 TRENTON — Debra White, the state’s new “homelessness czar,†has been on the job since September, but Tuesday state officials announced the “first-ever coordinated resource effort with the City of Atlantic City, nonprofit organizations, and healthcare providers is underway.â€
The plan is to end chronic homelessness through collaboration, enhanced services and housing over the next three years, the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs said in a news release.
“Atlantic City faces distinct challenges in addressing homelessness, including seasonal employment that affects housing stability and a concentration of social services that attract people in need from across the region,†Gov. Phil Murphy said in the release.
White, of Atlantic City, was hired at a salary of $110,000, a state spokesperson has said. She has a master’s degree in business administration from Rosemont College and a bachelor’s degree in accounting from LaSalle University.
People are also reading…
Her previous job was director of business services for the Chelsea Economic Development Corp., a nonprofit that works to improve the quality of life in the Chelsea neighborhood of the city.
“We can get to a point where we’re either preventing homelessness before it occurs or addressing it so quickly that a person’s homelessness is very brief and nonrecurring,†DCA Commissioner Jacquelyn A. Suárez said in the release.
Suarez said White will use real-time data tracking, stakeholder engagement and partnership, and a “laser focus†to find solutions to homelessness.
Others joining the effort include Collaborative Support Programs of New Jersey, AtlantiCare, Jewish Family Service of Atlantic & Cape May Counties, and the Atlantic County Continuum of Care.
Mayor Marty Small Sr. said the city has been working hard to address homelessness, and has made some strides, but looks forward to this partnership with the DCA and others.
In 2023, the city and its Boardwalk Improvement Group began efforts to make visitors and residents feel safer on the Boardwalk.
That effort included starting a homeless outreach initiative that sends social workers out daily to engage with the unhoused.
BIG was started by the city, state and Casino Association of New Jersey, Small said at an October 2023 news conference.
“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 during the news conference.
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 at the time. “I say it all the time, it’s Greyhound therapy.â€
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.
About 3 in 10 people contacted by city workers actually want to be helped, said Kenneth Mitchem, city director of community services. 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.
A July news conference updated the public on what the city was doing to address safety on the Boardwalk after a series of damaging fires there, some of which were started by homeless encampments.
“We’ve brought all the departments of the city together,†Fire Chief and Emergency Management Coordinator Scott Evans said at the time. “The first time — I’ve been here 37 years — in my memory that we have every single department and outside agencies together working from a single playbook.â€
The fires were threatening the Boardwalk’s future as the city was embarking on a $26 million Boardwalk rebuilding project.
City workers were not only clearing homeless encampments from under the historic structure, they also were clearing encampments citywide, and encouraging those living in them to accept help, officials said then.
The news conference started at New Jersey Avenue and the Boardwalk, between the Ocean and Hard Rock casinos, where public works employees routinely clear up encampments and Health and Human Services employees and police regularly engage with the homeless.
Watching the news conference was “AC Batman†Curtis Douglass Bordley, who said he chooses to be homeless in the summer in Atlantic City, where he dresses as Batman and accepts donations from people in exchange for photos.
“I’ve had life-and-death encounters,†Bradley said of being attacked while on the street. “I’ve had my jaw wired, been hit in the head with a bike lock.â€
But he said he now sleeps where there are cameras and he feels safer.
