ALLENTOWN, Pa. — Presidential senior adviser Tom Perez on Wednesday dropped by a new affordable housing complex in Allentown, where he saw yet more evidence of the Lehigh Valley’s resurgence.
Perez and local officials, including Mayor Matt Tuerk and Allentown Housing Authority chief Julio Guridy, on Wednesday celebrated 51 new homes with income restrictions at Bridgeside Estates.
Those homes represent the first phase of construction on the site, where the 76-unit Little Lehigh public housing development stood until a few years ago.
Crews broke ground on the project in November 2022, and its first residents moved in last year.
Adding more than four dozen affordable units back to the housing stock will “help us address the affordability crisis that we face here in Allentown,” Tuerk said.
The Allentown Housing Authority owns the property at Lehigh Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Drive.
The authority partnered with Pennrose Properties on the project. They’re aiming to build about 50 more affordable homes on the lot that covers more than 63,000 square feet, though that could take several more years, Guridy said.
Bridgeside Estates will not be “built overnight, just like Rome,” Guridy jokingly said.
'Incredibly important' investment
The $27 million project received American Rescue Plan Act funding from Allentown and the state, among various other sources.
“The North Star for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris is equity. And equity means not simply racial equity, but equity means that ZIP codes never determine destiny.”Tom Perez, senior adviser to President Joe Biden
Tuerk said he invited Perez, who serves as director of the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, to show Biden’s administration how the city invested its $57 million in ARPA funding.
“We wanted to get an opportunity to show somebody from the Biden administration exactly how we have, in the city of Allentown, invested incredibly important resources for our recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic,” Tuerk said.
The mayor rattled off a series of ARPA-funded projects that also includes $20 million for sewer and stormwater infrastructure, millions more for deferred maintenance throughout the city and funding for Irving Pool and the Allentown Metal Works site.
Those investments, along with “critically important” funding for housing, are helping Allentown “build and recover and really regain our strength” as the heart of the Lehigh Valley, Tuerk said.
ARPA a 'statement of faith' in local leaders
Tuerk and Allentown City Council members have been “such remarkable partners” for Biden’s administration in its “journey to form a more perfect union,” Perez said Wednesday, crediting them for pouring funding into the Bridgeside Estates project.
The $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act, passed in 2021, “was a statement of faith in our state and local partners,” like Gov. Shapiro and Mayor Tuerk, to know what their areas need, Perez said.
“We said to you, ‘You are in the best position to know what's best for Allentown and we trust you,’” Perez said.
ARPA also was a vehicle to promote equity through an “array of investments” to help people access services like child care and high-speed internet, which Perez said is an “essential public necessity” like water.
“The North Star for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris is equity,” Perez said. “And equity means not simply racial equity, but equity means that ZIP codes never determine destiny.”
Perez on Wednesday afternoon held a discussion at Velocity with leaders of Allentown’s Puerto Rican community. A scheduled stop at a downtown barbershop was cut after the Bridgeside Estates event ran long.
The president’s senior adviser said he always enjoys visiting the Lehigh Valley and seeing “the diversity in communities outside Philly and Pittsburgh.”
He lauded the Lehigh Valley for undergoing “a remarkable transformation” since he first met and started working with “serial activist” Guridy in the 1990s.
