Easton defends homeless camp cleanup after video draws scrutiny online

EASTON, Pa. — A video of Easton public works crews clearing a homeless encampment off Elm and 12th Street drew more than 240 reactions and 160 comments on Facebook after it was posted April 10, prompting city officials to respond with what they said was missing context about the weeks of outreach that preceded the cleanup.

The video, captioned “getting rid of the homeless camp” and posted anonymously to the Everything EASTON Facebook group, showed Public Works employees standing alongside skidloaders and dump trucks at the edge of a wooded area where several unhoused individuals had been living for months.

Easton City Councilman Frank Pintabone said the video left out that context entirely.

“The original video,” Pintabone said, “it wasn’t much context. Our residents have a right to know the truth. I don’t want the public thinking that, if you become homeless, or you or somebody you love becomes down on their luck, the city is going to treat you less than and dispose of you. That’s not what we do.”

Pintabone said two unhoused individuals had been living at the site for several months before four or five others joined them about two months ago. By the time crews arrived to clean up the area, he said, the site had already been abandoned for nearly three weeks — some residents had accepted help and left, and the rest had moved on their own.

“About two and a half weeks ago, a few individuals did accept help and left,” Pintabone wrote in a statement posted to his Facebook page. “The remaining individuals ultimately abandoned the site. What you are seeing now is the cleanup of that area. Please know that every individual was given multiple opportunities and access to support services.”

The city’s outreach to unhoused residents is delivered through the Community Advocate Program, launched in July 2023 following the Ferry Street fire, which destroyed 10 homes and displaced 32 residents.

Community Advocate Kristen Cooper, hired by the Easton Police Department in the fire’s aftermath, has since expanded her role to working with the city’s unhoused population alongside Circle Patrol Officer Jeff Crosson.

At a City Council meeting on Feb. 25, Cooper and Crosson presented data showing the city had 11 actively homeless individuals in 2025, with 39 in transient or unstable housing.

They also presented data on outcomes following the department’s outreach: the average number of calls made by an individual to police decreased in the 90 days following the intervention, with only 19 percent generating another call.

Cooper described Crosson as functioning more like a case manager than a patrol officer, saying many of the people he works with list him as their emergency contact.

“That’s the biggest thing that I do,” Crosson said at the meeting. “I make relationships with everybody. They all know my name. I know where to find them all: on the railroad tracks, in the woods, driving the bike, everywhere that I can find them.”

Crosson described his approach as one of patience, waiting for the right moment before pressing someone to accept help.

“You don’t want to hear it every day,” Crosson said, referencing daily check-ins. “But after you build a relationship, you can see when his or her behavior has changed. Okay, now is when I’m going to start really pushing to see if we can help people out.”

Cooper said that commitment doesn’t end at the door of a treatment facility.

“It doesn’t stop with getting them to a treatment facility,” she said. “Officer Crosson will drive them to wherever their facility is, and we will also follow up. We have an individual that calls Officer Crosson multiple times a week to give him updates on his life, and he’s housed, and he lives elsewhere now.”

Still, Pintabone said outreach has limits, and that mental illness and addiction can cloud people’s judgment about accepting help.

“A lot of people have mental health issues, a lot of people have drug addiction, and it clouds them from making smart decisions on their behalf,” he said. “You know, these are people that, for one reason or another, are down on their luck, and we’re going to do what we can to help them. And unfortunately, a lot of them don’t want the help. They’re not ready for the help, and there’s nothing we can do about that.”

“Our staff is over there, trying to work with all the people. What do you need? Drug help? Mental health help? Housing help? Like, what do you need?” he said. “And they kept turning it down.”

He said the city would offer resources to anyone who asked, but couldn’t compel anyone to take them.

“Unfortunately, we can’t legally force adults to take resources that are being offered,” Pintabone said. “They’re not ready to deal with their mental health issues; they’re not in a position where they know they can help themselves.”

A 2021 study by UCLA economist Elior Cohen found that participation in long-term housing assistance programs significantly reduces the likelihood of returning to homelessness and produces broader benefits, including lower emergency room use, reduced criminal activity, and higher employment rates, compared to short stays in emergency shelters.

The study found those results were driven almost entirely by intensive, longer-term intervention.

Access to permanent housing is itself a challenge in Easton. Safe Harbor Easton, a transitional shelter on Bushkill Drive, houses up to 50 residents and pairs each with an in-house case manager working toward permanent placement.

Pintabone said the shelter’s rules, including sobriety requirements, meant some individuals wouldn’t consider it.

“A lot of them don’t want to take advantage of the shelters because there are rules,” Pintabone said. “You can’t drink, you can’t do drugs. You have to be there at a certain time. And so they want to live out and be left alone.”

Commenters on the original video were less forgiving of the city’s position. One wrote that Easton hadn’t built a homeless shelter because “there was no money coming out of it.” Another said, “Imagine all you have in life is a tent and a blanket and people in power feel that’s too much and need to take it from you.”

Pintabone pointed to several recent cases as examples of the city’s outreach connecting with people.

A woman walked into City Hall recently and asked if she could still get help. She could, he said, and the city connected her with services. Others reached out for help finding birth certificates or Social Security cards so they could find work, or to locate family members they could live with.

The city paid for one man’s bus ticket after he said he was from Portland, Oregon, and wanted to go home.

Pintabone also noted that homelessness in Easton is often temporary. He pointed to the recent Hotel Hampton fire in downtown Easton, which displaced 67 residents.

“As you guys saw, when Hotel Hampton emptied out, we saw people from all over — low-income, single apartments — that could appear homeless,” Crosson said at the February meeting. “They’re not.”

The observation comes against a backdrop of acute housing pressure. Easton faces a shortage of about 9,000 housing units, according to the Lehigh Valley Planning Commission.

As of April 8, Pintabone said, all but one of the displaced hotel residents had been placed in new accommodations in Nazareth, Slatington, Bethlehem and elsewhere. The city is working to place the remaining resident, a military veteran, in a veterans’ facility.

Pintabone said Easton also sees a transient population — unhoused individuals who pass through for weeks or months before moving on.

“What we’re noticing is that a lot of these individuals that are unhoused in other parts — in New Jersey, New York, up north, California — these people travel,” Pintabone said. “They might be in Easton for a month or two and then go somewhere else. Some people choose to stay because, again, there are resources here.”

Pintabone cited the city’s resources as a draw, including the county Assistance Office and Social Security Administration, food pantries, resident clothing and food donations, and warming centers that run from November through April.

“We offer resources,” Pintabone said. “We don’t push these people out, we don’t look at these people as being less than.”

He acknowledged that the encampment itself had been a problem for the surrounding community and for the people living there.

“You see the pictures. It wasn’t good for the community, it wasn’t good for the unhoused population that were staying there,” he said. “There are also health concerns — diseases can potentially be transferred in conditions like that. But we didn’t just show up this morning like, ‘surprise!’ We had conversations about being cleaned up, doing this, doing that.”

“Listen, that’s just it, man,” Pintabone said. “We truly care about all of our residents, whether you’re a wealthy, high-earning individual or you’re unhoused. That’s Easton. Easton takes care of everybody.”