Kelly Kenoyer: I'm here with Councilman David Joyner. Thank you so much for joining us today.
David Joyner: Thank you for having me. Good to see you.
KK: So let's recap what happened at the city council meeting this week. Can you explain Luke Waddell's original ordinance that he proposed to deal with the homeless in Downtown Wilmington?
DJ: Yeah. So earlier this year, Council Member Waddell revisited an ordinance which we had voted down last year, and he brought back up the same piece of policy, which essentially is a copy and paste from the New Hanover County Commissioners' ordinance, which they passed in 2022. [It] essentially said that you cannot occupy, camp, sleep, in public property that's owned by - they said the county, we were doing an ordinance for city property. And under his proposal, it would have been a class three misdemeanor.
KK: So you amended this ordinance, and can you tell me a little bit about how you changed it and why?
DJ: Yeah, so I jumped in right away and made an amendment to start by striking one of the subsections of the ordinance, which specifically was about parking lots, so city parking decks and service lots that are owned by the city. The reason that I wanted to start with that is because when Councilmember Waddell introduced this a month or so ago, Mayor Saffo asked that we continue it, to have more time to talk with service providers people experiencing homelessness, nonprofit groups, as well as the folks who were explaining, you know, the sort of the burden that they were having, particularly downtown, on the business community.
And one of the things that I consistently was asking at these meetings is, does this have anything to do with parking? Are [there] people who are sleeping in their cars overnight? What you're talking about, what you're trying to solve for? And nobody said that was what they were bothered by. The only reason it was in front of us is because that's what the county had done.
And so when it got copy and pasted, here we have it in front of the city. And I actually talked to one group in particular. It's called the Safe Parking Initiative, and they're a group of faith communities, churches and faith groups who want to use their properties in order to allow people who are living out of their vehicles to sleep in those predictable, safe, consistent locations overnight, but that's going to be a cohort of people who are pretty likely to self-resolve out of homelessness. I mean, with a vehicle, you can still get to work, you can still get to school, you can still get to a medical appointment. And so I was saying, you know, why are we going to penalize this group of people when they are the closest to resolving? They're not at all a part of the problem that you're claiming you want to solve. Let's go ahead and strike this and get this out of the ordinance. So I let off the meeting right away and said, you know, have a motion to remove this piece, and let's pick it up and go from there.
KK: You also tried to change this from a misdemeanor to an infraction, and your logic with that was really about what a misdemeanor is meant to do, and this seems like a less severe punishment. You don't get points on your legal record from this, but what does this infraction allow law enforcement to do when it comes to enforcing anything with the homeless?
DJ: So this, to me as an attorney, is a distinction with a difference, the difference between felonies, misdemeanors and infractions, which I see every day in court. The difference between a misdemeanor is that you are convicted of a crime. It goes on your record. Courts will look at your record in the future. If you come back to court, courts can put you on probation after you've had a certain number of convictions. Courts can put you in jail after you've had a certain number of convictions. But actually, for a class 3 misdemeanor, for the first essentially four offenses, a court can give you a fine and tell you to go on your way. A judge can't even put you in jail the first three times that you violate this, and then the fourth there are some different parameters around what they could do with probation.
And so I was saying, why are we going to put a criminal law on the books which allows law enforcement to arrest and take somebody to jail for an offense that they are extremely unlikely to actually receive a jail sentence for, because, in addition to just having that framework, which we inherit from Raleigh, you know, that's prescribed to us by the General Assembly. I work with the nine district court judges in New Hanover County regularly, the folks who serve in on the District Court bench for both Pender and New Hanover counties. And I know their habits, and I know the way they think, and they don't put people on probation for class three misdemeanors. They don't put people in jail for class three misdemeanors.
