http://www.tonawanda-news.com/siteSearch/apstorysection/local_story_003090931.html

Published: January 03, 2006 09:09 am
The impact of gaming
BY DENISE JEWELL
The Tonawanda News
North Tonawanda, NY ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. 

A dozen men waited on a rainy night in December in a
gray lobby at the Atlantic City Rescue Mission for
beds that were already taken.

The shelter had housed 351 homeless people the night
before. Mission President and CEO William Southrey
expected dozens of people to sleep on mats on the
floor again. 

When I started here in 1981 as a staff member ... a
big night for us was 50 people, Southrey said. Tonight
it is over 350. It says something for the draw of the
community, the fall out of gaming.

Gaming's impact on Atlantic City has been felt beyond
its high-rise hotels, splashy casinos and the millions
of tourists that visit the city each year.

Hidden behind the city's convention center, the
Atlantic City Rescue Mission tells a different story
of gaming's impact on the city than the bright casinos
and hotels that line its beaches.

Inside the four-story facility, are hundreds of people
who haven't been able to make it in Atlantic City.

Half of them battle drug or alcohol problems. A fifth
have gambling addictions. They are overwhelmingly men
of color.

Southrey estimates that the Atlantic City Rescue
Mission houses about 3,000 homeless people each year.

In comparison, Community Missions of Niagara Frontier
sheltered 395 people in crisis in 2004.

The mission, which provides a range of services from a
food pantry to job training, operates with 47 staff
members on a $2.9 million budget.

As property values have risen and new developments
have been built, people on the fringes of Atlantic
City's community have found themselves priced out,
Southrey said.

That's an issue, Southrey believes, that Niagara Falls
should watch as its gaming industry matures.

People are going to realize that some of the community
is going to be displaced, Southrey said. They're going
to be removed from the community. They won't be able
to survive in the setting.

While revenue from Atlantic City's 12 casinos has been
dedicated to building new housing in this city of
40,385, those that deal directly with the homeless say
finding affordable housing has become increasingly
scarce.

While the mission expanded its facility to a
four-story building with 260 beds on Bacharach
Boulevard in 1989, Southrey said he started seeing the
real effects of the housing crunch on Atlantic City's
population about a decade ago. 

You've lost hundreds and hundreds of available rooms,
and a lot of these places were where you put your
marginalized people, Southrey said.  They'd get meals
and a place to live at a very inexpensive rate, and
the state would subsidize and reimburse. And that
doesn't exist anymore.

While the city's unemployment rate has dropped since
the first casino opened in 1978, Atlantic City's
poverty rate at 23.6 percent, according to the U.S.
Census, is more than double New Jersey's average.
Compare that to 19.5 percent the Niagara Falls
population that is below poverty.

While homeless advocates believe affordable housing
has been a continual problem for Atlantic City,
housing was the one of the first priorities of state
legislation that divided casino revenue earmarked for
economic development projects.

Initially, the Atlantic City housing was so important
to the community that all of the revenue was channeled
into the Atlantic City housing fund, said Susan Ney,
the assistant deputy director of project management
for the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority.

The city won a $35 million HOPE VI grant in 1999 from
the U.S. Department of Urban Development to help fund
a $192 million community revitalization project that
included building 500 new homes, a new school and a
Boys and Girls club. The project is still under way.

The project includes replacing 214 public housing
units with more than 500 mixed-income homes, as well
as building a new Boys and Girls Club, renovating an
old fire hall to house community programs and
constructing a community day care center.

Construction began on four developments in the city's
HOPE VI program in 2002 and is still under way.

The HUD grant is similar to one the Niagara Falls
Housing Authority has applied for three times to
replace its aging Center Court projects, but has
failed to get.

In some neighborhoods, Ney said, the authority oversaw
projects to build new housing for existing homeowners
so they would not be displaced. 

That did a lot to keep the neighborhood balanced and
kept the strong fabric of the neighborhood, because
you had those long-term residents, Ney said.

Still, some residents, like Christopher Lewis, believe
the casino industry has negatively changed the city's
residential neighborhoods.

It's messing with the community because all this
adding on to the casino properties, it's cutting down
on the areas where they can build houses, Lewis said.

Southrey, the mission president, said beachfront homes
that are selling for up to $1 million border areas
where projects have stood for years.

Eventually, he believes, those older communities will
disappear as the new housing is built.

While he sees the harsh effects of gaming on Atlantic
City's community, Southrey weighs the city's problems
against the economic rejuvenation casinos have helped
bring to the city. 

It gives a lot of opportunity for people to do well,
but at the same time, you have all sorts of other
people in the community that may not succeed, Southrey
said.

Contact staff writer Denise Jewell at 282-2311, Ext.
2245.



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