Homeless, Advocates Quiz Shelter Changes; Board: Law Decrees Burden Is Local

CREST HAVEN – Homelessness was the main topic of the Dec. 11 freeholders’ meeting, but it wasn’t on the agenda.
The rows of the county administration meeting room were filled with men and women, bundled in layers of clothing, unshaven and unkempt.
They were the subject when the focus centered on Code Blue and the homeless, who held onto a notion that the county’s stance against them would change Jan. 1.
Not so, replied the suited freeholder board. Once the official work ended and it was time for the public to speak, Freeholder Director Gerald Thornton looked on the crowd lined up to speak at the podium.
Word had passed to him earlier to expect those men and women.
Due to their number, Thornton stated, “Please, because there are a lot of people, there will be a limit to five minutes when you go to speak.” He further asked that speakers address the board one time. “We don’t want to keep repeating,” he said.
West Cape May resident Hugh Blair broke the ice, as he stated he was a “convener,” a voice for the homeless over the last three years. He stated he had been active with the homeless and with Code Blue.
He asked a series of questions about what would happen to men if women and children were given vouchers for motels on Code Blue nights? “How will homeless children and teenagers be sheltered?” he continued.
“Given the population of the county, 95,000, which is much smaller than many municipalities in New Jersey, it was a mistake for the freeholders to divest Code Blue to municipalities,” Blair said.
Blair said he was “Still holding the county responsible.”
Freeholder Jeffrey Pierson, who oversees the Department of Social Services which administers aid to the homeless, answered Blair.
“We are not divesting our responsibility in assisting with the homeless,” he replied. He added the county had funded $64,000 to house the homeless with funds from the state.
Those funds were “cut off” said Pierson.
“What we have done, we have taken $65,000 out of our budget and worked with municipalities to identify areas in municipalities where they can shelter their people on Code Blue nights,” Pierson continued.
“We do not put people in motels,” Pierson continued. We do not put women and children only; we put families (with children) in motels. There is no separation of children,” he said.
What has changed is that some barrier island municipalities have opted to identify their police stations as warming centers. That is because they are open all night, and are warm.
“It is their (municipality’s) responsibility by law, and we are trying to find a mechanism to make it right,” Pierson said.
Blair asked whom he might talk to about details, and Pierson pointed to Donna Groome, who oversees the Department of Social Services, seated across the room from Blair.
Thornton cited figures collected for the homeless from the County Clerk’s Office from a surcharge on recorded documents. In two years, the fund has $140,000. He added that from November 2017 to 2018 the county spent $101,000 on the homeless.
He added that the county had given $25,000 to Middle Township and $20,000 each to Lower Township and Wildwood from a Social Services block grant to aid those without homes.
How would the homeless know where to go? Blair asked.
Thornton replied the towns would advertise.
Once again, the official Point in Time survey of homeless taken in January of each year, the benchmark that the state uses, revealed 34 homeless countywide.
Pierson recited the numbers from that survey: Wildwood, seven, Lower Township, 10, Middle Township, 13, Belleplain, three, Ocean City, one.
The number drew a low rumble of disbelief among those who are among the homeless, saying there are far more than that, and the board was denying the fact. Pierson said “chronic homelessness has dropped 52 percent.” He said at one time the county had sheltered over 300, but that number was reduced to 109.
Mary Ann Harris, who said she was from Camden, said “I was homeless when I moved to Wildwood.” She said that her adult daughter and 15-year-old grandson were not sheltered.
“I am here to represent the homeless. I know how it feels to sleep in a car,” Harris said.
Groome said that the incident was not a Code Blue incident, but a homeless situation. Sheltering under both is done under different criteria.
Dana Gilroy told the board she was homeless and lives in a car, and that is where she sleeps. She said she works 32 hours every two weeks, and cannot find housing for the money she makes.
She asked if the homeless, who may have warrants for their arrest, might be reluctant to enter a police station warming center, fearing arrest. Pierson replied “They said they would not worry about wants on warrants, at least that is what they say.”
Laughter erupted from some seated. Gilroy said she would “rather freeze to death than go to the (county) jail.”
Mike Hale, a homeless resident, said the homeless “Want to get a room and live like a normal person. It does make a big difference.”
He said that he had received a ticket for sleeping in his car outside a friend’s house. Paying the fine for that offense, he said, would mean the money he and his girlfriend, Gilroy, were saving for room rent would be lessened meaning they would have to remain homeless longer.
Ronald Hedley, who has been homeless for 27 years in the Rio Grande area, said “I sleep in a tent on concrete. They (police) take our tents and slash our tents.”
Thornton said that was the first time he had heard of such action by police.
Sharon Rizzo, 62, said she “is living in a storage locker and I do not feel safe, not human.”
A woman who identified herself only as Tanisha said she resided in Wildwood and Middle Township, and that The Branches in Rio Grande and Cape Hope had been “very helpful. I know a lot of people look down on the homeless, but we are smart and intelligent. We want a job. We want to feel like a human. I hope you guys can end homelessness forever.”
Sam Kelly, an advocate for the homeless addressed the board. He said he had visited the homeless behind the Acme in Court House “a decade ago…I have pictures 5-years-old of tents destroyed, wheelchairs busted up, and moved on. That’s reality.”
He said the homeless “loved it when I walked in with a bag of hamburgers from McDonalds.”
Denise South of Lower Township, with Cape Hope, an advocacy group for the homeless, noted it was her fifth year before the board.
She said the Cape Community Church in Middle Township, has volunteered to become the warming center. A session was to be held there Dec. 17 to certify volunteers at the center for cardiopulmonary resuscitation, a mandate for the centers.
“I want to say end homelessness. Give someone a home. It couldn’t be simpler. The Housing First model was Cape Hope’s dream. We saw it happen in Cumberland County, in Bergen and Hudson.”
She added that the group continued to work toward Housing First.
South said 43 percent of the homeless her group encounters are “not in the woods, not in substance abuse…they are single parents with children who can’t make it because they’ve been abandoned or suffered trauma and cannot make it.”
Thornton reminded the group “When we were searching for warming centers, suddenly this room was filled. They said we were opening a drug center, and we took grief and heat, and we were just looking for warming centers. They said ‘Not in my town.'”
He said there was about $200,000 that the county has that could assist a non-profit group, like the Atlantic City Rescue Mission, or “any non-profit that wants to address this (homeless) situation.”