Camden County Plans To Shut Down Tent City
Camden County New Jersey has announced plans to shut down a tent city encampment that has stood in Camden for over the past year. Fifty people currently live there, supporting themselves through ties with community members who offer aid and support, and looking out for one another.
Camden officials state they will use federal stimulus funds to provide social service support to those living in the tent city. The amount of aid being offered, and how the relocations will impact residents remains unclear.
The Philadelphia Inquirer ran a feature story today about the plans to move out these homeless people living under I-676.
"Though advocates for the homeless have attended monthly Camden Tent City Task Force meetings since the fall, some who work with the Tent City community question Camden County's approach.
"Where do they go? A storefront? An abandominium?" asked Hal Miller, homeless coordinator for Volunteers of America Delaware Valley. There are more than 1,000 abandominiums, slang for vacant houses, in Camden. A man died Tuesday morning in a fire in one such building.
Miller said several Tent City residents whom he visits regularly do not qualify for public housing because they have felony drug convictions. Others have previous evictions, bad credit, or intractable drug problems.
"You kick them out of homelessness to more homelessness," Miller said."
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