meanwhile in Ocean County leaders are struggling to address the complex situation of homelessness there ocean remains one of the few counties in the state without a permanent shelter and this month an organization that offered the only emergency Youth Shelter Services closed transitioning to a site that will instead serve unhoused families as the community sees more demand from parents searching for a safe place to stay with their kids Ted Goldberg reports Ocean's Harbor House recently closed its emergency Youth Shelter executive director Alice Woods says there were two main factors why we didn't have funding and we weren't serving numbers of kids we served 100 kids in 2018 at the shelter and this past year we only served 20 up until July so this is just not a sustainable model it's it's um it's a decision that is unfortunate but necessary the lack of funding has been an ongoing problem the shelter has been a challenge for years and years the shelter has operated at a deficit for a long time in the past two years we've tried everything we could possibly try to bridge the gap I've worked with Ocean County I've worked with other partner agencies to see if we could uh secure funding for different populations as a result Ocean's Harbor House is reorganizing and shifting its resources Woods says there has been a much larger demand for family services so that's where the focus will go there are hundreds of families in Ocean County that are that are in need of shelter of a place to live there many of them are being um housed in motel rooms that are very small without the ability to cook dinners and have services so we feel like we're uniquely poised with a shelter facility to open the very first family shelter in Ocean County I feel like with what we do at healing Harbor and then shifting into this family service it's really family shelter is really going to help bring that all together family crisis counselor Marissa Nova viesski says young people in Ocean County aren't out of luck Ocean's Harbor House will still have its hotline and the 12-bed group home for transitional living isn't going anywhere she says having more Family Services is a better use of resources in Ocean County one of New Jersey's few counties without a full-time homeless shelter that's one of the the major I guess Pros I think of opening this family shelter I think going back to bridging that gap of you know how instead of having the kids come here and you know stay in the shelter for that cool off period and then reunifying with their families why not have them stay with their families and have the family come in and you know work with us and and you know do that counseling piece Woods says there's a lot of noise and false accusations about the decision to close the Youth Shelter she says the three kids living here were relocated without issues two return to their families and one was moved to a shelter in another County we worked with their Guardians and parents and and case managers to transition them out like we would anyone else and like I said it's a temporary facility so they were never staying here a long time anyway Ocean's Harbor House is expected to be one of many groups vying for money from Ocean County's new homelessness trust fund created by County Commissioners last month money will come from a surcharge on most documents processed by the county clerk's office starting on September 1st in Toms River I'm Ted Goldberg NJ Spotlight news [Music] [Music]