Last summer, Republican Councilman Luke Waddell re-introduced a proposed anti-camping ordinance. A similar ordinance was passed, after heated debate, by county commissioners in 2022 – but it had only applied to county-owned property, most notably the library. In 2024, Waddell introduced a city version for the first time, but it was shot down by council Democrats along party lines.
However, August of 2025 looked different, with a visible increase in the downtown homeless population and a growing chorus of frustration from downtown business owners. Notably, those concerns did include negative interactions between patrons and unhoused people, but also gun violence, gang-related (or gang-adjacent) activities, vandalism, drunk Marines, and police understaffing.
With the added pressure from downtown stakeholders, Waddell got more traction the second time around. While there was plenty of public opposition and some contentious moments on the dais, an amended version of the ordinance eventually passed. Waddell, Republican Councilman Charlie Rivenbark, Democratic Councilman David Joyner, and Democratic Mayor Bill Saffo voted for it; Democratic council members Salette Andrews, Kevin Spears, and Clifford Barnett voted against it.
Joyner supported the ordinance after successfully pushing to reduce the ordinance from a misdemeanor to an infraction and remove prohibitions on sleeping in cars overnight in surface lots. Saffo and Joyner also added a promise from the city to provide land for a new shelter with the intention of working with a community partner to build it. They also included a “co-responder model,” budgeting four social workers to partner with Wilmington Police Department officers – a check against the Maslow’s Hammer approach some feared law enforcement would take when dealing with homeless people.
Flash forward a year: Waddell lost his reelection bid, as did Barnett. Wilmington City Council, now all Democrats, looks a little different – but while there’s been some progress, I think advocates would agree the homelessness problem largely looks the same.
The ordinance, shelter, and social workers – one year later
According to the city, no citations have been issued under the new ordinance, and Wilmington Police Chief Ryan Zuidema told me in September that, anecdotally, “I don't know that it's been a game changer, so to speak.”
In late October, I asked WPD if they could provide a little more context for the lack of citations, and a spokesperson told me, “Issuing a citation is one option available to officers when addressing prohibited activity. Depending on the circumstances, officers may explain the ordinance and seek voluntary compliance before considering a citation.”
WPD told me that the lack of citations “does not establish how often those interactions have occurred or whether the ordinance has had a deterrent effect.” Which is totally fair – though I’d add, it doesn’t suggest it has had a deterrent effect, either.
On the shelter front, things seem to be moving slowly. In January, not long after the final ordinance vote, the city put out a request for information, looking for a shelter featuring case management, housing navigation, trauma-informed care, crisis management, supportive counseling, and Housing First (a model that aims to stabilize individuals before demanding sobriety or other requirements).
After receiving a half-dozen proposals, by April it seemed like the city was ready to move forward with LINC on a project. Serving the Wilmington area since 2000, LINC proposed a 45-bed shelter and at least two potential locations. But six months later, a city spokesperson told me that, while LINC would “continue to be part of the conversation,” the city was “still evaluating next steps,” with staff “working with council and community partners to explore options.”
Three of the four social workers have been hired (according to Joyner, a fourth candidate declined the offer, and the city is still recruiting for that position). Chief Zuidema told me they’re getting those three people up to speed, figuring out the best ways, times, and places to team them up with officers. While the program is still rolling out, Zuidema was optimistic that social workers would have much better luck with situations that involve mental health, substance abuse, or a combination of both. I’ve heard anecedotally that it’s already had some success, though it is early days.
“A police officer is not going to solve that problem in 5 or 10 minutes that they talk to that person. But that goal of the social worker program is that they'll be able to hopefully kind of dig down a little bit deeper with those individuals, figure out what resources they truly need, and get them connected with those resources so that we're not coming back over and over to the same place for the same individuals,” Zuidema told me.
One thing you can say is that concerns about criminalizing homelessness have not manifested. A year ago, I spoke to District Attorney Jason Smith and Judge Jay Corpening about the possible impacts of the ordinance. We talked about some of the fears I’d heard that, though not a criminal offense, an infraction could still lead to jail time or fines if someone didn’t show up to court after getting a citation.
“The consequences ramp up, and they ramp up in a hurry,” Corpening told me.
WPD may issue more – that is, any – citations in the future, but for now, it seems like a non-issue. Whether the threat of a citation has been a useful deterrent seems debatable, although it’s only fair to note that proponents of the ordinance consistently called it ‘one tool in the toolbox’ and always caveated that it was not a ‘silver bullet.’ It would be nice to get some kind of data on how it's been used, but I somehow doubt officers are logging every time they mention it to someone who might be in violation.
