter Graysen Golter contributed to this report.
Reporter Lindsay Weber can be reached at Liweber@mcall.com.
