A New Jersey community organization has initiated a campaign to provide homes for five homeless men who lost the rooms they had been renting when they could no longer pay the rent because they could not find work.

The impulse for the initiative arose after El Diario/La Prensa published interviews yesterday with five men of Central American origins who had been living for months in a place they had dubbed “The Devil's Cave” in the Plainfield area.

Carmen Salavarrieta, a member of the steering committee of the Plainfield Hispanic Center, an organization which has given the men food and clothing, expressed gratitude for the intervention of Plainfield's mayor, Sharon Robinson-Briggs.

“Thanks to her, temporary shelter has been found for the five homeless men,” said Salavarrieta.

After being let go from their respective jobs and faced with the impossibility of paying the rents for their rooms, these men, construction workers and gardeners, had been living in the streets for about three months.

With nowhere else to turn, the homeless men made refuges, to which they gave the name “caves.”

One of these places they found beneath the porch of an abandoned house in the Plainfield area; it was shared by between six and 10 homeless men, who referred to the place as “The Devil's Cave.”

Two more locations, similar to the first, in Plainfield and North Plainfield, were inhabited by another 15 homeless men.

Yesterday the five men who had been interviewed by El Diario/La Prensa were able to bathe and to eat a hot meal.

Salvadoran Israel Rodríguez, 43, who had lived in the “Devil's Cave” for three months after he lost his gardening job at a golf club, said that he felt like he was “new again.”

With a voice full of hope, Alfredo Aguilar, 37, said that the only thing that they need “is work.”

Salavarrieta explained that her goal is to find the men two rooms the five of them can share, and to help them pay the rent while they look for work until they can support themselves.

“Other people who have become aware of the situation have offered to help them while they get established with jobs,” Salavarrieta said.

As for the homeless who still live in these caves, Salavarrieta said that the Plainfield Hispanic Center “will offer assistance to anyone who needs it.”