Ever since the New Hanover County Commission voted to push the homeless population away from the downtown library, they have become more transient — walking through downtown rather than stopping to rest, moving to new areas of town, and struggling to find sanctuary.
This came just a few months after the county agreed to the “Getting Home” initiative, a homeless street outreach program in which social workers from the county’s Health and Human Services department work with Wilmington Police to serve that community.
Earlier in July, City Council got an update about those efforts from Wilmington Police Department. Sergeant Ron Evans told the council about the impact the library ban had on that population.
"It moved a lot of the population out of the downtown area," he said. "This caused them to move to different encampments."
That complicated the Getting Home program’s focus. It used to emphasize the homeless population in downtown — but now, the unhoused were banned from the places they stayed downtown. Places like the library parking deck and the Meadowlark Lemon Bridge, where the old railway used to be. So, WPD changed, and brought two new officers onto the team to enforce trespassing outside of downtown.
"We're still concentrated on the downtown area, but they are a significant amount of places in woods that are owned by private property or different entities,” Evans said.
In a follow-up interview, Sergeant Evans said there are new camps that have cropped up in other parts of the city and county. These are generally unsanctioned camps — only a few on property where the residents aren’t actively considered trespassers. “The prime example is the encampment at Kerr and MLK," he said. "So that camp or that property is actually owned by three different entities.”
The owners — the Cameron Family, Duke Energy, and NCDOT — haven’t acted to stop the encampment.
“If you don't want to enforce trespassing on your own property, then, you know, that's okay. But that is I believe that's not the case for the vast majority, if not all of the encampments that we're coming across in the city," Evans said.
Evans said the police are working on that issue with the owners, so they can enforce trespassing. But he also says there aren’t enough shelter beds for those campers to stay. At the most recent available Point in Time count in 2021, there were 116 unhoused individuals in the tri-county area. But experts assume that to be an undercount.
Mayor Bill Saffo pointed out this problem during the presentation at council. “You can move on from one area to another, and that's primarily what's happened here in a lot of cases. And when you move them to another area, you wait a couple of days, and you find out where they've moved to. And I can guarantee you, they're probably in every stitch of woods that is left in New Hanover County, the City of Wilmington.”
There are essentially no places in New Hanover County where the unhoused who can't get into the shelters are allowed to sleep.
The police and social workers involved in the Getting Home effort touted successes — connecting people in need to food and shelter, to drug treatment centers, and to financial resources like veteran and disability benefits. But the presenters said there aren’t enough shelters or affordable housing options for them to rely on.
Despite the caveats and limitations, the team’s efforts have been somewhat successful. In six months, the program helped people access shelter nearly 100 times, connected 13 people to permanent housing, and connected 14 people to their families or other support systems.
County Social Work Supervisor, Katelyn Mattox says it takes time to build trust. “Oftentimes, given the availability of housing in our community, trying to reconnect them to former support is often our most likely and creative solution to try to help them find shelter. While those numbers seem small, again, these are big, big things to try to overcome with our folks. And with the lack of affordable housing, it does end up being difficult.”
At the new downtown day shelter on Market Street, the Getting Home program has an overall positive reputation. 67-year-old Barbara said she has been waiting on housing from the Housing Authority for 10 years, so she’s been homeless. But the outreach team?
“They are phenomenal. Miss Lee, Mr. Nunley, and Mr. Allen, their supervisor, and they think outside the box, they make sure that our needs are met. And it's just a good thing for the soul to get some peace.”
