Life in the Woodbridge woods comes to an end
Former homeless woman talks about life in squatters’ encampment
BY COLLEEN LUTOLF
Staff Writer

COLLEEN LUTOLF Sharon Simon, Woodbridge, returns to the Hopelawn woods Thursday afternoon to feed the cats she and Pink Bellamy cared for. Simon and Bellamy lived together in the “fairy-tale castle” that was razed by a township bulldozer last week.

WOODBRIDGE — Sharon Simon did not build the famous “gingerbread house” township bulldozers razed last week, but she did live there — along with the home’s owner, Pink Bellamy, who has become something of a local icon in the past few weeks.

Simon’s face was not splashed across countless local newspapers or television screens like Bellamy’s was last week, nor was she described as a “folk legend” railing against the establishment in a romantic quest of the American dream.

No one even knew Simon, a former mason, existed.

But she does exist. She even lived alone for a time in the home that Bellamy built 17 years ago, she said. When the house that Pink built was torn down, Simon lost her home, too.

“It’s devastating,” she said late Thursday afternoon as she walked across foot-wide dirt paths left by the bulldozer that gutted her former home that morning. “I lived there over three years. I can’t believe they tore it down. It’s like a landmark.”

Simon moved out of the squatters encampment two weeks ago she said.

“Donna [Barcellona] from the welfare department set me up with a place,” she said, as she sipped a can of Natural Ice beer. “It’s really nice. I love it. But my concern now is for my babies out here.”

Simon and Bellamy kept a number of cats in their small home that Bellamy said he modeled after a fairy-tale castle, complete with a moat.

Simon returned to the woods Thursday evening with a bag of cat food, which she poured into a bowl for the cats who had appeared soon after she did.

“It’s hard enough on us,” she said. “At least we’re human. We can understand what’s happening.”

Most of the men who lived in the woods behind the Hopelawn Pathmark moved there because they had no place else to live.

Simon was no different.

“I was stuck with no choice,” she said. “I became disabled, I lost my apartment, I lost everything.”

Before she began living in the woods with Bellamy, Simon lived in an Edison apartment and worked as a convenience store manager.

But debilitating physical and emotional disabilities left her homeless three years ago, she said.

“I starting walking down here years and years ago,” she said. “I used to leave packs of cigarettes, some money and food for the guys in the parking lot. Little by little, I got to know the people back here.”

Although one of the few women living in the woods, Simon said she was not afraid of the other squatters.

“No one ever tried to rape me or touch me,” she said. “Actually, they were more protective of me because I am a girl — just the opposite of what someone might think.”

Simon lashed out against the assumption the squatters were committing petty crimes in the neighborhood, acts of panhandling and burglary, which, Woodbridge officials said, ultimately led them to their evicting the squatter community’s inhabitants.

“I’d like to straighten that out because it makes everybody who lived here look like trash, and they weren’t,” she said. “They were good people, including myself. Things happen. People are disabled one way or another, and after a while they wind up out here.”

Only one woman who lived in the woods was panhandling at the Pathmark, Simon said. “And she died a year ago,” she said. “She had diabetes and didn’t have the proper medication.”

It was also about a year ago that Simon said she began to feel unsafe in the woods.

“People were drinking in the parking lot, and someone attacked the house,” she said. “They were throwing beer bottles. They shot it up with paintball guns. That’s why the windows were boarded up.”

Simon had been living alone in Pink’s house, but after the paintball gun attack, she asked him to move back in. The two had been living together ever since, she said.

But Simon said the pair were not a couple.

“He’s one of my best friends in the world,” she said. “He’s a very good friend, but he was never a boyfriend. I was too afraid to stay by myself. It became unsafe. People really started coming around out here.”

Last fall, a man who had been living behind the Pathmark was arrested for theft and attempted arson of a local pizza parlor. Pathmark submitted an official complaint with the township, which had gained ownership in the late 1990s of the 2.3 acres of land between New Brunswick Avenue and the Route 440 connector.

“There were six people back here,” she said. “They never panhandled. The people who lived here didn’t cause any trouble. But other people were running back here. There were kids coming back here. We never panhandled down there or caused any trouble. It’s common sense — you gonna bring trouble to where you live? No. But we got blamed.”

Those are the people Simon blames for the squatters’ evictions.

“I have more blame toward those people than the township itself,” she said. “The township was stuck in a position. It was the people who came out here and ruined it for the people out here.”

Instead of trying to make it through another winter, Simon is now sleeping under brand-new quilts in an Woodbridge apartment secured by Barcellona.

“Donna’s good,” she said. “She deserves all the credit. It took three years, but she got me a real nice place. She got me these bed quilts that are pink and white. They’re so pretty. I love my new place. And you could see a smile on Donna’s face. You can tell she felt good to help us.”

Woodbridge Administrator Robert Landolfi would not allow Barcellona to be interviewed for this story.

The cats will “probably be brought in for adoption” by animal control officers, Landolfi said.