Under The Boardwalk No More
In the wake of the Supreme Court’s Grants Pass v Johnson decision, cities nationwide have been emboldened to take drastic measures against their unhoused residents.
Atlantic City is one such place seizing the moment to remove people seeking shelter under the seaside city’s famous boardwalk. There’s a real atmosphere of eagerness among officials overseeing this project to get the sweeps started while the law is on their side.
The Las Vegas of the East Coast
Atlantic City, New Jersey, is famous for its casinos, drawing tourists seeking a weekend of debaucherous fun from across state lines. However, it is also one of the poorest cities in New Jersey, with 32.4% of the local population falling below the poverty line. The median income is $35,188 annually, and the employment rate is 50.9 percent.
As much as the city loves to be seen as a playground for tourists from everywhere else to let loose, the reality for the people who actually live there is very different. Just about everything is catered to the experience of tourists at the expense of residents, both housed and unhoused, and the politicians are no exception to that rule.
While discussing the new plan to sweep under the boardwalk, Mayor Marty Small clearly had tourism concerns at the forefront of his mind, saying, “We cannot claim to be this world-class resort (if) we don’t handle the problems that the resort sometimes encounters.”
No one seems to have considered how the tourism industry itself contributes to the vicious cycle of homelessness in Atlantic City.
The Tourism Trap
Atlantic City clearly earns a lot of money from tourism, and almost all available jobs in the area are within the tourism industry. In that way, the city relies on tourism. However, we’ve seen before in Hawaii and other places how this can be a double-edged sword.
Census data shows that poverty rates are high in Atlantic City, while employment rates are relatively low. There just aren’t enough jobs for residents, and what jobs there are don’t pay enough to live on or offer the benefits still considered standard in many other industries.
Meanwhile, housing prices rise as real estate investors buy housing and land to turn into hotels or short-term rentals for tourists, leaving less and less space for locals and inflating the cost.
The fact that Atlantic City is known for its casinos adds a little spice to this recipe for disaster, increasing the number of people who come in as tourists, lose all their money, and don’t have enough to get back home.
All of these things come together to form a pipeline into homelessness that is extremely difficult to escape. While the majority of homeless people in any given area are locals themselves, in a city like this, even people who start as much-lauded tourists may soon find themselves homeless and holding the short end of the stick.
What Does the Boardwalk Improvement Group Do?
According to a press release from the Mayor’s office, the Boardwalk Improvement Group, or BIG, is “a proactive partnership between the public and private sector that aims to improve the overall quality of the Atlantic City Boardwalk and beaches, and city as a whole.”
It consists of “an integration of city departments that conduct 24/7 observation and reconnaissance,” which doesn’t sound creepy at all, “with attention to prevention, abatement, cleanup, engagement and enforcement.”
If that all sounds very vague to you, here’s the most concrete explanation the mayor’s office has to offer:
“BIG addresses homeless individuals sleeping under and loitering around the Atlantic City Boardwalk and beaches, as well as removal of encampments, while supporting the idea of these individuals finding a successful path in life.”
How very “thoughts and prayers” of you. Imagine surveilling people 24/7 to make sure they don’t sleep on city property, throwing their home into a dumpster, and then assuring them that you support the idea of them finding a successful path in life, even though you’ve just made it ten times harder for them actually to do that.
Officials have stated that they’ve contacted 200 unhoused people with an offer of transportation back home, but only five have accepted. They didn’t mention how many of the remaining 195 were locals of Atlantic City, or maybe they didn’t ask.
The program is also supposed to offer the homeless people it displaces help of some kind, including transportation “back to where they came from,” a pathway into rehab for drugs or alcohol, connection with social services, and a place to stay.
Few details are available on the specifics of this, such as where people are being pointed to for housing and how many beds are available. It sounds more like something you would have to include in your homeless-displacement program just to make it seem a little more palatable and mask how cruel it actually is.
When the average person with no experience of homelessness hears these things, they mentally fill in the blanks and assume that anyone in their right mind would accept this offer, not realizing that there are a multitude of reasons a sane, smart person might decline any of these offers of “help.”
In fact, Jarrod Barnes, Atlantic City’s director of health and human services, specifically mentioned that many people refuse it. To a curious mind, that would indicate that the things we have available to help people aren’t actually that helpful to the intended audience. It would be a sign that something needs to change if we want to achieve our stated goal of supporting people in finding a successful path in life.
But as everyone reading here knows by now, that’s not the actual goal. And so, the fact that homeless people aren’t accepting help is lazily framed as evidence that they don’t know what’s best for them. And the sweeps continue.
