Rentals Will Allentown Ever Learn?

Express Times: Allentown's Waterfront project more than doubles proposed apartments-- "The project can now accommodate as many as five more buildings and up to 433 apartments.."

Express-Time: 168 more are going up around 7th & Linden Streets.

The Morning Call: 200 more around 8th & Walnut streets

By my count that's just over 700 new apartments within these three projects alone. Even before these are built the home ownership rate in Allentown was just 48.2% (2009-2013) compared to the rest of Pennsylvania's 69.8%.

According to these same tables the number of persons under 18 years in 2010 was 26.2%. If we were to make an assumption based on those numbers these 700 units could add an additional 183 students. According to one source the Allentown School District spends $14,352 per student. These additional students could cost the district another $2,626,416 each year to educate. Everybody better hope federal and state funding will come through because I'm certain the school property taxes on these wouldn't be nearly enough. Not to even mention the added expenses for police and other city services.

In My View
This is where Allenton keeps going wrong decade after decade. Rentals encourage transient behavior from those who have no long term commitment to either who gets elected or how the city looks. It's doesn't take much vision to see where most of Whitehall Township's problems lie. Nor why the Parkland area has less of them then either that of Whitehall or Allentown. It's because a greater number of those people living in the Parkland school district area have a long term inve$tment because more of them own homes.

Allentown constantly keeps seeking quantity over quality when it comes to housing. It's not unusual to see three units converted from a single dwelling. In essence three families living in the same house that once was owned by one family yet paying no more on the property in taxes then would a single family. We keep going down this same path over and over again. This time we're told there will be a different outcome. How could it be possible this time will be different?

Taxpayers are going to invest another $325 million for the Riverfront project. Wouldn't it have been wiser to spend that money requiring new tenants to purchase their units? Perhaps even allowing them to use part of their taxes towards the mortgages rather then a few developers who stand to make a bundle.

Why not apply the same money instead to other areas of the city?

Most of the downtown row properties in Allentown are worth less then $50,000. At that rate taxpayers could have bought about 6,500 existing properties. Suppose they were bought for $50,000 or less and another $25,000 was spent to fix them up. This would result in around 4,300 of them being able to be sold to what the cities says are hungry young Millennials who are chomping at the bit to move into urban environments (or so we're being told).

Currently @ Trulia.com there are 372 properties listed for sale less then $50,000
At the current time the MLS list contains 191

NO IT'S NOT A CRAZY IDEA.
According to one mortgage estimater the mortgage would be less then $400 a month on a 30 year $75,000 loan. None of these new rentals will even come close to that figure.

DUH... own a home for around $400 a month or rent a small apartment for nearly double or triple of that?
I don't think so!

Then again Allentown keep doing what you do so well.

Create never ending rental problems year after year.