Atlantic City officials dismantled a notorious homeless encampment beneath its iconic boardwalk, where resourceful drifters had set up surprisingly well-appointed makeshift lodgings, complete with heaters, love beds, pirated beer taps and a drop-off point for delivery pizzas.
Jarrod Barnes, the city’s director of Health and Human Services, described the encampment as an illicit apartment complex where residents have to crawl under the boardwalk for 50 yards before being transported to a modern day “Hooverville.”
“It was rooms and heaters and electricity and real beds, wooden floors, they were charging electric bikes and they had hot plates,” Barnes, 41, told The Post.
One tenant even found a way to get pizzas and fast food delivered to his rent-free accommodations.
“He called into different places and gave the Showboat [casino] address and then apartment “U,” and they were delivering,” he said.
The sneaky instruction would direct the delivery drivers to the right spot beneath the boardwalk.
Barnes added that the man, who lived under the boardwalk for seven years, had a workstation and living room set up in the encampment.
The city official recalled that when he tried to oust the vagrant one morning, he appeared and told Barnes to come back later because “he had a woman in the bed there.”
On another morning, Barnes found the group in the homeless camp cooking fresh eggs in a skillet. He has also found that in the winter, the heaters worked so efficiently that he had to take off his jacket when he ventured under the boardwalk.
Kenneth Mitchem, who was brought on last year as Atlantic City’s director of social services to help tackle the homeless problem, said he was astounded by the ingenuity of the people he met under the boardwalk.
“These guys here actually managed to tap into the beer lines that were coming from the resort out to this Landshark Bar and Grill and [were] able to siphon off the beer,” Mitchem said. “So many different talents.”
The advanced shantytown, however, brought its own risks. A fire broke out in April that killed a 67-year-old man living in the encampment.
The disaster triggered the city’s Boardwalk Improvement Group (BIG) to crack down on encampments across the city.
After that the boardwalk was cleaned and fenced up.
The city has been working to keep the famed boardwalk free of vagrants ever since.
The city rolled out its latest initiative to clean up the boardwalk in July, sending waves of staffers to speak directly with homeless people in the encampments and connect them with housing and mental health services.
During one of the morning missions last week, The Post saw how Barnes approached a raving woman at one of the encampments, calming her down and convincing her to check herself into a detox center.
Despite his success, Barnes lamented that many others living in the encampments refuse his team’s help, sometimes because they’re just used to living rough and relying on their wits.
It’s for this reason that the city council is reviewing a law looking to stop people from sleeping in public spaces.
The review comes after the Supreme Court ruled that municipalities can ban homeless encampments, a decision Mitchem touted as necessary to finally pressure unhoused residents to accept the assistance they clearly need.
“If they’re there for a habit, if they live here and they have a habit and they don’t want to leave, it gives you something to stand on,” Mitchem said of the new law being proposed. “We now have this decision and we now have an enforcement mechanism.
“This decision takes away all the excuses,” he added. “That’s what we were missing.”