Tent City residents start the journey back indoors

Looking every bit his 69 years, Bill Robinson limped out of Camden's Tent City on Thursday, crossed a highway blocked off by police, and climbed aboard a tour bus from heaven.

"It's happening," he said, struggling to believe his own words. "It's something you fantasize about and hope it would happen, and all of a sudden - boom! - it's here. You're blessed."

In an extraordinary scene, thanks to the rapid response and fund-raising prowess of a South Jersey preacher, Robinson and about 50 other homeless people carried their worldly belongings out of the woods inside an I-676 exit ramp, where some have lived for several years.

Their first stop was a Mount Laurel hotel, where Room 228 was waiting for Robinson. He took off his shoes, unhooked the plastic brace on his leg, and flopped down on the plush mattress.

"Where's the remote?" he asked.

The homeless people were rescued by Pastor Amir Khan, who said he learned about the encampment only six days earlier. Khan said he amassed more than $250,000 for the relocation through business connections and from congregants at his Clementon church, Solid Rock Worship Center. His nonprofit, the Nehemiah Group, which specializes in transitioning ex-inmates back into society, has promised to take care of the former Tent City residents for a full year.

"How dare we live in the lap of luxury when this is so close by?" Khan asked, repeating the question that prompted his action.

The residents' first stop was one night at the Wingate by Wyndham Hotel on Route 73, where greasy hair and scraggly beards were treated to warm showers (the options on the showerheads were a hit). They were fitted for business clothes by a Pennsauken nonprofit, Image and Attitude, and they talked about jumping into the whirlpool.

"They'll be pampered," Khan promised.

After checking out the bathroom in her room, Clara Biggs, 42, said: "This will be the first time I'll sit on a real toilet in a year."

Another woman got her first haircut in a year.

"Hair is the route to the soul," said volunteer cosmetologist Wanda Scott, one of Khan's parishioners. "Once you get your hair done, especially women, your whole being feels better. New attitude, fresh start."

The hotel lobby's complimentary coffee and snacks drew the guests' attention.

But many of the residents spent much of their first few hours at the hotel killing time the same way they did at Tent City - hanging out, chatting, and smoking cigarettes outside the hotel.

Before they arrived at the hotel, some drug-addicted Tent City residents were taken to hospitals for doses of methadone and other medicines that kill the cravings for drugs.

On Friday, Khan said, the homeless will be moved to the Nehemiah Group's facility in Bridgeton, N.J., where 50 beds await them for three weeks.

There, he said, they will receive the social services they need, followed by placement in a free apartment somewhere in South Jersey.

"We're not sitting back and waiting for government," Khan said.

The presence of Tent City has vexed government officials and social service nonprofits for several months. A task force has met monthly to figure out how to coax residents out, but efforts were largely unsuccessful, and an April 15 deadline to leave came and went.

Some task force members, such as the Volunteers of America Delaware Valley, have vowed to work with the formerly homeless at their new digs in Bridgeton and beyond.

A sense of spirituality drove much of the relocation. The scene at Tent City Thursday unfolded like an old-fashioned revival, with praying, speeches, and a lot of hugs.

Khan told the homeless that donors were writing large checks. "What they're saying is that they believe in you," he said. "Are you going to let them down?"

"No," responded the homeless men and women, a diverse lot.

Speaking to his constituents with a microphone, the "mayor" of Tent City and its original resident, Lorenzo "Jamaica" Banks, said he looked forward to taking his first bath in 38 years.

He said he would spend the night in his hotel room turning the light switch on and off.

The residents then gathered arm-in-arm and prayed.

"When I walk down that path, I'm not looking back, and I sure hope you don't either," Banks said.

Then he turned to Khan: "We would really like to thank you for giving us another chance in life."

Dozens of volunteers cleaned the grounds, taking wheelbarrows of trash to two overfilled Dumpsters. The edges of Tent City were lined with mattresses, plastic bags, dirty clothes, and at least one wheelchair.

There was some squabbling as the grounds were cleared, and some of the homeless looked overwhelmed by the unexpected turn of events.

"Why, all of a sudden, is this all happening?" asked James Boggs, the spokesman for the camp, sitting on the exit ramp's metal barrier, weighted down by a laptop on which he stores residents' information.

Boggs wondered how those hooked on drugs would make it so far away from their hookups in Camden.

And, really, how would any of them adjust to life inside?

Banks, who has a flair for the dramatic, did not take the bus. He got into Khan's red Cadillac Escalade, which followed closely behind.

Banks said that after he got his apartment, he would return to the streets during the day to help other people use tent cities as a means of transitioning out of homelessness.

Wearing a white cowboy hat and camouflage pants, he popped out of the sunroof as the SUV pulled away: "I'm starting another one to help someone else out! And you heard that from the mayor!"

Moments later, a man took a shopping cart left at Tent City and took it across to the other side of Federal Street - to another tent city.