$45K ‘hobo fence’ last ditch effort to keep homeless out of NJ park as some slam ‘inhumanity’
If you build it, they won’t come.
A Newark, NJ, politician had a six-foot, $45,000 fence erected around a public park in a last ditch effort to solve the spot’s spiraling homeless crisis — by locking the hobos out.
“The park was out of control,” East Ward City Councilman Michael Silva told The Post this week of Peter Francisco Park, which business owners and residents said had been transformed into an open-air drug den and hobo campground.
So in June, Silva, a former Newark police detective, used taxpayer dough to install the padlocked, wrought-iron fence around the troubled one-acre greenspace, where locals recalled doped up vagrants climbing the trio of monuments, or using it as their al fresco toilet.
“This problem was not going away and it was only growing, and becoming more violent every day,” he said.
Now the only way to get in the park is by asking the city for permission.
Silva said his office will give the key to the park to people looking to organize events like farmers’ or flea markets.
But visitors may need to pay the usual $500 permit fee along with a $50 application fee, depending on the event, according to the city’s Parks Department.
The drastic measure is so far getting mixed reviews.
Odette Martins, 45, an assistant at a doctor’s office down the block from the park, said the city has effectively shuffled the homeless to other nearby areas — including right outside her workplace.
“I’ve seen them in front of my office, and they go to the bathroom in front of the church” across the street, she said. “It wasn’t like that before.”
Some commuters are now upset they no longer have access to the park, located in the Ironbound neighborhood.
“If you’re waiting for the bus, you [now] have to wait here in the sun,” said Tiffany Moultrie, 41, who previously would be able to easily stand underneath the shade from the park’s trees while waiting to get to her job at UPS.
“I appreciate you trying to beautify the city but what about the people that live here?” she said.
And bus driver Kevin White, 40, slammed the move as “straight up inhumane.”
The homeless “were actually enjoying the space and they weren’t making trouble either,” he claimed, despite the chorus of complaints.
But Ironbound local Regina Donatangelo cheered the fence.
“They made a mess there, it was dirty,” said Donatangelo, 54. “They had a lot of strange people [there].”
