Married baby boomers who once owned an East Hampton home free and clear but now sleep in a poorly insulated trailer. A man with a traumatic brain injury who drove a wedge between him and his wife. A disabled 14-year-old girl who does her homework in a car to avoid the cold.

They are among the more than 20 people who are homeless and living year-round at Suffolk County campgrounds — in the rain, in the dead of night — because they can’t afford Long Island’s high rents or mortgages. A thin piece of nylon or aluminum is usually the only thing shielding them from the elements.

“I can’t afford an apartment on disability,” said Terri Scofield, 60, who has two strains of chronic Lyme disease and sets up camp every week, more often than not at Sears Bellows County Park in Hampton Bays,  for her and her service dog Sunny. “It’s really frustrating how some people don’t have a clue at all” about how hard life can be for a disabled person.

Scofield and nearly two dozen others stay at Sears Bellows, Southaven in Brookhaven, Cathedral Pines in Middle Island or Indian Island County Park in Riverhead, according to the campers and county officials. They are a small percentage of Long Island's nearly 4,000 homeless individuals.

The campers blame their homelessness on unaffordable rents, rising taxes, low-paying jobs and disabilities that keep them out of the workforce.

“We may be more lenient to them,” said Suffolk County Parks Commissioner Phil Berdolt, referring to homeless campers. “They’re just campers to us.”

The county does not count or differentiate between those who live in the campgrounds and recreational campers, or treat them differently, officials said. They must, however, move from park to park every week or two — Sears Bellows allows for two weeks — under county rules, a provision that wears on the older and disabled campers.

The campgrounds have housed low-earning, year-round residents for years, Berdolt said. A 1994 Newsday story on the issue featured interviews with three families living at Suffolk parks.

Their numbers undoubtedly swell in the summer when the parks are open to tent campers. Only Cathedral Pines in Middle Island and Indian Island in Riverhead are open during the offseason, and only for those in self-contained campers.

The situation is more common in Suffolk than in Nassau, where an estimated nine campers live year-round at Battle Row Campground in Old Bethpage, according to Nassau County Parks Commissioner Eileen Krieb.

Living at the campgrounds still requires an income to cover camp fees and, often, propane gas. Many campers also pay car insurance, cellphone bills and storage fees on top of those costs. In-season prices at Suffolk campgrounds, with the exception of outer beach camping and sites at the popular Smith Point County Park in Shirley, range from $7 per night for tent camping to $24 for electric and water hookup for a camper, and can cost more than $700 per month, according to an online fee schedule. Prices vary by campground and whether the resident has a discounted pass that is available to the disabled, seniors and veterans.

For many, the price is reasonable because the parks provide access to bathrooms, showers, running water and — since they are patrolled by park rangers — safety.

Those interviewed said they preferred camping to the county shelter system, which can require a share of their income, according to a spokesman for the state Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance. One camper said his family paid about $600 per month to live in a Suffolk shelter.

Many said they earn too much to qualify for social services. The waiting list for voucher programs is often thousands of applicants long, and it can take more than a decade to reach the top, housing advocates said. East Hampton Town, which has the authority to manage 189 vouchers, received 4,000 pre-applications when it opened its waiting list in 2018.

The low percentage of Long Island rental housing, combined with a lack of affordable rental units reserved for those earning 50% of the Area Median Income, which is at $43,400 per year for an individual or $62,000 for a family of four, makes it difficult for low earners and those receiving disability assistance to find affordable rental housing, experts said.

About 20% of Suffolk’s housing stock is rental units, when it should be 40%, said representatives of the Long Island Housing Partnership, the Hauppauge-based nonprofit that helps people find affordable housing. High land values and building costs make it difficult for developers to offer rents affordable to low earners without assistance from subsidies or the housing choice voucher program, also known as Section 8.

“When you have such a low supply of housing, the demand drives up the cost of housing,” said Peter Elkowitz, president and chief executive at the Long Island Housing Partnership.

But Long Island still needs a workforce to staff its low-wage jobs, including cashiers, nursing aides and restaurant workers, and they need to live somewhere. A single mother tent camping for the summer said she earned $18 an hour as a certified nursing assistant, often working overnight shifts, but still struggled to find housing. One would need to earn $36.67 per hour to afford a two-bedroom apartment in Nassau or Suffolk at the fair-market rate of $1,907 per month, according to 2019 data from the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

“It is not a surprise at all that folks could be making $18 an hour and still be homeless,” said Greta Guarton, executive director for the Long Island Coalition for the Homeless.