Last year, I wrote that the final version of the ordinance was “less evil than its critics claim, but also likely less helpful than its proponents hope.” In my editorial opinion, I think that’s still true.
Still, as the anti-camping ordinance was the core of the whole debate last year, I wanted to hear from city council on how they felt about it, along with the other provisions, a year later. I shared with them WPD’s contextual comments about the lack of citations issued, and also asked them about the shelter.
Council members weigh in
Councilwoman Andrews vociferously opposed the ordinance, criticizing it as an attempt to criminalize homelessness, and voiced “concerns about the ordinance's vagueness, its potential for unequal enforcement, and its disproportionate impact on people who have nowhere else to go,” she told me. She said concerns from residents and business owners were legitimate and deserved attention, “but so do the safety, health, and dignity of people experiencing homelessness.”
Andrews said she was “glad to hear” that no citations had been issued. And, like me, she had questions about its effectiveness.
“If the ordinance is being used as a deterrent, as WPD suggests, I would want to know what that means in practice,” she wrote to me in an email. “Are people simply being moved from one location to another? Are they being connected with services? Are they finding shelter or housing? Or are we simply making homelessness less visible without actually reducing it? The absence of citations is not the same as the absence of enforcement, and displacement is not the same as a solution.”
Andrews said her concern last year, and now, was restricting where people could sleep without providing a decent alternative. She said she was “encouraged” that the city was taking a more comprehensive approach. Serving on the city’s Homelessness Working Group, she said she wanted to be able to demonstrate clear results on reducing homelessness and getting people into sustainable permanent housing.
Andrews said she supported “exploring a city shelter,” but added, “a shelter alone will not solve homelessness. We need a coordinated system that includes prevention, emergency shelter, behavioral-health services, and pathways to permanent housing. Otherwise, we risk creating a revolving door in which people cycle between the streets, emergency rooms, jails, and temporary shelter.”
Andrews noted that the recent election provided an opportunity to partner with New Hanover County. Democrats Rob Zapple, a longtime incumbent, and Dr. LeShonda Wallace, a newcomer, both won seats on the Board of Commissioners and have expressed interest in thawing the currently chilly relationships between Wilmington and the county.
Councilman Joyner told me, “the fact that zero citations have been issued speaks for itself. I take that as a sign that we successfully wrote a policy which leads with an offer of services by social workers, and the teeth of the ordinance is truly a last resort for someone who simply refuses help. Does it feel warm and fuzzy to speak frankly about the role WPD should play in getting folks off the streets? No. But it is not compassionate to simply walk away when someone repeatedly refuses services, particularly when mental illness or substance use disorders may be the reason they're refusing.”
Joyner said he felt the ordinance was a reasonable way to address the concerns for safe public spaces while helping the people in need find a path to stable housing.
“The ordinance is not a silver bullet to end homelessness, and no one should view it as one. I view it as a limited enforcement tool within a larger homelessness response strategy. The overall goal continues to be making homelessness rare, brief, and nonrecurring. Shelters, both daytime and overnight, are required to achieve that goal,” he said.
Joyner said he’s still advocating for increasing shelter capacity.
“I visited Greensboro with Wilmington City staff to see emergency short-term housing and day shelter models; other colleagues and staff visited shelters in Raleigh. One lesson we've learned is that we should be thinking bigger than a traditional day shelter. I would like to see us work toward a centralized hub that provides daytime shelter while also housing permanent offices for the organizations and professionals who provide services. Rather than asking someone experiencing homelessness to navigate a patchwork of providers, the goal would be to create a single point of entry where those services can be coordinated,” he wrote in an email.
As an “imperfect comparison,” Joyner offered the Community Justice Center, founded by former District Attorney Ben David as a ‘one-stop shop’ for victims’ services and crime-reduction programming. He said he was optimistic that New Hanover County and Coastal Horizons might be willing to collaborate on a project.
Funding is an issue, and Joyner said that “we as a region are not hitting the numbers we ought to on state and federal grants for homelessness response.”
He also noted, “there are barriers to getting money from the Endowment because government responds to homelessness through the three-county Continuum of Care [COC], whereas the Endowment only spends in New Hanover County.” Notably, that limitation, based in the Endowment’s founding documents and bylaws, could be changed. But the only board member to ever really publicly suggest that might happen, even just as a long-term option, was removed from the Endowment board.