So if the original proponents of this were saying, we can arrest our way out of this, that is inconsistent with what's actually happening in our courtroom. So why are we in misdemeanor territory at all? And I heard the calls for folks who were saying, you know, don't criminalize homelessness. Don't make it a crime. Don't punish people with a crime for being poor and for sleeping outside. And so I'm glad that I was in the room as an attorney, and I'm the only attorney on council to be able to say, look, there's another way to do this. There's another way to give law enforcement this touch point, and it's an infraction. When we're talking about infractions, we're talking about things most commonly around traffic offenses. Sometimes we're talking about hunting and fishing offenses, where a law enforcement officer can come up and say, you know you're you're in the wrong place at the wrong time. I need you to move along, or I'm going to have to cite you for this. There's not a threat of going to jail in the hunting and fishing examples, which I think is an apt example. It's a law enforcement officer who's saying you've got to come into compliance, or you've got to leave, one of the two.
Again, infractions are not criminal in the sense that under North Carolina law, they're not crimes, period. That's clear under the law. North Carolina law states that there is an affirmative defense, meaning statewide, if you violate a city or a county ordinance, you cannot be prosecuted for that, and if within the next 12 months, you do not re-offend, you're not charged with the same thing. It automatically goes away. It's dismissed. It cannot the state cannot proceed on it. Or alternatively, you cannot be prosecuted on it. If you seek services and provide documentation to the court that you are seeking services, the state cannot proceed. The case gets dismissed. So there are some important protections in place for any sort of city or county ordinance that allows people who are seeking services, who find themselves in a place where homelessness, unemployment, medical issues have contributed somehow to where they found themselves, they can't be prosecuted if one of those two things applies.
KK: So it sounds like this infraction is giving you a touch point or giving law enforcement a touch point. And you also brought up this idea of having a co-responder relationship. Can you explain a little bit about that policy and how that's going to be integrated moving forward?
DJ: Co-responder models are something that we are seeing adopted nationwide. It's something that our incoming police chief, who's coming to us from Lynchburg, Virginia, has implemented in the community there, and that pairs a social worker or a somebody who has expertise and training in responding to a mental health crisis, behavioral health it pairs that person with a law enforcement officer, they respond together as co-responders to an event where we think that there might be some sort of mental illness component, there might be some sort of behavioral health component, and it allows the social worker to go in first and offer services.
The role of the law enforcement officer on scene is, ideally to just keep everybody safe, let the social worker go in get the person the help they need resolve the issue. That's the end of the law enforcement piece. What I pointed out last night is that the vast, vast majority of chronically homeless folks in our community accept services when they're offered. The vast, vast majority want services, and there is a discussion to be had about what happens when you have somebody who wants services and there are not enough services, but there is a very small group of people who refuse services. There is a very small number of people who just don't accept the help when it's offered. And that is something that I see at the courthouse, primarily around addiction issues, and my work in trying to get people into recovery, courts getting them into substance abuse treatment programs or mental health programs, as opposed to going to jail once they are justice involved.
I've seen that people who are on hard drugs, cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin, their brain chemistry is fundamentally altered to the point where it takes months of sobriety, months of sobriety, for them to get back to a mental state where they can make logical, wise, comprehensive decisions for themselves. I don't think that it's compassionate for us to let people in that very small category continue to deteriorate and continue to languish. So ultimately, that brings us back to the question of does the law enforcement officer responding have the lawful authority to compel that person to participate in the services offered.
Otherwise, you have a social worker who's coming up and saying, Hey, I have an abundant list of resources. I have a bunch of people who want to help you, and somebody who is saying no, and may not even be in a mental place where they can make a logical decision. We need to be able to help that person too, and that's why I think the CO responder model, with an infraction, not a criminal misdemeanor, is an appropriate solution.
KK: Well, let me ask a little bit more about that, because I think that for this particular thing where it's just about sleeping, you're unlikely to have this this compulsion component. It'll be more about the drug infractions and things like that. Do you think that with the model that was set up at City Council this week, you've gotten to a place where you can actually have law enforcement compel people to treatment? Are we at that place in the law here in Wilmington now?
D: We're at the place where the social worker can come in and offer the services, and the law enforcement officer can say, if you are not going to accept these services, I have the lawful authority to tell you to move along, and it's time for you to move along.
