TOMS RIVER, N.J. — Toms River Mayor Dan Rodrick is asking county officials to cease and desist the transportation of homeless people from all of the state of New Jersey each day to the Ocean County Mall, downtown Toms River, and other destinations throughout the county.
The problem stems from a warming shelter championed by the Ocean County Board of Commissioners on Route 9. While the homeless can legally stay at that shelter on cold nights, Rodrick says during the day, they are being transported all over town, which has led to an increase in police incidents and disturbances for township residents.
Rodrick accused Ocean County officials of planning to turn Downtown Toms River into a homeless encampment to create the perception of a homeless problem in town, to further a much larger financial agenda.
Mayor Rodrick sharply condemned the Ocean County Board of Commissioners and other local officials, claiming Toms River is being unfairly burdened by a political strategy to centralize homeless services in the township.
Rodrick said he and township officials had already found housing and services for all of the people in the town’s two homeless encampments last year, but county officials keep bringing in more homeless people.
He had shut down a warming shelter opened by the previous administration in Riverwood Park once all the tent city residents were placed in housing.
“They are bringing all these people to a warming center on Route 9, then during the day, they’re busing these folks to the Ocean County Mall and downtown,” he said today.
“Toms River takes care of the people who find themselves homeless in our town,” Rodrick added. “We don’t need to keep importing homeless people from all over; we need to help the small local homeless population get the services and resources they need and find adequate housing through existing county and state programs.”
The mayor accused the Ocean County Board of Commissioners of turning public spaces — including the Toms River branch of the Ocean County Library — into what he described as “a day shelter and a soup kitchen.”
He singled out Commissioners Rob Arace and Frank Sadeghi, saying they are ignoring overall public safety complaints.
“They even opened a soup kitchen inside the library,” he said. “These people are being dropped by in our community by agencies pretending to be homeless advocates who get paid by the head to import homeless people into our town from all over the state and the East Coast. These agencies are making millions of dollars importing homeless. Their plan is not about compassion; it’s is about people wanting to profit off the homeless issue.”
He noted that years ago, the township voted unanimously to shut down and demolish a downtown motel that was ground zero for the homeless, drug dealers, and prostitution after decades of complaints from residents.
“They want to go back to those days, but the people of Toms River made it clear they do not,” he added.
He cited police data showing 58 calls for service to the warming center and 51 EMS calls between January 1st and March 1st, excluding additional calls from nearby areas such as the mall, library, and town hall.
“The county should reimburse us,” the mayor said. “Maybe they should send their own sheriff’s officers to these situations, which can be dangerous for our officers. They are creating the problem, but our officers are the ones policing it, and our residents are the ones paying the price, not the county.”
Rodrick advises residents to visit the Brick branch of the Ocean County Library until the situation is resolved and the county stops unloading people at the Toms River branch.
“They are dropping them off at the Toms River library at the soup kitchen, and I’d urge residents, for their own safety, to go to the Brick branch for now,” Rodrick said.
He criticized what he called a greater political effort to create a perception of a larger homeless crisis in order to continue to grow the county program to include another more permanent facility on Route 9.
He said that effort is designed to justify a proposed homeless rehabilitation “campus” near Villa Amalfi, backed by Ocean County GOP Chairman George Gilmore and developer Jack Morris. That plan, the mayor said, would turn a vacant plot of land on an already busy Route 9 corridor into a homeless campus where operators would receive state and federal funding per person.
“Gilmore and his commissioners has lost their minds! Toms River will not be a dumping ground for New Jersey’s homeless,” Rodrick said. “They don’t care about fixing the homeless problem, they want to profit off of it.”
