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On Thursday and Friday, a group of volunteers and workers representing a variety of services, coordinated and organized by the Toms River Police Department, visited the camp to talk with the residents and offer assistance, with the goal of encouraging them to leave the site because it is private property.

Staying at the site is not a long-term option, Toms River Police Chief Mitchell Little said.

“There are a number of safety issues,” he said, from health risks for the group to dangers posed by the use of propane and gasoline at the site.

Brigham, who supports the encampment through Destiny’s Bridge, a nonprofit formed several years ago, said the people in the camp have no other options.

“What we need is a shelter,” Brigham said.

Making contact

The Toms River Police Department first started looking into the camp after social media postings by Brigham that raised significant concerns, Little said.

The majority of the people living in the camp are 55 or older, and several are 70 or older, according to statements Brigham has made on social media. Some have significant medical issues, including two women who need supplemental oxygen around the clock, powered by gasoline-fueled generator.

Responding to a medical emergency in the camp would be extremely difficult and would hamper lifesaving efforts because an ambulance would not be able to travel the dirt road to reach the camp.

The camp’s propane, gasoline and generators “all are potential hazards that aren’t regulated,” Little said, and create a fire risk because of what have been very dry conditions in a busy wildfire season across New Jersey until recently.

Severe weather poses an additional risk because the tarp-covered tents provide only so much shelter from storms, strong winds, and extreme heat.

And there’s the matter of the proximity of the high-voltage towers.

“Safety is a JCP&L priority, and we remind the public to keep away from powerlines and energized electrical equipment and at least 30 feet away from all JCP&L infrastructure for their own safety and protection,” said Chris Hoenig, a spokesman for Jersey Central Power & Light.

After investigating to pinpoint the camp’s location, Little pulled together a group of people to reach out to the residents and on Thursday, made their first trek to the camp. There were caseworkers with the Ocean County Department of Human Services, the Board of Social Services, the Ocean County Health Department, and Ocean County Senior Services. There were representatives of the Affordable Housing Alliance, Habcore, The Mental Health Association, and Bright Harbor Health Care with its On P.O.I.N.T. program.

Also providing support were Soldier On, Just Believe Inc., and Helping Assist with Melis, along with Toms River police and firefighters, Little said.

The needs of those in the camp area are as individual as each person’s fingerprints, Little said. There is no one-size-fits-all answer.

“That’s why we have to bring as many solutions as possible,” he said.

But Little is mindful of what has happened in the past, most notably with Tent City in Lakewood, where bulldozers plowing through the site to shut it down drew national attention.

That’s why he brought together groups and agencies to try to find solutions to get the camp’s residents into housing.

“We didn’t want to come in like an arrest force, like we’re going to rip them out,” Little said.

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Instead, the various representatives will be making repeated trips to the camp to talk with residents and try to convince as many as possible to see what alternatives might be available. They are being offered the opportunity to come out, speak with caseworkers, get health screenings and information, and then going back to the camp if that is what they wanted.

“It’s about building trust,” Little said. “That’s why we’re going to do it in a multiphase approach and keep going out there.”

It’s an effort that was not well received on Friday. Caseworkers from the Board of Social Services and volunteers with Just Believe drove to the camp for a second day of outreach, and were met with resistance from Brigham and some of the residents.

Brigham took exception to the presence of Just Believe, the organization that has been operating the Code Blue program in Toms River in the winter and makes outreach to homeless residents throughout Ocean County the rest of the year. Just Believe, led by executive director Paul Hulse, works with homeless residents on an individual basis, providing support to help them get on their feet. Those who are homeless as a result of addiction are helped into recovery programs, and those who are homeless because of financial circumstances get assistance to help them build a bridge to a permanent future.

“We’re just here to offer services,” Hulse said during a tense exchange at the center of the camp. “We’ll take you out and bring you back.”

One woman, younger than most of the residents, said another man needed an inhaler. When Hulse offered to bring the man to the county’s Mobile Health Unit for screening and then return him to the camp, the woman snapped at Hulse.

“He just needs an inhaler. Just bring him an inhaler,” she said angrily.

“They have to check him out so they can give him the right medication,” Hulse said, as the woman waved him off. “He’s not leaving,” she said.

“What services can you offer? Can you guarantee them a year of housing?” Brigham said testily. Hulse replied that they can connect the residents who want to explore options with people to help them.

“I’ve been trying to get help since I was 17,” the woman said.

“We have everything we need here,” Brigham said. “Just leave us alone.”

“If you go with them, tell them you want a year of housing,” Brigham said to one man who decided to accept the offer of a ride to talk with Ocean County Social Services.

No other options

The camp is organized to provide a community atmosphere. The center of the camp, where the road access connects, includes a propane grill, a generator, a shower tent, and tables. A large pile of bagged garbage sits in the middle. An array of portable solar panels aims to generate power to meet the residents’ needs eventually, Brigham has said on social media.

