ATLANTIC CITY — As the city continues to deal with homeless people living under and around its iconic Boardwalk, the mayor says the new Boardwalk Improvement Group has been working since early this year to make visitors and residents feel safe there.
BIG was started by the city, state and Casino Association of New Jersey, Mayor Marty Small Sr. said Wednesday during a news conference.
It now includes an internal app called See It, Click It, Fix It, which is shared by all BIG members, so quality-of-life problems can be easily reported to all and addressed.
Small also talked about the city's new homeless outreach initiative that is sending social workers out daily to engage with the unhoused citywide.
"We hired 10 full-time people and a plethora of trucks and other equipment to give us the tools (to succeed)," Small said as he stood on a section of Tennessee Avenue between Atlantic and Pacific avenues.
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It's an area frequented by folks who loiter and panhandle, Small said.
"These people are not 'Atlantic City homeless.' These people just happen to be in Atlantic City," Small said. "I say it all the time, it's Greyhound therapy."
That's a term used to describe other municipalities sending their neediest to Atlantic City on buses for help.
"Why? Because we have supreme social services," Small said.
Kenneth Mitchem, city director of community services, said the homeless outreach program has been running since March. In the past two months it has found permanent housing for 10 formerly homeless individuals, he said, including most recently a woman and her two young children who had been evicted.
About 3 in 10 people contacted by city workers actually want to be helped, Mitchem said. The others decline services.
The effort is funded by Clean and Safe funds, part of the amended casino payment-in-lieu-of-taxes bill, Small said.
He also said he is working with the state to hire a "homeless czar" to work here.
The state would not allow City Council to force the needle exchange to move out of the city, Small said. It also rejected Small's idea to move homeless and other social services to the Ancora Psychiatric Hospital in Winslow Township, Camden County, he said.
At the October City Council meeting, Councilman Bruce Weekes proposed a citywide effort to control the homeless and drug- and alcohol-addicted population that loiters, drinks and uses drugs openly, panhandles and makes visitors and residents feel unsafe.
"If the state isn't willing to relocate social services, it is up to us to focus on enforcement," Weekes said at the council meeting, where he gave a presentation on his proposal.
His plan would be funded through a public-private partnership, he said, of the city and stakeholders such as South Jersey Gas, Atlantic City Electric, the Showboat hotel, the city's casinos and the cannabis consortium.Â
Each would pay an annual fee to hire 36 new staff members dedicated to enforcing ordinances on everything from parking to more serious offenses, Weekes said.
Under his plan, casinos would pay a total of $822,000, the city about $395,000, hotels about $132,000, various utilities and business groups $40,000 to $66,000, with amounts going down to about $20,000 from AtlantiCare.
"We recently made it illegal to be panhandling at drive-in windows or gas pumps," Weekes said at the council meeting, but that ordinance means nothing if it is not enforced.
The unit also would focus on city parks and enforcing noise ordinances in neighborhoods.
"Our house should be clean. Our children deserve to go from Head Start nursery to the library without seeing people shooting up and nodding off," Weekes said.
Small said the city's effort is a partnership with social service agencies that are working on similar efforts, such as the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority's Special Improvement Division, the state Department of Community Affairs, the casino association and groups like Jewish Family Service, Volunteers of America, Hope One Atlantic County and NJ Rise.
