Cumberland County Needs a Second Shelter
By Albert B. Kelly
As much as I hate to say it, I’ve resigned myself to the fact that there will be a certain amount of homelessness in my community. That’s not to say that I passively lay down and accept this state of things, but it is to say that no matter how hard we try there will be a certain percentage of residents who cycle through homelessness as they battle mental health issues, substance abuse, and whatever else comes with trying to survive once your life unravels.
While I had prepared myself over the years of my administration to see a certain amount of homelessness, there is simply no way that I was prepared for what I am now seeing on our streets each and every day. I say that with a mixture of anger, sadness, compassion, and disgust. People can speculate as to the why, but for my money what we’re seeing on the street is the fallout from the pandemic mixed in with bail reform and limited treatment options.
With the arrival of the pandemic, it was all about isolation and social distancing, two things that are impossible to do in our jails and prisons where people are stacked in with one another spending most of their time in common areas circulating amongst the general population of the facility. In such “congregant settings”, a respiratory illness such as SARS-CoV-2 basically spreads like wildfire to all who live or work in that setting.
With that in mind, SARS-CoV-2 was a ticket out of jail or prison for a good many people who otherwise would not have been released. I sat in on a good many calls over the course of the pandemic listening to officials go on about how carefully the inmates would be vetted and screened before release and while it sounded good, many remain on the streets and they’ve now become our problem.
In the immediacy of the pandemic, releasing these individuals couldn’t be avoided because if they’re not released, Covid spreads and incarceration becomes a death sentence. While I understand the reasons why, knowing doesn’t change the fact that many of those released back into society are plagued by mental health issues, addictions, and a level of instability that almost guarantees they remain on the streets.
In addition to the pandemic, which simply accelerated things, our efforts at bail reform also contributes to the tsunami of homelessness around us. What I mean to say is that those who would have likely been locked up prior to bail reform are also out on the streets with many untreated issues. Yet I remind myself that that’s the price we must pay to ensure that otherwise stable people who brush up against the criminal justice system for relatively minor offenses, don’t join the ranks of the unstable because, lacking bail money, they sit in jail and lose their jobs and apartments.
The bottom line is that there are far too many desperate and sick people on our streets at all hours, in all conditions, doing all manner of things to stay alive, hustle a dollar, feed their addictions, or silence their demons and they’re scaring the heck out of people.
With that in mind, Cumberland County needs to consider placing a second homeless shelter on the western side of the county. The folks running the shelter on Mays Landing Rd do a good job but they need more capacity in more places, a deeper bench with more investment. For my money, the former Juvenile Detention Center, now used for storage, could and should be repurposed for use as a satellite homeless shelter. In addition, we’ll seek partners such as Inspira for the skills and the many clinical resources they can contribute.
Code Blue has its place, but Code Blue is what you do when you have to do something and you can’t afford to get in too deep or you simply don’t want to. But I don’t think we’ll have that option for too much longer. At this point, for all I know we’re standing at the edge of a wave that’s only going to grow larger so that the number of people who find themselves joining the ranks of the homeless becomes too overwhelming and too large for us to ignore.