Toms River Councilman Urges Ocean Towns To Help Their Homeless

TOMS RIVER, NJ — The unseasonably warm temperatures may make it easy to forget about those who do not have permanent housing. But with the days getting shorter and winter coming, those who are homeless in Ocean County will be searching for ways to protect themselves from the cold and bad weather.

It's a problem that Toms River Councilman Terrance Turnbach has been on a mission to address in Toms River and in the county, which is the only one in the state without any form of transitional housing.

On Nov. 1, the Code Blue program kicked into effect for the 2020-2021 winter season. When the temperature is anticipated to drop to 35 degrees or below at night, towns with 10 or more people who do not have housing are supposed to provide emergency shelter from the elements.

It's a duty that other Ocean County towns are failing to fulfill, Turnbach said Tuesday night at the Township Council meeting.

"Last year, only Toms River and Lakewood had Code Blue shelters," Turnbach said. Toms River's Code Blue center is operated at Riverwood Park by volunteers with Just Believe Inc., a nonprofit that helps homeless people transition out into housing, jobs and self-sustainability.

Lakewood's shelter was at the Lakewood Community Center, but the Center has since been sold, so now, the Toms River center is the only emergency shelter in the county when the weather turns bitter.

"This is simply unacceptable," Turnbach said.

Beyond the issue of every town with a homeless population being required to provide shelter, there's a bigger problem: lack of space.

Last year, the Toms River and Lakewood sites provided shelter for 50 to 60 people per night each. The Code Blue season finished in the early weeks of the coronavirus pandemic, and the pandemic wasn't a significant factor as the weather warmed up in mid-March.

Now, social distancing and the closure of the Lakewood Community Center means the capacity to help has been significantly reduced.

"Toms River has always welcomed people from other towns," Turnbach said, "but with COVID we won’t be able to sustain that."

He said their are at least six towns that have double-digit numbers of homeless, according to the 2019 Point In Time count of the homeless in New Jersey.

Toms River ha the highest number of people without shelter at 87. Lakewood had 50, Seaside Heights had 49, Brick had34, and Point Pleasant Beach, Beachwood and Seaside Park had 10 people without shelter, according to the Point In Time count.

Turnbach is hoping officials and citizens in those towns will join Toms River in efforts to convince the Ocean County Board of Freeholders to address the problem.

"Code Blue only runs November to March," he said. "This is just a bandaid."

"Housing insecurity is not a partisan issue," Turnbach, a Democrat said, noting that it was state Sen. Robert Singer and state Assemblyman Greg McGuckin, both Republicans, who sponsored a change to the Code Blue law that set the temperature at 35 degrees, increasing it from 32 degrees. "This is something our county should be proud of, not something we should ignore."

"I'm calling upon the other 32 municipalities to provide for the homeless in their communities, to step up and do their part for the homeless in their community," Turnbach said, and to press the county freeholders to open a shelter to help on a countywide basis.

"The freeholders' failure to lead doesn't mean towns should follow suit," he said. "Until we get the county to move on a transitional housing center, Code Blue is all we have," Turnbach said.

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