- Homeless advocates searched areas impacted by the Ocean County wildfire for displaced unhoused individuals.
- While evidence of campsites was found, no people were located in the burned areas.
- Many unhoused individuals in the area rely on monthly payments that are insufficient to cover a full month of motel stays, leading them to seek shelter in wooded areas.
Outreach coordinators from homeless advocacy group Just Believe Inc. searched the smoldering woods in southern Ocean County the afternoon of April 23, looking for any unhoused people who may have been displaced by a massive forest fire that has burned more than 11,500 acres.
“The good news is that we didn’t find anybody at the sites we know about,” said Paul Hulse, president and chief executive officer of Just Believe. “We were worried. I thought, ‘Oh my God,’ we know people are living out there.”
He said the group has been in contact with about eight people who occasionally live in tents in wooded areas off Route 9, between Waretown and Lacey. But a visit to several of several sites by Just Believe outreach coordinators and supervisors found no people in those areas, Hulse said.
Case managers Sheena Horahan and Donna Ryan, and supervisor Staci Laubauskas were among those searching in the Waretown area on the morning of April 23.
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Lacey’s Industrial Park, where fire destroyed at least one building and damaged others, is a site where at least two unhoused people had been staying, Hulse said. The outreach team found a destroyed tent and a jacket during their search of several sites, he added.
In many cases, homeless people spend the majority of the month in local motels, but may wind up sleeping in their cars or in tents in the woods when they run out of money toward the end of the month.
Many unhoused people are receiving Social Security disability payments, regular Social Security or other types of monthly payments, but the money is not enough to pay for an entire month in local motels, he said.
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“The question is, where are they going to stay now?” Hulse said of the homeless. “There are no more woods left for them to stay in.”
Jean Mikle covers Toms River, Seaside Heights and several other Ocean County towns. She’s also passionate about the Shore’s storied music scene. Contact her: @jeanmikle, [email protected].
