We have to break down the stigma of homelessness in New Jersey

Walking into Joseph’s House, a night shelter, in the Bergen Square neighborhood six years ago I was having a conversation with their executive director, John Klein, when I noticed a woman walk into the building. At first glance I thought she came to the facility as a social service provider inquiring about a client or doing some fact finding about the shelter, but my inclinations were wrong. She asked about the hours of operation and if her, and her son were able to spend the night at the shelter. She politely took some supplies from the facility and made her way back out to the parking lot, got back into her Subaru, and drove away.

The truth of the matter was that this woman was living out of her car with her son and had nowhere else to turn and no one to help her.  At the time, this shocked me, this was not the face I had recognized of an individual searching for a bed and place to stay. Furthermore, I think the false image or perception of an unsheltered person is one that has been sculpted by television and movies that is grounded on instability, substance use and mental illness. And while thousands of people are struck by these diseases in a singular or concurring way, they only make up a small percentage of the shelter and those who are walking the fine line between housed and unhoused. To drive this point home further, in 2022, public schools across the nation counted more than 1.2 million homeless students.

Now, with that said, in Camden County, according to the annual point in time count our unsheltered population dropped by 2% in 2023 to 141, but we still contend with hundreds of impacted individuals on the street every day throughout the region. Overall, in New Jersey, the homeless population has risen by 17% and throughout the nation, according to the federal government, since counting began in 2007, last year we saw the highest number of unsheltered people recorded throughout the country.

All of this is to say that there are people struggling — like the woman I met in Joseph’s House who did not fit the description we have built in our heads of someone struggling to find shelter. Furthermore, if that woman had been living out of her car there is probably a very good chance she was not captured in the annual count of homeless in the county. Everyday we are seeing people we know, who are couch surfing, living in shared locations and out of their cars and they aren’t even part of the current conversation because they don’t end up in our count of the homeless. These are members of our community that are in need of available services that in many cases cannot be reached.

In Camden County, we are looking at ways to get to functional zero homelessness for both residents and veterans like our counterparts in Bergen County. But what does functional zero for chronic homelessness look like for us here in Camden County? Like so many other public health challenges it means breaking down stigmas and putting a face to the name. It means assisting our neighbors in their most desperate time of need — from keeping someone struggling to stay in their residence to providing a helping hand to someone already living in on the streets — because we have a moral obligation to our community and our taxpayers to tackle this issue head on. Furthermore, the cost to us a society is much less if we can keep an individual in their home as opposed to cost of the services they would need once they become unsheltered.

My colleagues and I are developing a long-term plan to get to functional zero, but one of my core beliefs is that we need to act, and we need bold ideas. In addition, we need to show our community who is most impacted by the scourge of being unsheltered. It’s the widowed grandmother on Medicaid with a sick adult son in the house, it’s the father of a little girl who has had a setback in his professional career, it’s the mom living out of her car with her young son fleeing from domestic violence. We need to expand our minds and rebuild our perception of what it looks like to be homeless in the 21 ^st century. We invite you to join us as we continue the work of helping the most vulnerable in our community get back on their feet and on the road to housing, self-sustainability, and productive lives.

For more information on ways you can help or participate with us visit us at www.camdencounty.com/service/community-development/ or don’t hesitate to call 856-374-6033.

Louis Cappelli Jr. is the commissioner director of the Camden County Board of Commissioners and a law partner at the firm Florio, Perrucci, Steinhardt, Cappelli & Tipton.

This article originally appeared on Cherry Hill Courier-Post: We have to break down the stigma of homelessness in New Jersey