She feeds her ‘heroes,’ Bethlehem’s homeless population. She used to be one of them.

Around 7:10 a.m. the breakfast call shoots through the dead quiet that settled over the towpath in Bethlehem.

“Good morning, motherf—–s!” hollers a tiny, red-haired woman from her tri-wheel electric scooter that’s been playfully decorated with multi-colored holiday lights, a bike flag and a Christmas bow.

“Wake up! Come get your breakfast!” she shouts.

Today Allison’s prepared frittatas, croissants and hot coffee. Tomorrow she’ll make blueberry pancakes, and they will be blue and chock full of berries. Lehighvalleylive.com spoke to “Allison” on the condition her full name not be published.

It’s a Tuesday morning. Temperatures dipped into the low-20s overnight, and in the early light, the steam coming up from the warm aluminum trays is sort of thrilling. The cup of hot coffee will be a godsend for “my heroes”, as she likes to call them — those folks who live along the towpath by the Sand Island trail. Homeless folks.

Only three or four folks come out when they hear the call today. There’ve been fewer and fewer since the fire, she notes. But there’ll be a few more tomorrow.

“There used to be about 30 people down here,” she said. She points to scattered trash scaling the side of the bank of the canal.

“They used to be lined up right over there, but it’s gotten colder. And some of them were worried it wasn’t as safe, too,” she said.

“Are you sure you don’t want anything else?” she asks one of the few still left, Pete, a retired veteran in his 60s. He’s among the homeless folks who agreed to speak to lehighvalleylive.com if his name was withheld.

Pete’s handsome and clean. He’s got sad eyes, but he likes to talk. He slept in a shelter last night, he says.

“You’re an angel,” Pete replies. “Just the coffee will do for me, thanks,” and they hug and part ways.

“Make sure I get my jugs back, or I won’t be able to bring more coffee. I’ve got two over there now,” she tells another man named Robert. He came to collect the meal for the group. She asked Robert to remind a mutual friend to fill out her SSI application or Allison won’t be able to help her.

“Alright. Will we see you tomorrow?” Robert asks. He’ll be leaving the path soon, he says, but he doesn’t know when yet.

“Yeah. I’ll be back.” Allison says. “I love you guys,” she yells out over the canal, before throwing her scooter into drive and zipping away at 13 mph to her next appointment.

This one is with God, she says, she meets him on the bridge as the sun rises over the “Christmas City” furnaces.

Allison, a former chef and resident of Bethlehem, takes her own money and donations to prepare warm meals each morning for the city’s unhoused residents along the Towpath.Glenn Epps

In America, homelessness has reached epidemic proportions, and remains one of the nation’s greatest humanitarian crises, according to the United States’ Interagency Council on Homelessness.

It’s largely the result of failed policies; underfunded affordable housing programs; extensive wage gaps that fail to keep up with rising living costs; inadequate safety nets; inequitable access to quality health care, education, and economic opportunity; and mass incarceration, the agency states on its website. And the Lehigh Valley is no exception.

In 2022, the region saw a 36% increase in the number of homeless people, according to Mark Rittle, executive director of New Bethany Ministries in Bethlehem: “For families and children that’s a 47% increase,” he said.

A report filed last year by the Easton Area School District cited that more than 100 families with children were homeless, or housing insecure, at some point during the school year. That’s not including the number of teens or families who go unreported.

According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s 2022 Point in Time Count, there were more than 1,300 homeless families living in eastern Pennsylvania in January 2023.

The report is based on point-in-time information provided to HUD by Continuums of Care (CoCs) as part of their CoC program application process, and consistency of the homeless counts may also vary, the department stated. According to the report, more than 200 families were counted in transitional housing, including Safe Haven, and more than 200 also remained unsheltered.

In Bethlehem, a homelessness study performed by the city in October concluded that the city was short of more than 1,000 affordable housing options it will need to alleviate its own housing crisis.

Since 2019, the city’s seen its rental vacancy rate drop to 2% down from a normalized 7%, which would signal a healthy housing market, said Deputy Director of Community Development Sara Satullo.

The city’s inventory would need to increase by, specifically, 497 very low income units, 243 low income units, 312 market rate units in order for the city’s vacancy rate to recover back to 7%, she said.

“This issue pisses me off because I used to be one of them,” says Allison, referring to the folks she just finished feeding.

She ran away from home when she was 16 years old, she says. It was a miserable and desperate time in her life. She grew up in foster homes sometimes; sometimes she lived in abandoned buildings, cars or on the streets in Allentown. That pattern lasted almost 30 years, she says.

In those sorts of conditions, it’s easy to lose hope, she said.

“They’re my heroes because they’re living in the woods. S—ting in the woods, in the cold and they haven’t killed themselves. They still have hope, and that to me is a hero.”

Most mornings, nowadays, Allison wakes up around 4:30 a.m to pray.

She appreciates the stillness of early mornings, she says, and the peace too — that’s new.

Inside her one-bedroom apartment at Monocacy Tower, she cooks, then packs all her food for the heroes inside the insulated pack-away on her electric scooter. She secures the freshly brewed jug of hot coffee, does a quick switch of her oxygen tube and takes off on her daily mission to deliver fresh blueberry pancakes, hot coffee, hugs and hope.

“It took a long time for me to get to where I’m at,” she says. “I’m thankful to the people who kept me from losing hope. That’s all these folks need, is someone.”

Allison, a Bethlehem resident and former chef, starts her trip to the Towpath in Bethlehem to deliver food to the city’s unhoused residents on Dec. 21, 2023.Glenn Epps

When she gets to the path today, Chris, a tall man with big hands and funny eyes asks, “Are you coming on Christmas?”

“I don’t know yet,” Allison says.

“New Bethany is pulling together a dinner, I think,” says Pete.

“I’m glad to hear that. I’ll bring breakfast then,” says Allison. “I love you guys.”

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Glenn Epps can be reached at gepps@lehighvalleylive.com or glenn_epps_on Twitter.