Joyner praised the COC, calling them “experts, rockstars, and saints,” but suggested a different arrangement in which it was accountable to Wilmington, “not the region vaguely.” By the same token, he said: “the city needs to (and seems prepared to) invest in it like it deserves.”
And, acknowledging that housing is a major component of the homelessness problem, Joyner pointed to progress on providing affordable units in the 60–80% AMI range (for a family of four, the Area Median Income is around $109,200, so that range is families making $65,500 to $87,360). He said the city was “falling short” on households at 50% AMI and below – $54,600 for a family – adding, “that's where the need is greatest, and it's an area where we have more work to do.”
Democratic council members J.C. Lyle and Cassidy Santaguida were elected after the ordinance passed, but both shared their thoughts.
“I've heard it has been harder to locate people experiencing homelessness because they move around more,” Lyle wrote in an email, acknowledging she doesn’t actively work in that field. “Mostly, I'm pleased that [the ordinance] has led to people getting assistance, not getting arrested.
Santaguida said the shelter and the co-responder model would have a greater impact than the anti-camping ordinance, writing in an email that “this year we’ve made progress on both fronts.”
Like Joyner, Santaguida voiced support for a resource-hub approach to a shelter.
“Regarding the shelter initiative, several council members visited Raleigh earlier this year to learn about service provider models in Wake County and returned inspired by Oak City Cares. Oak City Cares utilizes public-private collaboration to provide a central resource hub that enables individuals experiencing homelessness to access multiple services in a single location. Council members in the Homeless Working Group have discussed establishing a similar resource and service hub as a key strategy to make homelessness in Wilmington brief, rare, and non-recurring,” she wrote.
Mayor Saffo, Councilwoman Chakeman Clinton-Quintana, who was not on council when the ordinance passed, and Spears, now mayor pro tem, did not respond to my request for comment. Waddell respectfully declined to comment as well.
Words and deeds
Last year, the debate over the ordinance was intense. Accusations of cruelty and poor leadership flew back and forth. The spectre of Nazi Germany was invoked. The term ‘common sense’ was, once again, abused as a thought-terminating cliché. In the end, a compromise was hammered out and, like all compromises, it left some on either side frustrated and disappointed. In politics, we call that a win. I’m not sure homeless advocates – or people experiencing homelessness themselves – would agree.
As the debate was boiling away, I wrote nearly 9,000 words about the issue. Probably the single longest column I’ve written since I started two years ago, during which time I’ve won precisely zero awards for brevity. In my defense, this is one of the most contentious and complex issues around.
Most of the concerns I pointed to are still with us. And some of the ideas I explored then are still on the table now, beyond the shelter the city promised to help support.
For example, creating a mental health facility with wraparound services and housing. Last year, I wrote that the county was exploring an option, roughly analogous to The Healing Place’s approach to substance abuse, working with Trillium, the quasi-governmental agency that handles state and federal funding for mental health. At the time, county staff were planning a trip to Atlanta to visit the Skyland Trail facility. A few months later, in January of this year, I checked in, and the county told me they hadn’t gone yet. Conversations with Trillium were ongoing, a spokesperson said, and they hoped to have an update later this year – though, so far, I haven’t heard anything.
The city is now exploring a similar option. In October, the city’s Homeless Working Group identified creating “a mental health-focused treatment and day center with supportive housing options” as an “opportunity for success” in helping unsheltered homeless people. According to a presentation from the meeting, the city could “partner with Trillium on an evidence-based model for treatment” and “identify partners to provide supportive housing.”
I also noted that Andrews had asked staff to prepare a request to The Endowment to fund a collaborative strategy for addressing homelessness. The city is still working on that strategy now, but Andrews’ point at the time was that there was already a city-county plan worked out in 2024. Perhaps, with the city and county mending fences, they can go back to The Endowment.
Importantly, it’s not that nothing is being done – far from it. Last year, as I was working on that Moby Dick of a column about homelessness, I talked to a lot of people. Cops, prosecutors, business owners, advocates, social workers, and people experiencing homelessness. A lot of them pointed to local solutions that were working. I talked to people at the Good Shepherd Center, the COC, the Harrelson Center, the Salvation Army, soup kitchens, and street ministries. Some talked on the record, some – for fear of the endless and precarious struggle for funding – on background, but many told me the same things.
