Allentown's new proposed zoning ordinance incorporates every progressive notion of 2024. We will address affordable housing by allowing alley and backyard tiny houses. We will address higher urban unemployment rates by enlarging industrial and commercial districts into formally residential zones. In other words, they will codify and further accelerate our decline.
In the real world of litter plagued Allentown, the unemployed are the chronic unmotivated. If we create more commercial space, we'll have to create* more business people for them, because real entrepreneurs have no trouble finding space for their businesses.
According to our city planning director....Increase opportunities for housing supply, walkability and vibrancy, and also to introduce new regulations that are employment friendly, focus on manufacturing,”... listing several of the goals of the zoning overhaul.
Apparently, Allentown has found the solution to the off shore manufacturing situation and the Chinese trade imbalance.
*Community Action of Lehigh Valley used to set people up in business. Instead of giving them a fishing pole, they gave them a fish market.
I'm taking this opportunity to display a photograph of 8th and Hamilton taken by Bill Schoenk in 1941. Mr. Schoenk worked at Mack Truck and raised a family on S. 9th St. His wife Betty was a crossing guard for many years in the neighborhood.
This new zoning to permit tiny houses in backyards, etc. is one of the most outrageous decisions I’ve ever seen Allentown make, and Allentown is well known to have made many.
ReplyDeleteFar better would be to create some sort of no-interest mortgage program to be used to fill existing vacant stock that already meets current standards.
Imagine you are living in an Allentown row home. One, maybe both sides of your well-kept yard/garage/home garden plot picks up families living just one chain link away!
Residents of the city must rise up against this ridiculousness. Matt is trying to turn our city into he wants it to be, a pedestrian based downtown with all the jobs and amenities a walk away from our front doors. He also wants to increase the density of the population by providing room for substandard housing in backyards and alleys. This is all a Woke pipe dream, we know what can go wrong with such dreamy thinking, been there, done that. We need to make our voices heard and make sure council, who must approve also hear us. Otherwise Matt will succeed in doing something even Roy and Ed couldn't do, drive a final nail into the heart of the city.
ReplyDeletei’m curious to know what’s so bad about a pedestrian based downtown?
Deleteanon@5:49: This is NOT a comment or click bait centric blog, I seldom print disingenuous comments such as yours. What's so bad is the lack of reality. In Allentown's real world we need more parking and less density. Do you think that our double parkers really want a pedestrian based downtown? No reply will be printed.
Deletewhat i find disingenuous is the belief that there is one correct way to run a city. additionally, on another point, the zoning staff knew that ADUs would be contentious. that’s why they’re holding public input sessions in june.
DeleteYou have to remember that the Mayor, staff and City Council are collectively made up of feel good liberals and we've seen how great they've done over that past 30 years. If I have to read another sales pitch by the Community Development Director claiming the Zoning Ordinance will protect and preserve neighborhoods I'm going to puke. This back yard accessory dwelling unit is an idea right out of Seattle and Portland, two cities run by liberals with hundreds of thousands of people living in the streets. I hope City Council approves the Zoning Ordinance but without the back yard accessory dwelling unit provision. Allentown is already too dense and we already have too high of a share of the region's affordable housing. This provision will not create affordable housing but will further erode the quality of life in the City's neighborhoods.
ReplyDeleteBackyard housing is a terrible idea. Ask any firefighter. Allentown has too many old, decrepit homes on substandard alleys. With backyard housing there will be more illegal rentals, greater density and more cars without parking spaces and more areas that the police cannot patrol. DC worked for decades to rid itself of “alley houses.”
ReplyDeleteNot sure how the city can grow without reasonably increasing density. Perhaps you can lobby South Whitehall to merge with the city as an alternative?
ReplyDeleteThe city has grown...Reilly has created over 1,500 units downtown. Hyman has created hundreds of units in former factories. Zoning now wants to endanger alley life with affordable housing. IMO, the city needs to improve, not grow.
Delete9:41 - Maybe I’m naive, but I believe people of all races and economic levels want safe, clean streets; good schools; and quiet, peaceful neighborhoods.
DeleteWe don’t have that right now, and need to realize that adding still more inexpensive, small housing units is only going to make things worse.
If you want to see where allowing density to run wild gets you while not paying attention to what’s really important gets you, go to one of the shack cities that you see in the third world. Or even a trip to NY or Philly.
This is not going to solve our problems, and will only make them worse.
I’’m not sure how more tax paying neighbors will hurt businesses in our neighborhoods or the long-term finances of our city. Walk around town a little, most of Allentown is as dead as a rock most of the time. We are not at all an over-crowded city. If anything, we lack sufficient density and vibrancy.
Deleteanon@6:29: If you look at the Hamilton Street crowds on my masthead picture you'll realize that Allentown was vibrant with less people years ago. More affordable housing won't create vibrancy, and that's the premise of the new zoning. No reply needed.
DeleteA core Allentown problem is that the center city neighborhoods are too densely populated. For decades, hundreds of center city buildings built to house their owners with 5 or 6 members of one family who owned no cars have been dangerously converted to 3 or 4 dwelling units housing 15 + unrelated, transient tenants who own 3,4,5 cars. As a result, over the last 50 years Allentown has gone from a great place to live to a good place to rent to a poor place to drive through. Adding density will worsen already bad conditions.
ReplyDeleteAnon 5:49 - Maybe you can define what a “pedestrian-based downtown” looks like to you.
ReplyDeleteYes, people love convenience and walking to shops and eating places in their own neighborhoods - when they want to. However, I would say that few want that to be their only option.
We’ve seen thousands of new rental units (all “luxury” rental units, of course) built downtown in the last decade, but I don’t see those people when I go downtown. So obviously they still want to eat and shop outside of their own neighborhood as well.
That’s the funny thing about America, most of us enjoy our freedoms, and freedom of movement is a large part of that.
What I hear right now are government bureaucrats wanting to force us into THEIR choices, not ours. Pedestrian-friendly to them seems to mean putting still more people on top of us and making vehicle ownership and driving more difficult in the city. So we’ll have to eat and shop at places THEY allow to be close to us. If we want to venture outside
OUR neighborhoods they want us to take public transportation, and be able to move around on THEIR schedule. And pedestrian-friendly sounds great until you get older, or injured, or until there is bad weather (or just hot/cold weather). Then walking or waiting for public transportation doesn’t sound quite as desirable.
The ironic part of this is that many of those pushing these ridiculous ideas aren’t even living in the city, and some of those that do are hopping into their taxpayer-funded, $40,000+ vehicles every morning to go about THEIR business.
But you see, they’re important, not like the rest of us peasants. We’re here to be packed like sardines into their concept of “pedestrian-friendly”.
So when I hear government bureaucrats telling me that they’re going to make things more “pedestrian-friendly” it sounds more like they’re designing a community prison. For US, of course, not THEM.
lots of job openings at city hall so i don’t know why you’re complaining
DeleteI just have to say it, 9:09 AM describes my definition of modern day Liberalism. I just want to be left alone, make my own decisions about how I live. I don’t need to be lorded over by people who think they are my betters.
ReplyDelete