Court tells Neptune homeless they have three months to get out of Route 66 camp

NEPTUNE - The remaining people living in the woods off Route 66 have until Oct. 27 to get out after a judge approved an ejectment action filed by the owner of the property .

The homeless encampment is located between the parking lots of ShopRite and the Zen Leaf dispensary and nearby residential homes on Cardinal Road. The unhoused have made their homes in the woods for the better part of the last decade, but the number of people living in the encampment grew to several dozen in early 2023 .

The property is owned by Neptune Boulevard Development Group LLC. The individuals the township has been dealing with are Danny Betesh, a managing member of the company, and his attorney Jason Klein of Ansell, Grimm & Aaron PC.

Batesh filed an ejectment action against the homeless in the encampment. The term “ejectment” refers to the process by which a property owner removes a non‑tenant, an occupant or a squatter from their property. State Superior Court Judge David Nitti ruled in favor of the ejectment in the Monmouth County Courthouse in Freehold on July 26.

You can read the full order at the end of this story.

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Since last year, Neptune Township officials, including Business Administrator Gina LaPlaca, have worked to find a permanent solution for the remaining people living there . She told the Asbury Park Press the township has a conference call on Thursday, Aug. 1, with the Neptune police and the nonprofit agencies that have been working with the homeless to figure out what the next 90 days will look like.

"What are the next steps? How can we maximize this time as positive and productive as we wish it to be?" LaPlaca said is the point of the meeting. "I know they would like more time than 90 days, so we are going to do the best we can. From there it is working with the property owner to continue to secure and maintain the property, so it does not become an encampment again."

There are a lot of moving parts before the Oct. 27 deadline, so many that it is hard to tell what to expect on Oct. 28.

"A lot of that depends on what it looks like on Oct. 1, if we have one person still there or six," LaPlaca said. "Whether the issues or challenges that these folks have are so severe that it is almost impossible to find them housing. Whatever the reasons for why they are still there plays a big part of it," LaPlaca said.

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Earlier this year, township officials stated publicly they were prepared to take legal action against the property owner of the homeless encampment for failing to remedy any code or zoning violations.

"All the code and zoning violations that the property owner has been issued are still there, until the property is remediated. So the cleanup aspect of it still has to go on and having these folks relocated aids in that cleanup process," LaPlaca said.

The property owner has been written up primarily for code violations pertaining to conditions such as the trash and hazardous materials such as propane tanks on the property.

"We are talking about cleaning up campsites or perhaps belongings they may or may not choose to take with them when they leave, including structures that some of them have erected for themselves and currently live in," LaPlaca said.

She said that this is an accelerated version of the process the township has already been going through for the past 18 months or so.

Since the homeless were served notices that the court hearing was coming, four or five left of their own volition, LaPlaca said. "So we know that progress has happened as a result of this action, so hopefully that will continue over the next 90 days and it won't be too challenging to complete the process," she said.

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The majority of the people who remain should be able to access housing of one kind or another, she said.

"It is primarily the availability of units and the timeframe for getting all the paperwork and all the boxes checked. That is still a problem for the majority of folks there. There may be people who have much higher hurdles to climb," LaPlaca said.

Figuring out those hurdles will be the main point of discussion during the conference call this week.

Ejectment order by Dennis Carmody on Scribd

Charles Daye is the metro reporter for Asbury Park and Neptune, with a focus on diversity, equity and inclusion. @CharlesDayeAPP Contact him: CDaye@gannettnj.com

This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Court tells Neptune homeless they have three months to get out of Route 66 camp