Atlantic City officials have cleared out a notorious homeless encampment beneath the city's iconic boardwalk, where resourceful vagrants had set up surprisingly well-appointed makeshift shelters complete with heaters, love beds, bootleg beer taps and even a pizza drop-off point.
Jarrod Barnes, the city's health and human services director, described the encampment as an illegal apartment complex and said residents had to crawl 50 yards under the boardwalk before being transported to a shelter. A modern-day “Hooverville.”
“The room had heaters and electricity, a real bed, wooden floors, a place to charge your e-bike and a hot plate,” Burns, 41, told The Washington Post.
Some tenants have even found ways to get pizza and fast food delivered to their rent-free accommodation.
“He called all kinds of places and he was on the showboat. [casino] “I contacted the address and apartment 'U' and they were delivering,” he said.
The subtle instructions will guide the delivery driver to the correct location under the boardwalk.
Burns added that the man, who had been living under the boardwalk for seven years, had set up a workstation and living room in the encampment.
City officials recalled that when they tried to evict a vagrant one morning, the vagrant showed up and told Barnes to come back later because he had “a woman in his bed.”
Another morning, Barnes found a group at the homeless camp cooking fresh eggs in a frying pan, and noticed that in the winter, the heaters run so efficiently that people have to take off their jackets when they go under the boardwalk.
Kenneth Mitchem, who became Atlantic City's social services director last year to tackle homelessness, said he was amazed by the ingenuity of the people he met below the boardwalk.
“These guys are taking advantage of the beer lines that flow from the resort to the Landshark Bar and Grill. [were] “You can soak up beer,” Mitchem says. “You've got a really wide variety of talents.”
But the expanding slums came with their own dangers: A fire in April killed a 67-year-old man who lived in the camp.
The disaster prompted the city's Boardwalk Improvement Group (BIG) to crack down on encampments in the city.
The trail has since been cleaned and fenced off.
Since then, the city has been working to keep the famous promenade free of vagrants.
The city launched its latest effort to clean up the boardwalk in July, sending out crews in waves to speak directly to homeless people in encampments and connect them with housing and mental health services.
During a morning assignment last week, The Post filmed Barnes approaching a distraught woman at one of the campsites, calming her down and convincing her to check into a detox center.
Despite their success, Burns lamented that many people living in the camps refuse his team's help because they are accustomed to sometimes shoddy living and relying on their wits.
As a result, the city council is considering a law banning sleeping in public places.
The review comes after the Supreme Court gave local governments more power to ban homeless camps, and Mitchem stressed the decision was necessary to finally pressure homeless residents to accept the help they clearly need.
“If they're here habitually, if they live here and have a habit and don't want to leave, that gives us grounds to act,” Mitchem said of the proposed new law. “We now have that determination and we also have the enforcement mechanism.”
“This decision removes all excuses,” he added. “That's what we were missing.”