A tarp covers what appears to be a pile of supplies, and there are chickens wandering around. Brigham purchased them as chicks, with the goal of using them to provide fresh eggs and so they can help reduce the tick population — a significant problem in the tall grasses and weeds that ring the camp.

Tucked back by one tent, a small cross is stuck in the ground. It’s unclear what the cross honors, though a resident of the camp died recently. The woman suffered a heart attack; Brigham said she was not at the camp when it happened, but had called one of the other residents to say she was not feeling well and was going to the hospital.

But homeless people living outside are at risk. Phil Studnicky of Shore Life Church, who volunteers with Just Believe, said he has found homeless people dead in their tents or at their campsites on multiple occasions. It’s part of what pushes him to try to get people off the street.

“It’s no way to live,” Studnicky said.

Brigham agrees, but said the camp exists because people have run out of options.

“I know some say they like living outside,” Brigham said. “But every single person is here because they have no other options.”

“There’s no shelter for them to go to, and I’m getting calls for help every day,” he said. “They’ve got community here. They’ve got food. It’s a basic human right to have a place to lay your head.”

Mike, Kevin and Morrow

Thursday’s outreach did convince some of the residents to seek assistance outside the camp. Among them were Mike and his son, Kevin, along with Morrow, who at 78 is one of the oldest residents in the camp.

Morrow, who was dressed in a coral polo shirt and khaki knee-length cargo pants, said he has an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and worked “buying out companies”, decided to accept the offer to go to the Ocean County Board of Social Services to see what benefits are available.

“I like it out here,” he said, insisting it was his choice to live at the camp and declining to discuss how he wound up without permanent housing. “My mind is focused somewhere else now,” he said, as he made notes in perfect penmanship in an appointment book on his lap.

Mike can pinpoint when he officially became homeless.

“It will be a year and a month on the 27th,” said Mike, 57, whose shoulders sagged under a green U.S. Marine Corps T-shirt with the title “STAFF SGT” on the back that hung loosely on his thin frame. Mike had been the caretaker for a fellow Marine who lived in Cedar Glen Lakes. That man died in November 2020, and Mike and his family continued to live in the house until they were forced out.

“I was paying the utilities and the cable,” Mike said, but they could not stay because he was not the owner.

Mike served in the Marines from 1986 to 1992 and was deployed to Cambodia for a year and later served in Desert Storm, in Iraq and Afghanistan. After his enlistment ended, he went to work in construction as a framer.

“I have a whole book in storage of houses I designed,” he said. “I was a framer-architect.”

He built a life with Lisa, 60, including the couple’s sons, Kevin, 37, and Kyle, 33. They also have a grandson, KJ, Kyle’s son with his girlfriend, Amanda. KJ turns 7 in September.

A car accident in 2013 that left him with a broken neck upended their lives.

“See my scar?” he says, tracing the line on his neck that runs from the base of his skull to the chain holding his dog tags. The broken neck wasn’t his only injury; leg injuries left Mike unable to walk with a normal gait. He is unable to work construction as a result.

Mike tried to get approved for disability but was denied because he didn’t have enough work credits, he said.

He and Kevin wound up living in a tent in Riverwood Park, Mike said, until they were forced to leave because camping in the park is not permitted. That’s when someone recommended he get in touch with Brigham, and he and Kevin wound up in the camp.

Kevin said he wants to work. “It’s hard to get a job without an address,” Kevin said.

Lisa was not with him because she is in the hospital after suffering a brain aneurysm.

Mike and Kevin were accepting the offer of temporary housing from Just Believe, and were working with the Board of Social Services and with the Affordable Housing Alliance’s Rapid Rehousing Program to try to find a long-term solution.

Studnicky, who spends his days with Just Believe delivering food and checking in on the people who have accepted help, said he wants to make sure Mike is helped permanently.

“I gotta get you outta here, off the ground,” Studnicky said as the van bumped its way back to the main road. “Hopefully you’ll never walk the Green Mile ever again.”

From homeless to hopeful

“I was where you are.” Ted, who was driving the van, spoke up to share his story with Mike. “Six months ago I was homeless. Now I’m working and I have a permanent place to live.”

Ted works for Just Believe, driving the organization’s van to deliver food and outreach to people who are homeless. He and Studnicky, who goes by the nickname “Cousin Philly,” cover hundreds of miles a week all over Ocean County.

Ted says he became homeless last year due to “bad relationships, bad choices and a little bit of bad luck.”

He found his way to the Code Blue shelter at Riverwood Park, and Just Believe’s group of volunteers and connections with organizations turned his life around, he said.

“I didn’t even have an ID,” Ted said. “They (Just Believe) definitely did more for me in the last six months in a more consistent way than anyone in my life. Their only condition is you have to follow through.”

