ASBURY PARK State Superior Court Judge Lawrence Lawson has ruled
against a Morristown gospel rescue mission that has tried for at least
three years to open a 40-bed homeless shelter in Asbury Park.
Lawson, sitting in Freehold, upheld the Asbury Park Zoning Board of
Adjustment's decision last fall not to allow Market Street Mission to
open a large regional facility on Memorial Drive.
The zoning board had said that rather than helping the city's own
homeless, the mission could cycle more than 1,000 men a year, possibly
up to 1,400, into the city with no programs in place to help most of them.
Market Street planned to have a small number of the men join its
long-term life-change program for drug and alcohol addicts, but most
of the beds would be filled by homeless individuals who could stay up
to seven nights but would be put out on the street each morning to
find jobs or programs. The Asbury Park facility was to be called the
Jersey Shore Rescue Mission.
The zoning board considered the shelter three separate times and said
in the end the mission was too large in scope and too small in
programming. The zoners' decision came after a series of hearings in
2007 and after a local group called Stand Up For Asbury had organized
and appealed an earlier approval.
''Here, there will be an increase in men loitering on the streets, an
increase in the male homeless population in Asbury Park, and it will
significantly burden the city,'' Lawson wrote in his opinion, dated
Aug. 26, and obtained today.
The judge said it was not good to have the men ''roam the streets
during the day and after the program is over.'' He said many of the
men cycled into the facility would be left homeless in Asbury Park
''with no way to get back to their respective towns.''
"The mission is disappointed but not defeated,'' said its lawyer,
Brendan Judge.
"The mission has the right to appeal Judge Lawson's decision and I
will be speaking to my client about that topic.''
Paul Vail, an Asbury Park property owner who helped lead the Stand Up
For Asbury group, said the "people of Asbury Park and the city of
Asbury Park have prevailed against an organization that wanted to do
harm to the city.''
''The more we looked into it, it was clear this mission's larger aim
was not to help poor struggling men,'' Vail said. "They were looking
to put people into their evangelical program to convert them to their
brand of Christianity, and all the other men were to be discarded on
the streets of Asbury.''
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