South Bethlehem’s Challenges Are a Matter of Policy, Not Character

Sarah Naumes is a resident of South Bethlehem.

Fall has begun, and Lehigh has transformed into a campus that looks like the setting of a movie. Just a few blocks from the institution, a different scene is shaped by years of uneven investment and ineffective governance by the city of Bethlehem. 

In the two-plus years my family has lived in South Bethlehem, just adjacent to Lehigh, there have been multiple documented shootings and incidents involving gunfire in our surrounding neighborhood.

In the first incident after our move, the police knocked on our door in the middle of the night to ask us to check that no one in the house had been injured or killed by a stray bullet.  

Gun violence is only one of the many forms of violence South Bethlehem residents live with every day, and it’s made possible, at least in part, by the broader structural violence of uneven investment and neglect by the city of Bethlehem.

Trash, weeds and animal waste litter many of the sidewalks. Negligent landlords are enabled by lax enforcement. The city remains unresponsive to requests to manage issues using evidence-based practices appropriate for high-density neighborhoods.

Emails and calls to the mayor’s office and Bethlehem city council have gone unanswered, while the city’s mobile app for reporting problems receives daily requests for action from residents.

Yet, across these issues, a common refrain is used throughout the city’s bureaucracy and council: the problems in South Bethlehem can be attributed to the neighborhood’s “riff raff.” 

“Riffraff” is a term with strong class connotations, referring to a segment of society as worthless or inferior. 

The argument here is that the city isn’t responsible for gun violence or waste. Rather, these problems are caused by certain residents in South Bethlehem, and only those residents can make meaningful changes. If that were true, the city would bear no responsibility and would, therefore, have no action to take. 

But it isn’t true. There are many actions the city can take to improve the quality of life in South Bethlehem. These include park maintenance to give children safe places to play, greater oversight of landlords whose properties fall into disrepair, neighborhood cleanup campaigns, community-building events and educational campaigns about local ordinances. 

Some of these measures would require little or no additional funding. 

What’s true is that, historically, South Bethlehem’s steelworkers, many of whom were working-class immigrants, lived in the city’s denser working-class neighborhoods near the mills. That history has helped shape a persistent class and race divide.

Today, South Bethlehem is a diverse community in which a majority of the population is nonwhite, and many housing units are renter-occupied. The neighborhoods adjacent to Lehigh continue to be treated differently from wealthier parts of the city. 

To be clear, I’m not claiming to solve gun violence, the city simply needs to clean up the trash. What I am saying is that issues such as  poor waste management are emblematic of the way the city views South Bethlehem, and that perspective is an incubator for the conditions for multiple forms of violence. 

When the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on homicide rates from 2019 to 2022, the agency made a similar claim, concluding, “continued prevention efforts, particularly those addressing social and structural conditions that contribute to violence, are needed to mitigate risks and inequities.

These efforts include policies and programs promoting economic and housing security; hospital and community-based outreach and violence interruption programs; initiatives to encourage secure firearm storage to prevent unauthorized access or use; environmental changes such as remediating vacant lots and therapeutic approaches to address trauma.

In other words, gun violence is multicausal, with economic and housing security as a significant factor.  

Initiating a neighborhood cleanup campaign requires little time, effort and money. Still, it requires the city to stop blaming individuals for the problems in South Bethlehem and to take both accountability and action.