These weren’t silver bullets – there are none – but puzzle pieces that fit together in fairly obvious ways: Housing first, housing navigation, wrap-around services. Getting people housed, with a modicum of safety and security, or preventing them from losing their housing, and then helping them tackle mental health, substance abuse, disabilities, employment, and so on. A good example is Good Shepherd’s The Sparrow, which provides permanent supportive housing for 32 people, made possible in part by a land donation and other assistance from the City of Wilmington and federal Covid-recovery funding managed by the state.
And, of course, affordable housing plays a key role, both so that people aren’t pushed out of their homes and so, if they do end up homeless, getting rehoused isn’t financially impossible.
Will the current approaches work for every last person? No. But the vast majority of homeless people, advocates believe, can find their way to shelter, and then housing, if it’s available.
There are, of course, criticisms of some of those approaches, even some colorable arguments against them. Some argue it’s not the government’s job to house the homeless or fund nonprofits that do – especially in times of austerity. Some would like to see those getting housing have some skin in the game. And there will likely always be pushback, or at least concerns, from neighbors when it comes to having a shelter in their community – case in point, the recent efforts of Living Hope to open a new facility at Dock and South 10th streets.
Some alternatives work for some people. Take Eden Village’s tiny home community, which provides permanent supportive housing with wrap-around services for some of the most vulnerable chronically homeless people. It’s an amazing, life-saving and life-changing resource, funded in part by the City of Wilmington, The Endowment, and private organizations, with support from New Hanover County. But the community also charges a modest rent ($350 a month) and prohibits substances – barriers that some chronically homeless people wouldn’t be able to get past. As part of a portfolio of resources, it makes total sense. But if you were to just duplicate Eden Villages around the region, some folks would be left out.
Other alternatives, like local and state efforts to criminalize aspects of homelessness, are more problematic. Housing costs money, but criminalization costs money, too, through the courts and jails, and emergency room care. Many advocates I’ve spoken with are concerned about North Carolina’s House Bill 437, which would ban all camping on public lands, allow residents and businesses to sue local governments that allow or sanction camping, and allow local governments to create designated areas for homeless people. (It’s not as extreme as Louisiana's “Streets to Success Act,” backed by the Cicero Institute, which includes significant fines and jail time for first-time offenders, and even the threat of unpaid labor.) Democratic Governor Josh Stein vetoed HB 437 this past summer, but the outgoing Republican majority may take up an override vote before the end of the year.
Notably, this type of state law is taking place against a backdrop of federal policy changes, as the Trump Administration’s HUD attempts to shift billions in funding away from housing-first programs and towards rural areas. That’s led to a protracted legal battle where, recently, a federal appeals court ruled in favor of HUD.
Meanwhile, closer to home, I hear frustration from advocates who feel like local officials keep going back to the drawing board, in search of compromise, or more options, or simply kicking the can down the road. Those advocates often tell me the problem isn’t solutions – it’s scale.
Liz Carbone runs Home Team Consulting, which works with nonprofits and local governments on housing-focused programs. An advocate for housing and homeless issues, who also sits on the Wilmington Housing Authority board, Carbone summed up the frustration people working in the field sometimes feel.
“When it comes to ending homelessness, we know exactly what to do and this community does it successfully and against all odds every day,” she said. “So you can either fund those programs adequately and scale them up to meet the need or stop calling us and asking us, ‘where do we start? What do we do?’”
She’s not speaking for every service provider, of course, but she’s articulating something I hear a lot.
I won’t be coy; we’re talking about money. A significant amount of money. And, in some communities, that could be a nonstarter, for political or financial reasons. But, as people often point out to me, our community – at least New Hanover County – has a $1.8-billion foundation that is practically falling over itself trying to find ways to spend $80 million plus annually as IRS regulations kick in.
Last year I wrote, “With a strategy and a team of partners in hand, the city could make a good case to The Endowment — and if Endowment leaders were to say no, I think the community could rightfully demand a damn good explanation.”
That’s still true.
I also wrote this: “I think Waddell has a point when he complained about weak leadership. Whether or not you agree with his ordinance, and whether your concern is downtown aesthetics and business, the well-being of homeless people, or both, I think you have to acknowledge that we have extraordinary resources in our community and have failed to put together a more concerted effort to address homelessness. The fact that some elected officials are still saying they need more data and information is, well, kind of galling.”
That’s still true, as well.
We are in year 18 of the Ten-Year Plan to End Homelessness. Launched in 2008, after 18 months of committee work, Mayor Saffo – then in his first full term – said, "We can't just stick our heads in the sand anymore and say we don't have a problem. We do have a problem.”
And that, most of all, is definitely still true.
