“Common Ground” sounds like a great program. HOWEVER, if they expanded to Hackensack, there’s still the same “Field of Dreams syndrome”. As they said in Field of Dreams, “build it and they will come”. No matter how much is built in Hackensack to serve the homeless, it will always be running at over 100% capacity. One has to look beyond Hackensack to understand why.
State and national level homeless advocates look at Bergen County, with 900,000 people, as doing very little compared to other counties in New Jersey with smaller populations (actually Bergen has the most population). They consider it a great injustice that such a wealthy county does less for the homeless than smaller and poorer counties such as Essex, Union, Passaic, or Hudson.
Let’s look at the regional problem of homeless. Newark has over 15,000 homeless people. There’s over 300 places for homeless in Newark to get a free meal. But Newark doesn’t have anywhere near enough facilities to take care of all the homeless there. And that’s just one city. There’s five others in our region: Paterson, Passaic, Jersey City, Elizabeth, and New York City.
From a regional perspective, homeless advocates look at Bergen County as an “overflow” location to help solve the regional situation. County officials, of course, then target Hackensack, since they don’t want it in their small towns. The more that is built in Hackensack to serve the homeless, that helps to slightly reduce the level of crisis in the other six cities.
IF FACILITIES WERE BUILT IN HACKENSACK TO ALLOW NIGHTLY BEDS AND DAILY MEALS FOR 1000 PEOPLE, IT WOULD SOON FILL UP DUE TO OVERFLOW COMING FROM THE OTHER SIX CITIES, ESPECIALLY NEWARK. And it would hardly make a dent to reducing the homeless crisis in those cities.
That’s the big picture, folks.
"Hope" has everyone pigeon-holed into two categories, those who are symphathetic to the homeless support their programs, and those who are ignorant or evil don't support homeless programs. Maybe there's a third category: Those who are sympathetic to their needs, but also understand that the influx into Hackensack of homeless is essentially ENDLESS, and that no matter how much is done here, it will always draw more homeless into the city.
Hey, maybe it's time to go into the cities that are actually SOURCING the homeless, and solving it there. There's no way that Hackensack SOURCES more than the programs here.