Dear Editor:
As the director of the statewide association of animal shelters, I have watched with mounting concern the troubles surrounding the Hudson County SPCA/Assisi Center over the past several months. The latest is the debate over how the shelter’s decision to adopt a no-kill policy has resulted in an overflow of stray dogs and cats that have no where to go. The reason they have no where to go is because when the shelter is full, Jersey City Animal Control reports the shelter refuses to admit any more animals and there is no other animal shelter in Hudson County to give those strays refuge. I have seen the police, the shelter and the politicians engage in elaborate finger-pointing exercises to lay blame somewhere for this crisis. The police blame the “pit bull explosion.” The shelter blames Jersey City, intimating that if it would only pay its animal control bill, then somehow animal overpopulation–a national problem–would go away in Hudson County. The SPCA’s board of directors continue to hide behind a wall of silence and anonymity, a wall they themselves have erected by failing to register the SPCA as a charity with the state of New Jersey, contrary to state law. And the politicians–where are the politicians?
Actually, the cause for the current crisis is very simple. If a shelter wants to be “no-kill”–that is, if it doesn’t want to put animals to sleep to make room for more incoming animals–the only way to do that is to stop accepting new animals once the shelter fills up. The shelter must then wait until enough people come in to adopt their animals before it can begin accepting new animals. There are a limited number of cages in an animal shelter and it sometimes takes weeks if not months for some dogs and cats to get adopted. Couple that with the fact that animal shelters in urban settings are flooded almost on a daily basis with stray, lost, or unwanted animals. If you only have 12 seats around the dinner table, you can’t seat 25. This is basic common sense.
But stray and homeless animals in Hudson County must have a guaranteed place to go when they are lost or no longer wanted by their human caretakers. It is a tragic fact that there are unmistakably more dogs and cats in the world than there are homes for them. The leading cause of this is the public’s failure to spay or neuter their pets, which produces thousands of unwanted litters every year. In New Jersey alone, approximately 110,000 dogs and cats come into our animal shelters each year and only about 60,000 get adopted. You don’t have to be a genius to do the math.
There is nothing wrong with an animal shelter adopting a no-kill policy. But it does lead to only one logical conclusion: Jersey City needs another place to take stray animals. Leaving them to roam on the city streets creates a human health and safety hazard. It also violates state law. Not to mention how incredibly inhumane and cruel it is to allow companion animals to wander streets and alleys, where they are likely to be subject to abuse and starvation, to die of exposure, or to be killed on roadways by cars. Turning animals away and assuming Animal Control will just take the strays to another shelter won’t work because there is no other shelter. And simply ignoring the problem and hoping it will go away won’t work either.
If the cause of this crisis is simple, then so is the solution: Jersey City needs another animal shelter. An anonymous donor has pledged $500,000 toward the construction of a new shelter. It is time for the Jersey City council and mayor to take action. No more excuses. No more finger-pointing. The entire state of New Jersey is watching. Now, what will they do?
Diana H. Jeffrey, Esq.
Director
Animal Welfare Federation of NJ