The nonprofit group conducts an Islandwide homeless count every year for the federal Housing and Urban Development Department, and this year counted 3,960 homeless individuals. It did not provide a breakdown of the homeless population in Suffolk versus Nassau.

A Long Islander earning 30% of Area Median Income would need a monthly rent of $930 to meet the affordability threshold. A person earning the average Supplemental Security Income of $858 per month would need to find an apartment that costs no more than $257 a month to be affordable, a nearly unheard of amount for the area.

The political battle to build more affordable units has been the main obstacle in constructing higher-density and subsidized housing, said Richard Koubek, chair of the Suffolk County Legislature’s Welfare to Work Commission, which advises county officials on poverty-related issues.

“Long Island is locked into the single-family ownership model, and anything that varies from that is frankly a threat,” Koubek said. “The reason these people are in tents is because we can’t get housing constructed.”

He noted that Huntington Town, for example, projected a need of 2,798 units in 2008 and has only built 729 since, according to the Huntington Township Housing Coalition, where Koubek is also vice president. Municipalities are also much more likely to build affordable housing for seniors than for families, he said.

Instead, many turn to campgrounds. Newsday spoke to several of them. Here are their stories:

She's not sure how to survive the winter

TERRI SCOFIELD, 60

Terri Scofield sets up camp the same way each week. The ground is meticulously raked, the picnic table provided by the county is scrubbed with a bleach solution, and a mat is laid outside her tent for her service dog, Sunny.

Her site at Sears Bellows County Park remains pristine all week, with the rake lines still visible on checkout day.

Setting up is taxing for Scofield, but cleanliness is critical because her immune system is compromised. She will sometimes go without showering in the communal bathroom because she is too tired from the move.

Scofield, 60, suffers from two strains of chronic Lyme diseases and five other tickborne illnesses, she said. Her symptoms include fatigue, pain and cognitive difficulties like trouble thinking and speaking clearly later in the day.

“It’s dirty and time-consuming and takes an incredible amount of physical work,” she said of setting up. “Who would have thought at the age of 60 I’d be forced every week or two to break camp, pack the car, drive nine, 10 miles down the road and make camp all over again.”

Scofield, a former paralegal and activist for mothers on public assistance, said she never lacked a roof and four walls before she started living at the campgrounds in spring 2018. A monthly disability income of less than $900 per month has made it tough to find something affordable after she became too sick to work earlier that year, she said. Shelter living is not an option due to her supressed immune system, according to a letter from her doctor.

Hammering stakes and connecting tent poles leaves her with little energy to cook or take 11-year-old Sunny for a walk. Scofield recalled that once she set up in the wrong tent site and, in tears, begged a neighbor to help her move.

“This is supposed to be a vacation spot, this is supposed to be a recreational area,” Scofield said. “It’s not meant for people to live in.”

Scofield said she has been sick since 1985.

She said she last earned $2,000 per month working as a subcontractor for various law firms, enough to pay for a mobile home in Riverhead and groceries. When Scofield was no longer able to work, the $6,000 she had in savings quickly evaporated.

She said her father passed away in 2003 and that she is estranged from her siblings, so with no family and no real way to earn income, she turned to Sears Bellows County Campground in Hampton Bays. 

“I can’t afford an apartment on disability,” she said.

Living at the campgrounds is cheaper than an apartment, but life still incurs other costs.

Scofield’s monthly expenses include car insurance, a cellphone payment, a storage unit and food for her and Sunny, leaving her with little or nothing left over. She said she is on a waiting list for a Section 8 housing choice voucher, which she said would be the best option for long-term housing.

With the campgrounds closed to tent campers for the winter, Scofield plans to sleep in her car in big-box store parking lots and shower at a discount fitness club. She said her days will be spent at public libraries, and meals mostly will be purchased at drive-thru windows. 

“I don’t know how I am going to survive another winter,” she said.

The wind and propane don't mix

DONALD PACCIO, 59

Family photos inside Donald Paccio’s pop-up trailer were taken during a different era in his life. They display a fit and handsome suburban dad with his arms around his two young boys on trips to Sesame Place in Pennsylvania or on the Little League ballfield — images captured before he fell in 2003 from a moving truck and onto the concrete.

Paccio, 59, was working as a delivery driver for The New York Times, a job he took pride in and that provided his family with a solid middle-class life, when he fell. Paccio said he was left partially paralyzed for several weeks and sustained lasting damage to his brain, nerves, eyes and spine. He was 42.

Paccio was awarded workers' compensation from the accident, although it took years to begin receiving regular payments. His life unraveled soon afterward, straining his marriage and eventually forcing him to declare bankruptcy in 2017. The family lost its Hicksville home to foreclosure in 2018.

