Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2003 | 9:23 a.m.
ATLANTIC CITY -- At the Underwood Motel, there is no concierge.
Down here, the "rooms" are 3-foot high crawl spaces between the beach and the underside of the Boardwalk. Crumpled cardboard boxes serve as beds, supplying a thin layer of insulation amid the cigarette butts, broken clam shells and empty 40-ounce bottles of Hurricane Malt Liquor.
Under the Boardwalk, down by the sea, nobody feels like singing: A dice roll away from the wealth, warmth and neon lights of high-rise casinos, homeless people inhabit an underworld where survival is a life-or-death gamble.
Estimates vary on the number who call it home, from 50 to 100 on any given day, depending on the season.
"You sleep with one eye open," said Joe "Spits" Terracciano, 51, a homeless alcoholic who spends most of his nights there.
Sitting in the sand under a pier one recent afternoon, swigging from a brown-bagged bottle, Terracciano -- they call him Spits because he spits when he talks, having lost most of his teeth -- said he found his way to Atlantic City soon after being released from prison five years ago.
He panhandles for booze money, filches food from casino buffets or begs at the pizza shops that line the Boardwalk.
"You can go into the casino buffets and get some food before they catch you. And a lot of places, if you walk up and say 'I'm hungry,' they'll give you something to eat. I've learned it's better to be honest," he said.
The Boardwalk was never intended to be a shelter. The first one was built in 1870, at the request of hotel owners tired of having beachgoers tramp sand into their lobbies.
Its modern successor is home to nine casinos and dozens of souvenir stores, T-shirt shops and saltwater taffy stores. Forty-feet wide in most places, separating the beach from the casinos and stores, it hums with activity in summer.
After Labor Day, the crowds thin out. But all year long, people like Allen Wilson call it home.
Wilson, 51, is an ex-convict and alcoholic who lives under the Boardwalk in various locations. One is a 3-by-5-foot hole in which he has wedged cardboard boxes and a suitcase he scavenged from the parking lot of the nearby Endicott Hotel.
"I have a suitcase there to block the wind and a rug and I use two blankets. I lay one down and put the other on top of me. I use the cardboard to insulate me and I put the suitcase and the (wooden) palette up to keep the wind from coming through," he said.
"When it rains, I go into one of the casino's bus lounges and sleep in a chair. When it dries up, you come back and take out the wet cardboard and put in fresh cardboard. In the warm weather, it's OK. When the cold comes, you really got to improvise or you'll freeze to death," Wilson said.
Dressed in work boots, clean brown slacks and an "Atlantic City" sweatshirt, he could pass for a working man. But it's been years since he held a job; his record -- six years for aggravated assault on a police officer -- makes casinos afraid to hire him, he said.
So he hustles in the casinos, walking past the slot machines in search of coin buckets left unattended, or spare chips. On the Boardwalk, he'll steal clothes off racks if the store clerk is looking the other way.
Mostly, he drinks. Today, it was vodka, first thing in the morning.
"It relieves my stress, just for a minute," he said. "But my reality kicks back in and I start all over again. It's a means of self-deception. You don't want to deal with your situation and your condition."
Alcohol, drug addiction, mental illness -- and a stubborn refusal to accept help -- are common threads in the lives of the Underwood Motel's regulars. Some are busted gamblers with no support network: In a survey of 120 homeless people living at the Atlantic City Rescue Mission shelter several years ago, 20 percent listed "gambling" as a contributing factor.
"There's a small percentage who bet and lose and then throw away their life," said Bill Southrey, president of the Mission. "But for most, homelessness has already been a part of their lives" before they resort to living under the Boardwalk.
On a recent Wednesday morning, he was up before dawn and looking under the Boardwalk with a flashlight, hoping to find people and persuade them to come in from the cold.
The beach was deserted, the only noise coming from crashing waves and an outdoor loudspeaker at Resorts Atlantic City casino that blared information about coming attractions and the casino's $8.95 buffet.
Directly across the Boardwalk, hunkered down under the Boardwalk Peanut Shoppe, Southrey found an encampment consisting of four people.
