Allentown, Easton, Bethlehem mayors address housing, climate change

The Lehigh Valley’s three largest cities are joining forces to tackle some of the most pressing issues facing the region, including housing, homelessness and climate change.

At a news conference Thursday afternoon, mayors of Allentown, Bethlehem and Easton announced the creation of the “three-city coalition” to work collaboratively on problems they face.

“Oftentimes we are very proud in the Lehigh Valley about where we’re from, we think of ourselves as Allentown people or Bethlehem people or Easton people, but the issues that we need to focus on as a region do not know any municipal boundaries,” Bethlehem Mayor J. William Reynolds said.

Collaboration between the three cities is nothing new. The mayors already meet monthly, according to Allentown Mayor Matt Tuerk, and regional initiatives already exist, including a “dirt bike task force” that includes mayors and leaders in both Lehigh and Northampton counties.

But the coalition will codify that collaboration and ensure that it continues beyond the tenure of the three cities’ current mayors.

“We are here to formalize this agreement, and kick off something that we believe will be around for decades,” Reynolds said. “One day we will look back on this as kind of the first step, that the public sector decided to come together, that unified voice that we need.”

The coalition will specifically address housing and climate change, because leaders identified these issues as shared and urgent across the entire Lehigh Valley. For example, all three cities have seen dramatic increases in home and rent prices since 2020.

Developing joint strategies to add more affordable housing — which could look like collectively advocating for state laws and conducting joint resident engagement projects — will be a key goal of the coalition. That could include supporting development of housing in suburban and rural regions, which would help ease the demand for housing in Allentown, Bethlehem and Easton.

“Nowhere is it written that poor people can’t live in townships,” Easton Mayor Sal Panto Jr. said. “Cities are core communities that have high percentages of poor people and people who live below the poverty level, but that doesn’t mean that one of the townships couldn’t dedicate 100 acres, just 100 acres to an affordable housing development, where they have the land. We don’t have the land.”

Reynolds also said the cities will soon announce details of a Lehigh Valley Green Ribbon Commission consisting of business and civic leaders across the region that will spearhead climate change initiatives.