“I went into a depression. I drank vodka like it was [going] out of style,” Paccio said in a recent interview at his camper, parked at Indian Island County Park in Riverhead. “Toward the end of losing the house, I was ignoring everything.”

He slept in his truck before buying a trailer to stay at Nassau County’s Battle Row Campground in Old Bethpage. He soon headed east, finding the eastern Long Island sites to be cheaper and more lenient in restrictions.

Pop-up trailers like Paccio’s feature hard roofs and floors, but only canvas sides. He hangs extra blankets and sheets along the walls and uses a propane heater during the day to keep warm. It’s too dangerous to leave on while sleeping.

“The problem is the wind,” he said one November day when the mercury topped out at 34 degrees. “As long as it’s not windy, it’s not bad.”

Paccio estimates he grosses $4,100 in income from disability, Social Security, workers' comp and a small pension. Taxes and hundreds given to his wife every month leave little left to afford traditional housing.

Paccio said he spends more than $500 a month in camping fees to park. He also pays about $250 a month for a storage unit, $129 for cellphone service and $75 for car insurance. Propane, gasoline and food round out his expenses.

The apartment search process is overwhelming for Paccio, who struggles to concentrate on something as simple as locating his former optometrist’s phone number. Other setbacks this year include putting down his 14-year-old dog Snickers, totaling his truck, being burglarized, and losing an older sister after she had an aneurysm.

Still, Paccio does hold hope for the future. He said he would like to work it out with his estranged wife by spring and begin looking for a new apartment together.

“If you’re in an apartment, you’re warm all the time. You have a bathroom right there,” he said. “That’s what I miss.”

'I don't want to die in here'

FRED STETTINGER, 66, and DARLENE STETTINGER, 63

Darlene and Fred Stettinger live in a cramped 19-foot Zeppelin camper where the floor is caving in and they cannot take a shower in the winter months because the water system does not work. Four years ago, the couple was living in the Springs home they owned but had to sell for $356,000 in 2016 following foreclosure proceedings. Investors purchased the distressed property, and the following year would sell it for more than $1 million.

“If you don’t know what you are doing, and you get into a situation that you don’t know anything about, people can just get over on you,” said Darlene, adding she is dreading spending another cold winter in the trailer where a television receives only four channels and the chill exacerbates pain from a neck injury.

The couple purchased their former two-story saltbox style home in 1998 for $190,000. They paid cash with money from a car accident settlement, assuming that without a mortgage they’d be able to live out their golden years there. It was in the town where they both grew up, a short walk to the beach and close enough to the Riverhead group home where their oldest son, Frederick, 36, who has cognitive disabilities, resides.

What they didn’t count on was how much they would pay in property taxes, which rose to about $8,000 per year by 2014. The payments became harder to make when Darlene left work as a hotel housekeeper that year because of the lingering effects of the injury from the car accident. Fred retired from the East Hampton Town sanitation department in 2000 following an injury and said he collects about $1,800 per month through pension and disability payments. Another adult son, Daniel, 29, contributes his monthly $500 disability check to the family’s income and lives in the camper.

Darlene said she took out a $250,000 mortgage in April 2008, just months before the financial collapse, to cover taxes and other expenses. The mortgage agreement included a clause stating the 6.75% interest rate could rise as high as 18% should they miss a payment by more than 30 days. She missed payments after she stopped working in 2014 and the property soon went into foreclosure. 

The Stettingers sold the house in 2016 to pay off the loan, which had risen to $294,551.40 with interest, because that is what they were told by real estate agents to do, they said. Investors put some money into the property — a recent real estate listing shows a gunite pool and a renovated, airy interior — and sold it for $1.1 million in 2017.

Neither Darlene nor Fred graduated high school and admit they were overwhelmed by the process.

The couple used the profits from the sale to rent a house in Wading River for about a year, but soon ran out of money. Fred's income was too high to qualify for the shelter system. They said they purchased the trailer through Craigslist and found themselves shuttling among the campgrounds every week.

“We had to leave all of our stuff. We couldn’t take anything,” Fred said of leaving their home in East Hampton. "It was just heartbreaking."

They said they are unable to bring Frederick home for the holidays, a tradition they all miss. Hot dogs, hamburgers and processed foods dominate their diets.

“A lot of no-good foods, I call it,” Darlene said.

The Stettingers said their best hope for permanent housing would be a Section 8 housing choice voucher to subsidize their rent. There is stiff competition among applicants for the federal program, which is administered by local municipalities, and it could take years before a voucher becomes available.

“I’ll be dead by that time,” Fred said. “I don’t want to die in here.”