"You OK in there?" he said.
No one answered. Then a woman's figure sat up from her makeshift beach bed, pulling back a white sheet hung from the underside of the Boardwalk to block the wind.
"Feel OK?" Southrey said.
"No, I'm not and I'd like to be left alone, please," she snapped.
"Would you like some breakfast?" Southrey asked.
"No," she said.
"There's going to be a cold snap this weekend, you should know that. If it gets below 38 degrees, with a little wind, it's dangerous for you. My whole purpose is to get you off the streets. There's a medical clinic at the Mission now. It's free," Southrey said.
Continuing down the Boardwalk, he got on all fours to look underneath Central Pier, where a section of carpet was stored among the empty bottles and trash.
"Hello? Hello? Anyone in there?" Southrey said.
A young man's head popped up. He had been sleeping inside the rolled-up carpet, his head resting on cardboard.
"You want something to eat?" Southrey said. "Why don't you come over to the Mission?"
"I don't like the food. I don't do pork. Plus, they put a lot of sugar in the food," the man says, crawling out from under the pier, shivering against the morning chill.
He is Angelo Serbest, 28, and he says he came to Atlantic City to gamble. He blasted through all of his money and ended up down under.
"I lost a few grand in the casinos. I came here for fun. I got to gambling. I had $1,000 and then, boom, it was gone, just like that," he said.
But he won't go to the Mission. Southrey walks him back to his car, takes him for breakfast at McDonald's, tries to persuade him to come into the Mission, where there is a health clinic, religious services, food and beds. Two days later, he's back under the Boardwalk.
Under the Boardwalk, the cats get fed but the people don't.
In addition to the homeless people who live there, there are hundreds of feral and stray cats. They are tended to by the Humane Society of Atlantic County and a non-profit group called Alley Cat Allies.
Igloo-shaped shelters are placed under the Boardwalk, along with food and water.
The men and women who live in the Underwood get no food deliveries.
But social service agencies and city officials never stop trying to help them. Sometimes, it's one- or two-person teams of staffers from the Atlantic City Rescue Mission or Jewish Family Service trying to make contact with the Underwood's residents.
In summer, the city conducts pre-dawn sweeps in which representatives of the Fire Department, Police Department, the city and other agencies chase the homeless out and clear their belongings away.
"We've found kids under there, fathers, runaways," said Garry Alston, Atlantic City's director of code enforcement. "Once, we found a mother with two small children."
If it's a person from another city or state, they are offered a free bus ticket home. If they're asleep on a Boardwalk bench, police officers on bicycles tell them to move on.
The job isn't entirely altruistic: To city officials, the Underwood is a public safety hazard and a blight on a city that caters to gamblers, beachgoers and other visitors.
"We've had fires, we've had homicides, we've had rapes. Any social ill you'd care to name takes place down there," said Sgt. Michael Tullio, a police spokesman.
"The Boardwalk is a major tourist attraction, you can't let it go unprotected."
The main hazard is fire: Several times a year, homeless people trying to keep warm under the Boardwalk accidentally set fire to the Boardwalk itself. In April 2000, a homeless man died in a fire he had set to keep warm under a Central Pier ramp.
There are other concerns. Sometimes, the smell of urine and feces wafts up through the wooden planks from a homemade toilet in the sand.
"Your heart goes out for them," said Fire Department Investigator Thomas Bell, who has participated in dozens of sweeps. "Some of these are healthy people who just have an alcohol problem and there's nothing to do but direct them to the aid agencies. But they resist it."
In addition to the 130-bed Rescue Mission, soup kitchens run by the Salvation Army and former casino chef Jean Webster feed lunch to whoever wants it, in facilities just blocks from the Boardwalk.
At Catholic Charities, Sister Grace Nolan gives clothing and food when Underwood residents show up at her door.
"We're dealing with people who have been homeless for 5, 10, 15 years," said Capt. Shawn Hovatter, who runs the Salvation Army operation here. "They're getting pretty comfortable with it. They're just preparing to die. How do you change that?"
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