A newly formed community group that advocates for the homeless is seeking donations for the victims of the Feb. 19 five-alarm fire that left several Jersey City residents homeless.

The Jersey City Homelessness Advocacy Group says toiletry and clothing items are greatly needed, as are cash contributions that can be used to purchase gift cards or other items for fire victims.

The five-alarm blaze at the corner of Monticello and Fairmount avenues displaced as many as eight families, injured 19 firefighters, and appears to have been fueled by a gas leak, according to fire officials.

Items can be dropped off at New City Kids, 240 Fairmount Ave., tomorrow through Friday, from noon to 3 p.m., and also on Thursday from 6 to 8 p.m.

Cash contributions can be made to Jersey City Homelessness Advocacy Group.

Does anyone have contact info for a way to organize a fundraiser? I would like to get these families and businesses some help.

Homeless after a five-alarm blaze tore through a building near Jersey City?s McGinley Square and destroyed everything last Sunday, shop owners and tenants are trying to rebuild their lives.
But they feel that Jersey City has turned their back on them, unlike Hoboken, which has already mustered at least two fundraisers for victims of a four-alarm fire that happened the same night.

Reena Rose Sibayan/The Jersey Journal
Brian Palms with his mother, Twana, and sister, Talisha, outside the building on the corner of Monticello and Fairmount avenues in Jersey City where he lived and which was badly damaged by Sunday's five-alarm fire.
Six weeks after Asha Herbert, 22, a journalism and media major at Rutgers University-Newark, and her partner Brian Palms, 22, a lab assistant at Middlesex County College, moved into an apartment at 249 Monticello Ave., they lost all their possessions apart from a bag of clothes they managed to salvage.
Herbert also lost makeup for her job as a makeup artist at Sephora at Newport Centre Mall, and the couple also lost two pet turtles and 15 goldfish.
They had not obtained renters? insurance.
Now they are living separately with their mothers and looking for housing has become their full-time job, though they lack money for a security deposit.
?We are trying to move on,? Herbert said. ?We feel defeated and very weak.?
Herbert said they visited the Relocation Services Community Development office at 30 Montgomery St. and were told they can apply for help with the deposit and moving expenses, but it would take five days to process including a walk-through of the damaged building.
?There were holes in the wall and holes in the floor. One wall is missing,? Herbert said, speaking outside her boarded up apartment where a fire cleanup crew was throwing bags of burned belongings out of the solitary open window to a truck below. ?They are probably going to tear it down. What are they going to walk through??
Ernest Mallard, 30, lost two barber shops in the building B&M Barber Shop at 254 Fairmount Ave. and the Variety Spot at 251 Monticello Ave. that employed six people.
Devastated by the loss, he started drinking too much and found it only made his depression worse. Now he is optimistic. He is already looking to open a new barber shop down the street on Fairmount Avenue.
?I drank myself to the hospital. It?s not in my nature. I am a fighter. I don?t want to go back to a hospital,? Mallard said.
?I pray things go the way they are supposed to go. They say things happen for a reason. The structure is to be inspected by Jersey City building officials to determine if it can be repaired or if it must be demolished.
City spokeswoman Jennifer Morrill said the Mayor?s Office has been working to coordinate assistance for fire victims through the American Red Cross and the city?s Division of Community Development and has an aide working to track down the fire victims through the American Red Cross.
Fire officials have pointed to a chimney carrying the exhaust from 20 clothes dryers at the corner laundry as the source of the blaze and suggested there may have been a gas leak as well.
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