LAKEWOOD – The locks say it all.
The center of the municipality’s network, where for more than 4 years the fifth largest municipality in the state housed its homeless people on colder days, is guarded and closed, just when it most desires.
Without fanfare at the end of summer, well ahead of this week’s below-zero temperatures, the center was closed. Mayor Raymond Coles told reporters it would be closed because the construction “is in terrible condition. “
He didn’t allow a reporter to enter the Fourth Street facility because, he said, it was “dangerous. “Wooden planks cover the facade of the building; through a side window, tables and chairs are visible. On a recent day, the lighting fixtures were still on.
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Nothing in the air comforts, but it would do so in a bloody climate, in a city where nearly 3 out of 10 people live in poverty, approximately 3 times new Jersey’s 9. 2% rate in 2019, and where many expect the number that is emerging amid the economic damage caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
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In the absence of emergency services instead, Coles stated that the city would place homeless people in hotel rooms on “Blue Code days” when temperatures drop below 35 degrees in Lakewood and Toms River; The threshold for government intervention in New Jersey is 32 degrees.
But with temperatures expected to drop to 29 degrees on Tuesday and 24 degrees on Wednesday, according to national weather forecasts, it’s a little transparent where homeless people in Lakewood would expect the cold.
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Michael McNeil, director of Solutions To End Poverty, a nonprofit housing organization working with the municipality, told reporters Monday that the organization is still looking to align mandatory hotel rooms. motel “came to the rescue”.
Under the New Jersey Blue Code Act, county emergency control offices will need to coordinate with municipalities where at least 10 other homeless people have been registered. In Lakewood, the number of homeless people is estimated to be more than five times that number.
Officials should expand consistent Blue Code alert plans and dedicate a facility to space other people at night if temperatures fall below legal parameters.
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Coles told reporters that the municipality ‘intensifies’ in favor of homeless people chronically and that it depends on motel rooms, for up to 3 months, while connecting homeless people to social facilities.
To do so, he said, the municipality will depend on the budget of an affordable housing trust, created to be transferred to Lakewood for the first time this year. The fund comes from the rights the canton collects over ad development.
Lakewood took advantage of the same fund for tenants to pay their pre-pandemic salary.
Coles did not know how much the municipality expects to spend to space homeless people in motel rooms, nor did he reveal which motels would participate to the provisional extent.
Lakewood and Ocean County also have a “shared agreement” in which the municipality receives $25,000 according to the year for the lack of a heated shelter. It is not known how these budgets would be allocated in the absence of a genuinely heated shelter.
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Tracy Maksel, director of the Ocean County Office of Human Services, told reporters in an email that the county had recently been informed that Lakewood no longer owned the central network and that “the Fourth Street facility would not be available for the 2020 2021 Code Blue season as a warm-up site. “
“We also continue to use the emergency assistance protocol for overnight placements in hotels/motels if warm-up centers are full, or for other special cases where accommodation of choice is required,” Maksel wrote.
“If there are nonprofits (including local governments) that want to provide an area for a warm-up center, the county is looking for opportunities to improve the network of services available. “
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The mayor said McNeil, director of the nonprofit housing group, runs the municipality’s makeshift program. McNeil said he didn’t know how much cash would be in place to place homeless people in hotels.
However, he admitted that he saw how this would be feasible in the long run.
“We didn’t have a budget for that, yet we had cash that maybe just some other people (above) for a time, like 3 months, you know,” he said. “But we may not do that with everyone. It is not possible. “
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McNeil said his firm placed nine other people in hotels on an unsurpoverned weather alert on October 30 for remains of up to six nights. Code Blue’s official “season” runs from November 1st to April 1st.
The committee of Isaac Akerman, the municipality’s liaison officer for the municipality’s network center, said the municipality’s municipal director is looking for a solution “so that we can offer anything else. “
Contacted by phone, Lakewood City Manager Patrick Donnelly said Monday that he may not speak because he was on a convention call and were emailing questions to him, but did not respond promptly to the email.
On a phone call Tuesday, Donnelly said the municipality had covered 28 hotel rooms, 20 at Seaside and 8 in Lakewood, to locate other homeless people for 3 months.
The city administrator can simply say how much it would cost, however, he said the $25,000 the municipality receives from the county would be used to cover expenses.
“The money we get from the county will run out,” he said. And if we go beyond that, we’ll spend it to make sure other people have housing. “
Donnelly said that help can go to Lakewood City Hall and ask the police for help. He also said the municipality had employees, as well as policemen, who walked the streets to raise awareness of homeless people.
“They will be contacted by others who can help them find a position and enroll in this program,” he said.
In 2018, the Lakewood Community Center assets Rabbi Shlomo Chaim Kanarek, who runs several yeshivas in the city and owns the assets adjacent to the center of the network, where a bustling grocery mall has remodeled this downtown neighborhood.
Under a land swap agreement, the municipality gained a lot near the Toms River border, where a new network center was intended to be built, while Rabbi Kanarek would offload the assets where the existing network center is located.
It would be razed in favor of a parking lot.
Akerman said a new network center was not built because the land the municipality earned in exchange for Kanarek is in a coastal area, and claimed that a state permit is required to begin construction, in accordance with the Coastal Facility Review Act.
Akerman’s required approval from the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection “has been delayed for a while. “
Meanwhile, the construction remains empty.
The annual homeless census conducted through the nonprofit Monarch Housing revealed that Lakewood had at least 53 homeless people in “total homelessness. “
It is the third largest homeless population in Ocean County, according to Monarch data. In Tomoms River, there were 101 homeless people overall, while Seaside Heights was 91, according to the organization’s data.
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The closure of the Lakewood Community Center has tested the Code Blue program in Toms River, Paul Hulse, founder of the nonprofit Just Believe Inc. Ocean County and who runs the Code Blue program at the county headquarters.
“The closure of this Lakewood Community Center places a burden on Code Blue’s effort in the county, that’s for sure,” he said. “We don’t know what it’s going to look like until we get into the season and the temperatures are already dropping this week. “
Hulse said his homeless shelter can accommodate up to 30 other people per night and that on an average night there were another 25 people, there is no blue code in place.
“Are you going to (Lakewood) put 35 to 40 more people in motels every time there’s a blue code?” he said. “It makes it more complex to help others get out of their homelessness if they don’t have a center where they can access those resources. “
McNeil said his workplace seeks to provide partnership systems to provide social services to those in need, as well as locate hotels that have rooms for others to take refuge in.
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State Sen. Bob Singer, who sponsored the law to activate the Blue Code state-round when temperatures reach 32 degrees instead of 25 degrees, said putting others in hotels during the COVID pandemic shows that the municipality is “doing at least something. “
“But there has to be a more permanent solution than just putting other people in hotel rooms and motel rooms,” Singer said. “There has to be a solution for the whole county and not just a municipality moving towards those other quiet people. “
Lakewood officials say those who need refuge in The Days of the Blue Code in the municipality call the Office of Community Development at 732-364-2500.
The only Code Blue shelter in Ocean County in Toms River offers a pick-up service. To request this service, call 732-300-7126 or 386-315-0168.
For help, others can contact the homeless helpline by calling 2-1-1 or 1-877-652-1148. Information can also be found on the website nj211. org.
Gustavo Martínez Contreras covers Lakewood. Contact him at gmartinez@gannettnj. com or 732-643-4061