Deltacanopy

Posted on 20th Apr 2010 @ 12:24 AM

The number of homeless people in Ocean County appears to be dropping sharply and concentrating in four camps in Lakewood, according to members of a 21-member Homeless Task Force who toured them Thursday.

Where 60 homeless people were counted in the county in a survey done for the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development last year, there were 30 recorded in one done Jan. 29, according to Freeholder Gerry P. Little.

In September, a similar group of representatives of social service agencies, police, nonprofit groups and veterans organizations visited the known homeless camps in the county and counted 35 people, 15 of them identified as being in the country illegally.

Fourteen of them eventually responded to efforts to connect them to the web of social services, receiving housing vouchers that bring them a place to stay and other benefits, according to Jill S. Perez, director of the county's Department of Human Services.

Thursday's Task Force found 21 people in the Lakewood camps. One man was in need of hospital care for stomach problems. Police took him there. Three others started the process of getting mental health evaluations.

Another was a veteran who agreed to reconnect with the services available to him.

"Some of these people have been there for years," Perez said of the people living in tents in four camps in Lakewood, one of them recently created.

Often they will not follow the regulations for programs that can help them and drop out of them, she said.

The camp dwellers include whites, blacks and Latinos, both male and female, some of them living in donated tents outfitted with donated equipment worth thousands of dollars, Little said.

Perez said some advocates for the homeless set up the shelters, then "recruit" people to live in them.

Two of the camps are near Main Street in Lakewood, one flying the Mexican flag and allegedly housing illegal aliens.

Others are off Cedar Bridge Avenue, including one recently established where 17 tents and 10 people were located.