So despite these amendments, a few of your fellow Democrats were still opposed to this ordinance. You did win over the Republicans on council to this amended version. Can you give me just the quick version of why you think members of the community who say don't criminalize homelessness, why the Democrats on council with you should be in favor of this amended ordinance, even though it came from a place they disagreed with originally.
Wilmington is a compassionate city, and we have leaders who want to start with services. We have a lot of providers in a small footprint, because we are a leader. We are the hub for the region. Onslow County, Pender County, Brunswick County, Columbus County, people come to New Hanover County and to the city of Wilmington for these kinds of services, we've got to have our neighbors step up to the plate to help us with this regional problem. We are already leading with services. We will continue to lead with services. There is no proposal to cut services. This is one additional thing that we can do through a co-responder model and giving law enforcement the infraction, not the criminal misdemeanor option, to manage the number of folks who are here.
KK: This amendment passed first reading, and it'll need another vote in a few weeks, and then what else is next? I know Mayor Saffo also talked about potentially opening up city property to be given for free to a nonprofit. What do you see in our future here?
DJ: See, this is the piece where, when you're looking at the whole picture, the ordinance is one piece of a much bigger story. And Mayor Saffo has said that he wants to see, and I agree with him, and I know councilmember Clifford Barnett, and I think you know, Councilmembers Salette Andrews and Kevin Spears as well have said that they do want to see us continue to provide services. And one of the things that we know that we're lacking is a low barrier shelter. One of the reasons I think that you are having more visible homelessness, particularly downtown, is because while we do want to get people into places like the Good Shepherd Center, and while we're very glad to have the Salvation Army property come online, it's not necessarily going to be that cohort of folks downtown who are able to go to those shelters, and that's because of low barrier requirements.
If somebody is actively in the midst of addiction, if somebody does have a criminal record, they may not be able to stay at some of the shelters that we do have, because those shelters are also housing families. Sometimes they're housing families with children. And so we do need a place that is going to allow for groups who don't really fit into the resources available now. We've got to find a place for them to go. And so there is a proposal on the table where we want to see some of the city's property be reviewed by city staff. We've asked city staff to make a recommendation to us about which piece of property would be the most strategically effective use for a low barrier shelter, and then we want to hand that off to a trusted service provider in the community to say, here's the property, we're ready for you to come in and do the shelter services. So we do want to continue to add that resource.
KK: My other question about that is that Mayor Saffo said he wants the neighbors to buy in for whatever property this ends up being. And is that likely to happen? It makes me question whether this will actually come to fruition, because I've never met a neighbor who's excited about a low barrier homeless shelter getting put in next door to them. So I'm not sure which neighborhood would be saying, yes, please put these folks in next door to me.
D: I anticipate that that's going to be a stress point as we look at where we're going to put that shelter, which property we're going to identify to do that, I think what we were speaking to last night was a commitment to be engaged and to listen and to give folks a chance for input on where that happens and how it happens if it's going to be near their neighborhood because we do have an over concentration of services in neighborhoods that historically have been poor. You know, you can think about you can look at a map of the services and see which parts of Wilmington are we're really leaning on to place these things geographically, to put these groups of people geographically. And it's not fair for one piece of our community to shoulder that whole burden.
So I think that's what we were speaking to last night, saying that we want to have an open, participatory process. This is something that we want to do. This is something that's going to be coming down the line, and we know there's going to be passionate community conversations. Anytime you want to put something like this in somebody's neighborhood, and look, if we can do it outside of a residential neighborhood, that may be a good way forward, but you know, people, when people see this coming to their area of town, they're going to have some concerns, and we want to have a discussion and a dialog wherever that ends up being, to try and let people know that this is a resource that our community desperately needs, and we're going to take every precaution that we can to make sure that it's done in a safe and effective way.
KK: Well, I do look forward to that dialog. Thank you so much, David Joyner for joining us today.
DJ: Thanks very much.
