Allentown welcomes residents' visions for center city

[LookingToEscape]

Lady Day wrote:

So you vision for the future of Allentown would be to segregate renters??? That does not sit well with me.
However, I do hate the way some of the beautiful homes in Allentown have been broken up into rental apartments.
<quoted text>

This is to preserve the value of homes family owned and occupied.
Keep in mind a city tax base is based heavily on the desirability of it's property. Generally speaking, many of the landlords do the minimal on their property because it affects their income. There is no sense for a home owner to sink a lot of money to improve and upgrade their property if they're surrounded by minimally maintained homes.
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I walk through neighborhoods that used to be family owned and occupied, now mainly rentals and it is sad to see how these neighborhoods have deteriorated.
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By avoiding mixing up family owned with rental, you also reduce the amount of trouble trying to find legit rentals from illegal conversions.

[deebo]

Former Valley Resident wrote:

<quoted text>
According to the 14th Amendment any person born in the United States is a citizen. Therefore the children of illegal immigrants, if born in the United States, cannot be deported. The status of the parents is irrelevant if the child is born in this country.

That's absolutely true. When I lived in AZ, there were stories on the news all the time of Mexican women crossing the border and being chased by the Patrol - in labor...

They would give birth to their children in the middle of the desert - but it was on American soil...Loophole, anyone?

[deebo]

LookingToEscape wrote:

<quoted text>
This is to preserve the value of homes family owned and occupied.
Keep in mind a city tax base is based heavily on the desirability of it's property. Generally speaking, many of the landlords do the minimal on their property because it affects their income. There is no sense for a home owner to sink a lot of money to improve and upgrade their property if they're surrounded by minimally maintained homes.
--
I walk through neighborhoods that used to be family owned and occupied, now mainly rentals and it is sad to see how these neighborhoods have deteriorated.
-
By avoiding mixing up family owned with rental, you also reduce the amount of trouble trying to find legit rentals from illegal conversions.

Agree. By letting landlords rent whatever they want to whoever they want, we've become the enablers to people that don't know the value of owning property. If you don't know the value of something like this, you simply treat it like crap. Garbage, holes in the walls, trash and old clothes on the back porch - all this would semi-cease if these people had to pay for the damage done to their neighborhood. Yelling and tossing garbage doesn't help the city at all.

I don't think all landlords should be forced to give up their property, but it can be regulated to a point. Zoning and property laws get amended all the time - just include crappy, passive landlords to get their act together. Tax them extra for excessive HUD housing, or devise a plan to create incentives for landlords that don't have every single property on HUD. There was a landlord I heard about in A-town that has something like, 15 houses and apts., more than half of which were Sec. 8. WTF? But it's guaranteed money to them because the State never bounces a check and it's deposited every 1st of the month without hassle. It's an easy way out for these guys. And most of them don't even live anywhere NEAR their properties for this reason.

[Ahem]

I live in what used to be one of the best communiities in Allentown, and I've watched rentals act like dripping battery acid on the quality of life here. And it 'begats' more rentals because of the less desirable nature of their presence on a home buyer.
We have large numbers of total morons moved in doing every antisocial behavior, short of murder, out on the sidewalk everyday, all day long.
They're nuts!
And we can't get anything done about it for long stretches of time.

[The Dude]

Ahem wrote:

I live in what used to be one of the best communiities in Allentown, and I've watched rentals act like dripping battery acid on the quality of life here. And it 'begats' more rentals because of the less desirable nature of their presence on a home buyer.
We have large numbers of total morons moved in doing every antisocial behavior, short of murder, out on the sidewalk everyday, all day long.
They're nuts!
And we can't get anything done about it for long stretches of time.

Your post is like a thousand others I have read in the last few years. I hope that your situation improves and the rental units in your neighborhood are turned back into homes. Good Luck.

[Ahem]

Thank you...

[Populists]

The_Enlightener wrote:

Why don't they "meet with the people" that live in the downtown area on what their ideas are to "clean up" the area. After all the ones that live in the downtown area are the ones that see what goes on at night around here. Not the shop owners that leave by 5 pm to escape the area at night.

One of the problems I see with this process and with the leadership involved is that these are people who are not Allentown natives nor do they have much of a stake in the area. To them this is sort of a high school game so see how much influence they can have in pushing agenda items that are 'cool' and trendy. They are having fun 'tinkering' with the community and are not all that bothered by the outcome or the consequences as long as they get their way.

There is a populist theory at the base of what this leadership suggests which calls for 'doing what the people want.' Well, translated, that means doing what the leadership thinks is best for the community.
Like all do-gooders, they have the best of intentions but since they think traditional planning approaches are old-hat, they wind up being salespeople pushing old wine into new bottles.

Rather than a vision for the City, I think these folks need new glasses to see the way things are. They are in perpetual denial.

[The Dude]

Populists wrote:

<quoted text>
One of the problems I see with this process and with the leadership involved is that these are people who are not Allentown natives nor do they have much of a stake in the area. To them this is sort of a high school game so see how much influence they can have in pushing agenda items that are 'cool' and trendy. They are having fun 'tinkering' with the community and are not all that bothered by the outcome or the consequences as long as they get their way.
There is a populist theory at the base of what this leadership suggests which calls for 'doing what the people want.' Well, translated, that means doing what the leadership thinks is best for the community.
Like all do-gooders, they have the best of intentions but since they think traditional planning approaches are old-hat, they wind up being salespeople pushing old wine into new bottles.
Rather than a vision for the City, I think these folks need new glasses to see the way things are. They are in perpetual denial.

Very well said.

[Damm Fools]

Ahem wrote:

<quoted text>
How many of these good renters do you think there are in Allentown?
On a percentage, not very many.
I'd guess its less that 5%, 10% max.
It was a higher % number when the proportion of rental houses to native renters was normal, but all that exploded for privateering landlords when Joe Dadonna began his social service miscreants transplantation operation in 1975.
The number of houses turned to rentals rather than owner occupied blow out the roof in every neighborhood in Allentown.
Its hard to find a neighborhood community in the city that hasn't been marred with unwanted and problenatic single family unit rentals (that are unpoliced by the landlords).
We need to pull back to the pre-1980 volume of rental property stock, and get control of the schools and social service sector costs again.

Take a look at http://www.policymap.com/map for Allentown.(great site, bookmark it!)In particular, look at mortgage originations for both white and hispanic. What you see is >25% home buying by Latinos in Allentown, and >90% home buying by whites in townships (and <50% in Allentown's worst neighborhoods). These maps make pretty clear that Allentown has permanently changed demographically and will not go back to pre-1980. I don't expect getting control of schools and social service costs is possible.

I do agree 100% with your aim of pre-1980 rental stock by regulating (and banning, if possible) townhouse conversions. Council could do it tomorrow by taking a first step. The second step and the third step will come easier...

Not holding my breath here.