Affordable Housing in Allentown gets Green Light with $14.3 Million State Grant
A big step toward building affordable housing in downtown Allentown was made this week when the project’s creator got a big chunk of the money needed for the project.
They will build 38 homes for people with low to moderate incomes with $14.3 million from the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency.
That is where most of the money for the complex will come from. Jonathan Strauss, co-founder of Cortex Residential, told LehighValleyNews.com on Wednesday that the company is now working on finishing the paperwork for that money.
Strauss said, “Once we finish that process, the project will be shovel-ready.”
For “seeing the strength of this project,” Strauss thanked the PHFA. He called it “another really great example of public-private partnership.”
Along with a grant from Lehigh County, Cortex also got $2 million for its project from Allentown’s share of the American Rescue Plan Act.
Strauss said that the building will cost around $17 million.
According to Miller, as the fastest-growing area in the Commonwealth, we need to provide more housing options. On Wednesday, he thanked the PHFA for its support of the project.
Strauss said that if everything goes as planned, the cheap housing development should start building early next year.
It’s likely that the first people will move into the building in 2026, he said.
The parish house next to Life Church on South Eighth Street will be torn down by Cortex so that the affordable housing complex at the corner has more room.
The developer said that the ancient church, which used to be called St. Paul’s Evangelical Lutheran Church, would not be changed as part of the project.
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Plans for the project were made public last year, but they have since been cut back.
At South Eighth and Walnut streets, Allentown officials allowed a four-story building with 52 one- and two-bedroom apartments. However, the Cortex said Wednesday that it plans to build a three-story building with 38 apartments instead.
Four units will be set aside for people whose incomes are at or below 20% of the median income in the area. The other 34 units will be for families whose incomes are below 60% AMI.
In 2024, the Federal National Mortgage Association said that the middle-class family in Lehigh County made $101,400.
Folks whose income is less than around $60,000 will be able to live in the downtown building.
Strauss says that the amount of tax credits the project got from the PHFA determined the size and scale of the finished design.
At first, there were more units planned for the building than there are now, but some will have three bedrooms, so Strauss said the company can still serve “right around the same number of residents.”