“When you’re down and out like that, you lose hope,” he said. The support from Just Believe not only gave him hope but helped rebuild his self-worth. He shares his story freely because he wants others to see there’s hope.

“Life doesn’t have to be so down,” Ted said.

Unaffordable housing

One of the biggest complications with helping people out of homelessness in Ocean County is finding affordable housing.

A shortage of affordable housing that existed before the COVID-19 pandemic has been exacerbated by the sharp rise in the cost of rentals throughout the area.

The median rent for a two-bedroom apartment in the Toms River area is nearly $2,300 per month, according to Zillow. Home rentals are no better, with a median of more than $3,000.

“There are people we work with, people who have jobs, who want to move into permanent housing but they can’t afford the rent,” said Peter Boynton of the Rapid Rehousing Program, part of the Affordable Housing Alliance.

Jerry Zucker, who works for the Affordable Housing Alliance, said one of the residents in the Toms River encampment had lived at Surf and Stream Campground in Manchester, which was closed down last year. The site had been eyed by a developer for a 245-unit apartment complex, but Ocean County and Manchester collaborated to purchase the site and protect it as open space.

In doing so, the residents of the campground were forced to leave.

“It was the only place she could afford,” Zucker said. The woman received $1,000 a month in disability and the rent was $600. “Where do you put someone who’s on $1,000 a month?”

Zucker said there’s another issue that has cut into availability of affordable housing has been towns that have let affordable housing leases lapse.

“They signed 30-year leases but those leases are not being renewed,” Zucker said. That means once-affordable units are rented at market value, or the buildings are torn down and replaced with modern, high-end units. And many corporate rental properties are requiring tenants to show they have income that is triple the cost of the rent.

Even if the rent might be affordable, people don’t always have the resources they need up front to pay first and last month’s rent and a security deposit of a month or month-and-a-half of the rent.

Often the advice is for people to move out of the area, but that requires resources as well.

“If you don’t have a nest egg, what do you do?” Zucker said.

What about a shelter? Pros, cons, concerns

“We need a shelter,” Brigham said Friday. “It’s a human right to have a place to lay your head.”

Multiple groups have advocated for a shelter over the last 30 years in Ocean County, the only county in New Jersey with no transitional housing. Ocean County spends millions each year on short-term emergency housing, including hotel stays, but until earlier this year when the county established the Homeless Trust Fund had done little beyond the short-term.

Zucker said a transitional housing facility provides organizations the opportunity to work with and follow up with people who seek assistance — a task that is exponentially more difficult when someone is living in a spot in the woods.

Little said one of the concerns is that if Toms River were to fund a shelter that it would shoulder all of the responsibility for people who are homeless in every town in the county.

“If other towns had shelters, it would be different, because everyone would be doing their fair share,” Little said.

The encampment currently includes people who had lived at the camp when it was located in Howell prior to the pandemic, but a developer bought the property and forced Brigham to move.

Some people don’t feel safe living in a shelter, several people said, and others don’t like the rules that go along with living in a shelter.

“Some like living outside (where they aren’t bound by rules) but come inside during the winter,” Little said. “Then they go back outside as soon as it warms up. It’s a vicious cycle.”

In addition, there are endless arguments over where a shelter should be placed.

“People don’t want it in their backyard,” Little said, “but it makes more sense to have it where people can walk to the services they need” to get out of homelessness.

“There’s this view of the homeless that we grew up with in the ’70s,” Boyton said, where the homeless were always portrayed as being dirty, drug-addicted or alcoholics, or suffering from significant mental illness.”

The reality of homelessness is different, the groups said. While addiction and mental illness affect some, there are families that find themselves with nowhere to go simply because they cannot afford the rent or because one catastrophe upended their lives.

One thing they all agree on: Living in the woods is not safe and not a way to live.

‘They can’t stay where they are’

Little said the police department and the coalition of organizations that visited the Toms River encampment Thursday and Friday will continue going out to talk with the residents and offer to try to help, and try to convince them to leave.

“The bottom line is they can’t stay where they are,” Little said. “If they stay they are trespassing.”

There is no timeframe for the removal of the camp, he said; “All we’re talking about is a reasonable timeframe.”

“After a reasonable time and after we’ve exhausted all the resources, they will be forced to leave,” Little said. When pressed, he said a reasonable time might be a few weeks, depending on how things go.

So far there have been some who have willingly left the camp, Little said. In addition to Mike and Kevin, a young couple and their child left, and another person asked for assistance and was slated to leave over the weekend.

There were others who seemed receptive on Thursday but were no longer receptive on Friday, after Brigham came to the camp, Little said.

“There are some people who want to leave and go cross country,” he said. “We’re hopeful that everyone sees the writing on the wall and starts the ball moving.”

And if that doesn’t happen?

A forced removal “would be the absolute last resort,” Little said.

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