According to a news release, Allentown Mayor Matt Tuerk has nominated Alan Jennings, the retired Exec Director of Community Action Committee of the Lehigh Valley (CACLV), to serve on the City's redevelopment authority. Tuerk believes this appointment will foster more affordable (workforce) housing and sustainable growth.
CACLV has a program called Community Action Homes, which purchases and rehabilitates housing stock throughout the Lehigh Valley. Unfortunately, the demand for services is so high that no applications are being accepted at this time.
Development of more suitable workforce housing requires more than buying and fixing old homes. Zoning should be re-examined with an eye to increasing density with tiny homes. TFor most families, there's no need for large 3 BR homes.
Though he likes to portray himself as the champion for those who have no voice, my experience with Jennings is that he has really served a lifetime as a lackey to the rich and powerful. When he was on the NIZ board, he made no appeals for local neighborhoods. He supported two goofy new taxes proposed by Mark Pinsley and Joshua Siegel, including an increase in an already very regressive sales tax as well as a county earned income tax. He was one of lasdt few defenders of disgraced Allentown Mayor Edwin "Fed Ed" Pawlowski.
I'm sure he'll do whatever the urban growth regime tells him to do.
9 comments:
My first reaction is that this must be a joke, but I guess I should know better by now. 🙄
In the poverty industry, Jennings is a hall of famer.
This is getting good again just like the powolski episode of allentown.
I'm all for development of suitable "workforce" housing with increased density and tiny homes...in the suburbs!!! Allentown already has most of the regions highest density/affordable housing, its the last thing Allentown needs more of. I'd love to see Alan Jennings advocate for affordable housing in Lower Macungie, South Whitehall, Emmaus etc..
Allentown has become a poverty magnet, a veritable warehouse for welfare recipients. A guy looking to attract even more spells disaster.
Worst appointment ever!
Jennings has done more to bring (and keep) Allentown down over the last 30 years than any other individual.
He and his organization were a major beneficiary of the Pawlowski regime. Jennings is ethically-challenged and still thinks his good friend Ed Pawlowski did nothing wrong.
Another old white guy for an important position. I suppose now Jennings and Tuerk can lecture us about how we need more minority representation in leadership positions in the city.
What a joke!
It’s like they’re determined to double down on all the mistakes of the last 40 years, and think that calling it a different name will get them a different outcome
Stuttering joe and jennings could help turek load his bicycle wagon with pencils to sell at the fair. These are types of people that are selling the same old sack of shit in a new colourful flavorful package expecting some to imbibe?All three stooges the walking dick with ears and two studdering idiots all just yes men.
Me no thanks I won't eat from the outhouwse the smell of the stench is to hard to swallow.
Excerpts of 6/22/23 Morning Call article about the Allentown Redevelopment Authority:
"That disagreement in priorities led to the recent resignation of executive director Meghan Hart and project director Scotty Smith...
Internal disagreements between the authority’s board and staff also intensified in the weeks leading up to Smith and Hart’s departures.
The authority first announced plans in 2022 to transform the former Allentown Toy Manufacturing Co. on 10th Street into an affordable housing complex with a community space, like a recreation center or nonprofit headquarters, on the first floor. But those plans are on hold after a disagreement among board members over an unsolicited offer to buy the property.
The board was split 2-2 on an offer by the Islamic Society of Greater Allentown to buy the former factory and convert it into a multi-purpose building with a mosque, affordable apartments and a food bank.
Board members Rodney Bushe and Tyrone Russell argued that selling the building to the society could be a way to right the wrongs of the authority’s past. But opponents say the society’s offer would not be a financial benefit to the authority, and voting on unsolicited offers is unfair to other potential buyers.
Minutes from a June 8 committee meeting show that a broader conflict arose after a May Morning Call article on the disagreement.
According to minutes, Russell said that Hart’s comments to the newspaper were “inappropriately expressed” and “very unprofessional.”
Hart, who said Bushe’s advocacy for the Islamic Center amounted to a conflict of interest because he is employed by the center’s leader, defended her comments. According to meeting minutes, she asked board members “why an agenda is being pushed that would put the authority in financially compromising position.”
Smith, the authority’s former project manager, also appeared to argue with Russell at that meeting, according to the minutes."
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