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On Saturday morning Middletown native Karen Law was mapping out her Martin Luther King Jr long weekend plans.

Homeless for the past five months, the mother of five grown sons was among those who attended the Quality of Life Committee Winter Clothing Drive in the Transportation Center, located at 1 Municipal Plaza.

After searching through the piles of coats, gloves, sweaters, hats and scarves, Law [shown below right and left] sat in the transportation lobby waiting for the Trinity Episcopal Church soup kitchen to open. After that she would have a couple more hours wait until the local Women’s Hospitality Network [WHN] program opened for the night.

WHN is a network of rotating local churches that offers shelter to women who are experiencing homelessness.  

“The problem is I have no place to stay on Sunday night because the program doesn’t run on Sunday,” she said. “And then my program doesn’t run on Monday because of the holiday so I won’t have anywhere to go on Monday.”

Through a CPC Behavioral Health program Law, the former laundromat employee, said she is receiving help getting back on her feet.

“They drop me off me off at the train station or a church,” she said of ending up in Asbury Park.

The Winter Clothing Drive was organized by the Asbury Park Quality of Life Committee and members of the City’s staff.

“We had such an amazing response from members of the community,” said Councilwoman Yvonne Clayton who leads the ad hoc committee. “There were so many designer label clothing donated, many still had the tags on them.”

Also spearheaded by city employees Cassandra Dickerson and Leesha Floyd, there was behind the scenes collaboration from Genise Hughes of the Asbury Park School District, Director of Property Improvement and Neighborhood Preservation Rob McKeon, Councilwoman Eileen Chapman and Mayor John Moor, to name a few.

“It started with a conversation I was having one night with a friend,” Dickerson said. “I thought of doing a free flea market but then decided it would be best to narrow it down to a winter clothing drive. Because I am from here, I know the people and know what they don’t have, it is important for me to want to give back to those who don’t have. I see it, some people can’t afford to buy a new coat or gloves and we have all these items that we are not using in our closet.”

Asbury Park native Donald Jordan, 41, said he has been on the street for three years. Because there are limits on how often he can receive social service aid, Jordan rotates his time between searching for work in the library with trying to pick up odd jobs. He can most often have a nightly meal the Jersey Shore Mission and at the Trinity Episcopal Church’s soup kitchen on Saturdays, he said.

Jordan [below right], who said his family has moved out of the area, often sleeps on the beach or other areas where he can find shelter but during below freezing temperatures the City’s Municipal Complex is open as a place of shelter.

“I don’t have a disability so social service programs are limited,” he said. “I can do just about anything, I can do landscaping, drive a care and do handyman work.”

City Manager Michael Capabianco said Social Service Director Doug Schultz has been working closely with the County to help those who find themselves homeless in Asbury Park.

But a part of the problem is that the homeless population often chose sleeping in the City’s municipal lobby over going to family or to a provided County shelter program.

“What we found is that many people actually have places to go,” Capabianco said. “We want to stress that City Hall is a last resort. The census that we have been conducting every night shows that 9 out of 11 people have other places to go and they weren’t going to them.”

Another part of the problem is that the County was inadvertently dropping off those who find themselves homeless in Asbury Park because a list of service providers were based in Asbury Park, Capabianco said.

Law, who said she did not feel comfortable sleeping in the transportation lobby, expressed her gratitude for the WHN program, which offers a nightly meal with their respite program.

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