Camden's Tent City Cleaned Out

I was back in Camden's Tent City this morning. Twenty four hours after the encampment was swarming with activity, with dozens of residents and volunteers dragging tents, old mattresses, filthy clothes, wooden pallets, dented bicycles and enough trash bags to fill two dumpsters. That was yesterday.

Today, as I stopped by the woods, Jim Luddy (above) was just leaving after spending the night, along with a half dozen others, after the compound was cleared out. He said he was going out to look for work, and opted out of the mass homeless moveout because, "if I'm working, I won't be able to take 21 days off," referring to the Nehemiah Group's three week treatment facility in Bridgeton that is to follow their hotel stay.

Today, the 50 or so former residents of what they preferred to call "Transition Park" were waking up at the Wingate by Wyndham Hotel, right off the NJ Turnpike, after an evening of "spa treatment." Carlos Maldonado, right, and Alfredo Gomez got haircuts.

The residents applauded as Micah Khan with the Nehemiah Group announced they'd be staying for another night - and going to Atlantic City! That afternoon activity was changed to a lunch buffet and a movie after some of the residents discussed the wisdom of being led into temptation.

Ed Biggs and Clara Biggs, photographed in their tent last month, posed together this morning during breakfast.

This was my third straight day in the compound, since Wednesday when Inquirer writer Matt Katz phoned me that "something's up in Tent City."

I was in Atlantic City covering the Casino Control Commission hearing for Joseph N. Merlino, the son of the late Lawrence "Yogi" Merlino,  a mob capo and hit man who became a government witness. He's also the cousin and shares the name of Joseph S. Merlino, the South Philly mob boss, now serving time in federal prison. Joseph S. and his mother and their construction company have been trying for twenty-some years to convince casino regulators that he is neither a mobster nor an organized crime associate.

They'd just broken for lunch without ruling yet on his application for a casino service industry license, and I was just about to start shooting along the boardwalk.

Instead I took off for Camden, ironically exiting the interstate on the very ramp off I-676 that surrounds Tent City. I'd run across it to enter the camp many times, but this was the first time I ever drove in from that direction, so I saw first hand how hidden from view the Tent City is from passing commuters,

Oh yeah, Merlino got the licence later in the afternoon.

Meanwhile, back at the camp, Lorenzo "Jamaica" Banks (below) the "mayor" of  Tent City was using an ax to break up sections of the wooden pallet "boardwalk" camp sidewalk. The Nehemiah people had promised to take the homeless men and women to their facility in Bridgeton to provide the social services they need, then place them all in free apartments.

He then hooked up the big screen television. First cranking up the generator, then running a cable from the aerial antenna through the digital converter, so they could watch themselves on the 5 o'clock news. The screen had a serious magenta cast, and the generator was really loud, but it kicked off a night of celebration.

On Thursday, with State Troopers closing off the exit ramp, residents carried their allotted single bag out of the woods, and boarded a big white bus. "Not a school bus," someone noted.

Banks waves to his fellow residents on the bus, as he rode with Pastor Amir Khan and his son Micah (left).

Arriving at the hotel, Melissa Wood, (left) and Teresa Williams were is already checking out the coffee maker. The free coffee in the lobby, shower heads, and remote control televisions were also big hits.

Clara Biggs checked out the bathroom in her hotel room. "This will be the first time I'll sit on a real toilet in over a year," she said. Earlier in the day, back in Tent City, after she used the porta potty delivered by the in the morning she said: "All these years we been out here we never had a porta potty. Now when we leave, they bring 'em in."

There are more photos here in a gallery of photos going back to the Winter of 2008-09. The newest ones are in the front.