Jersey Shore teens lose 'critical lifeline:' Ocean's Harbor House closes homeless shelter

TOMS RIVER — When Tiffany deSousa learned that an emergency shelter for teens and children in Ocean County was about to close, she was horrified.

Ocean's Harbor House's youth shelter provided emergency shelter when she was just 17 years old and leaving home.

Harbor House "saved my life. I would have been dead," said deSousa, now 39. She went to work for the organization after once living in its youth shelter.

But with the youth shelter's closure last week, she worries that children and teenagers who run away or are thrown out of their homes will have nowhere else to go.

The youth shelter at Ocean's Harbor House opened in 1988 in response to a large number of teenagers living on the streets, said Executive Director Alice Woods. Despite the closure of the youth shelter, the nonprofit organization will continue to provide transitional living for teens and young adults ages 16 to 21, family crisis services and referrals, and a 24-hour emergency shelter hotline for homeless youth, Woods said.

The youth shelter was always only a temporary measure, a stopover between a teenager's home environment and his or her next living arrangement, Woods said. Youth would stay for a few days or a few weeks until they could be successfully reunited with family or their caseworkers secured another living arrangement.

With its closure, the youth-only shelter will be transformed to help families in need of emergency housing, Woods said. That change will meet a growing need in New Jersey, where the high costs of rent and other essentials are squeezing working families into homelessness, she said.

"It's people that have decent jobs… but they can't make enough money to pay the rent," Woods said.

But deSousa worries the closure of the youth shelter will leave Jersey Shore teens without a critical lifeline. This week, she called for Harbor House's leadership to resign and the organization to refocus its mission on providing emergency shelter to teens and children.

Not having a youth shelter in the area "is just so dangerous," deSousa said.

Many of the teens that end up in emergency shelters like Harbor House have suffered abuse, or have complex emotional or behavioral struggles that cannot be met in a standard foster home, she said.

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"We don't have enough foster families that take teenagers," deSousa said. "We don't have enough that are therapeutic foster homes for traumatized teens."

"You can't put a kid in an unhealthy or a dangerous situation," she added. "You can't put them with somebody (who is) not licensed. You can't put them in a home that isn't inspected properly. There are laws for a reason."

Woods said the closure of the youth shelter does not mean these children will be homeless. Rather, they will end up reunified with their families, with foster families, or in cases where neither of those options is feasible, at a youth shelter in Trenton or in a psychiatric facility, depending on their needs, she said.

Currently, there is no homeless shelter for youth or adults in Ocean County.

Hundreds of homeless teens

In January 2022, there were 8,754 homeless people counted in New Jersey, according to a report conducted by the New Jersey Housing and Mortgage Finance Agency and Monarch Housing Associates. Of those, 453 homeless people lived in Monmouth County and another 419 lived in Ocean County, according to the report.

That year, nearly 9% of New Jersey's homeless population, or 780 people, were under 25 years old, according to the report.

In 2022, 438 unaccompanied youth were homeless in New Jersey, according to the Annual Homelessness Assessment Report to Congress.

In the past, many families who found themselves homeless at the Jersey Shore struggled with problems of substance abuse or mental illness, said Woods. Today, there is a new face to homelessness: a greater number of working families are losing housing as their pay fails to keep up with prices, she said.

"It's much more costly to live in every way," said Woods. "People have been managing, but over the course of time… you deplete your savings… More and more people are living paycheck to paycheck, and are vulnerable to all kinds of situations, including homelessness."

At the same time more families were facing financial crises, Harbor House's youth shelter was taking in fewer teens and children, and state funding was dwindling, she said.

"Due to the shift in government attitudes towards congregate care for youth and enhanced focus on keeping children with their families, there's been a marked decrease in requests to place unaccompanied youth in shelters," Woods said.

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In 2018, Harbor House's youth shelter took in 100 children and teens, Woods said. For comparison, this year the numbers dropped to just 20, she said.

"We tried everything we could possibly try to look for partnerships who could fund us to contract with them for the (shelter) beds," she said. "We've looked at the county, we looked at other agencies, and none of that panned out."

To transition to a family emergency shelter, Harbor House officials must first obtain a license through the New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs, which regulates homeless shelters. Woods expects it to be operational sometime in 2024.

"This is a tough decision to make," she said. "We've been talking about closing the (youth) shelter for many years, but our commitment to homeless youth kept us from doing that until it was no longer an option to stay in that model. And then we decided that we could really meet a significant need in the community by doing this. So we're sad but also excited for the future."

People facing homelessness in New Jersey should call 2-1-1 or 877-652-1148 for help. Support is also available through Monmouth County Social Services at 732-431-6000, or Ocean County Social Services at 732-349-1500.

To reach the Ocean's Harbor House hotline for youth emergency shelter, call 732-929-0660.

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This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Harbor House NJ closes youth homeless shelter in Ocean County