Dreaming of a better life, somewhere else

JULIANNE, 14, AND HER PARENTS, 41 and 42

Julianne is a disabled, 14-year-old honor student and aspiring artist who sometimes is forced to do her homework in a car to shield her from the cold and rain.

Her family, which includes her stay-at-home mother and her father, a custodian, began camping in tents in June after they said their Middle Island landlord asked them to leave, supposedly to sell the home.

They began shuttling between parks, including Cathedral Pines and Southaven, but were able to purchase a trailer in mid-October. The campgrounds are where the school bus has picked up Julianne early in the morning, sometimes before sunrise, since classes started in September.

The family has an income that in places other than Long Island should be sufficient for them to get by, but they say

Julianne's father, 42, makes $45,000 per year, plus overtime, working for a subcontractor of a Long Island town, his wife, 41, said. She added that her husband's take-home pay is about $750 per week. Julianne's parents asked not to be identified so her father's employer would not know he is homeless. 

She said she would look for a job but is worried that if the family’s income rises, her daughter will lose her Medicaid benefits. She also said she needs the flexibility in case Julianne, who was born with hip dysplasia and walks with a limp, needs medical attention.

“They should allow people to make more money and get help,” Julianne's mother said. “I want to work.”

A social worker who stopped by during an October interview could be heard telling them they would need to make less than $24,000 annually to qualify for services.

Julianne's mother said she thought they could save money at the campgrounds, but camp fees, a car payment and insurance, a storage unit, cellphone bills, propane for cooking, gas and food eat up much of their income.

“We’ve actually lost money instead of saving money,” Julianne's mother said.

Julianne's mother spent her formative years in and out of shelters and said she believes camping is a better option for her family. But it has its drawbacks.

Sometimes other campers fight well into the night, others leave messes in the showers, the family said. Julianne's mother said she is fearful someone could easily break into their nylon tent. Food goes to waste because it’s difficult to keep cold and it’s near impossible to stay dry in the heavy rain.

Julianne's mother, who earned a GED after dropping out of high school, turned to her daughter to say that once she is old enough, her mother hopes to seek a better life in another state.

“As soon as you're 18, I’m out of here,” she said. “I’m going back to school … or something.”

Saving money and their future selves

RICHARD BALTAR, 61, and JENNIFER BALTAR, 51

Richard “Randy” Baltar owned a hardwood flooring company for 30 years and said he did well for most of them. He worked in multimillion-dollar Hamptons homes with high-end architects and designers, earning enough to support his family and pay for a four-bedroom home in Westhampton, he said.

He said competition from contractors who used unlicensed, and he claims in some cases undocumented workers,  led to the company’s downfall following the 2008 recession. He and his wife Jennifer filed for bankruptcy in 2012 and lost their home to foreclosure in 2013.

"It was a very devastating day," Jennifer Baltar said of leaving their home. "The moving trucks came in, they took everything out of the house and put it on the side of the road."

The Baltars, who have seven children, have been able to save money since moving into a 33-foot Jayco trailer in 2016. In less than two years, they plan to put a down payment on a house in Port Charlotte, Florida, where the weather’s better and the taxes are cheaper.

“We had to live like this to get that” savings, Baltar said in an interview in the camper parked for the week at Cathedral Pines in Middle Island. “It’s hard to find a dump [on Long Island] for $1,800 a month.”

Baltar, 61, works full time as a cab driver. Jennifer, 51, has schizoaffective disorder, which has symptoms like schizophrenia, and she collects disability income. The children are mostly grown, and their two youngest sons are staying with a family friend until they are old enough to join the military.

The Baltars said they prefer living in the campgrounds, where they have freedom and some privacy, over the shelter system, which they have used in the past. They said they did not feel safe in one location where the county proposed placing them. At another shelter, seven families shared two bathrooms.

Baltar espouses conservative values and stresses the importance of hard work, although it has taken a toll on his body. He said he has had two heart attacks in the past six years and, since then, has adopted a vegetarian diet.

The couple said the biggest drawback to camping is having to move nearly every week, although Sears Bellows in Hamptons Bays allows for two-week stays. Still, as a member of what he calls “Long Island’s diminishing middle class,” Baltar said the lifestyle has allowed them to prepare for their future.

It all comes down to what’s best for their senior years, Baltar said.

“Do you want to live hand to mouth,” he said. “Or do you want to save money?”

By Vera Chinese

vera.chinese@newsday.com@VeraChinese

Vera Chinese joined Newsday in 2017 after working as an editor for the East End lifestyle publication northforker and a general assignment reporter for the New York Daily News.