WILMINGTON — It’s been a year since the unveiling of a joint homelessness strategy between the City of Wilmington and New Hanover County and, since, the sparks generated have burned out. However, one elected leader is pushing for the city to take up the torch and forge ahead alone.
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“I don’t feel like we have any choice,” Councilmember Salette Andrews told Port City Daily Friday. “I think we’ve had a trifecta of defunding from the federal, state and county level and it really leaves us holding the bag at the city level.”
After the joint strategy was unveiled in September 2024, staff was supposed to come back to elected officials with cost estimates; it never happened. Since then, the county has decided to conclude its involvement in the joint workforce housing with the city and defer non-county agency funding (some of which went to homelessness service providers) to The Endowment.
Largely attributed to funding and staff reductions in the wake of the Republican commissioners budget passage, the county also cut its $27,300 in direct funding to the Continuum of Care, effectively ending the county’s participation with the CoC board.
“That 10-year commitment ended in FY25,” county spokesperson Alex Riley wrote in a statement to PCD. “There was no agreement to fund beyond that, and while County funding was not renewed as part of the FY26 budget, we note that last month the Endowment announced a $200,000 grant to the Continuum of Care.”
The joint strategy resurfaced at the city after Councilmember Luke Waddell again proposed an anti-camping ordinance; council tabled it earlier this month and then scheduled a meeting to discuss homelessness as a whole.
On Aug. 22, four days after the city held a special meeting to discuss homelessness with staff and service providers, Andrews asked city staff to develop a proposal on funding the joint strategy to end homelessness. The council member wants to see the number of emergency, transitional and permanent supportive housing beds needed to meet the current unsheltered population, along with the need for other supportive services like day shelters and mental health treatment.
Though unsure yet when the city’s proposal will be ready, in an email obtained by Port City Daily, Director of Housing and Neighborhood Services Rachel Schuler indicated the city may need to hire a consultant to gather data.
Whatever the cost estimate is for implementation of the strategy, Andrews envisions taking to the New Hanover Community Endowment. Created with $1.3 billion from the county’s sale of New Hanover Regional Medical Center, the organization has already provided a $200,000 grant this year for the CoC to maintain a universal database of homeless people.
It’s unlikely the proposal will be ready before the city’s next meeting on Sept. 9, when Councilmember Luke Waddell’s anti-camping ordinance is scheduled to be taken up again. The ordinance combines regulations the city already has on its books against certain activity on city property and slightly expands them, such as to now cover surface parking lots and already failed last year.
Andrews, against the ordinance, thinks the city’s approach should focus on getting people shelter and tackle the root of homelessness issues rather than lean on criminalization.
Informed by months of conversations with service providers and those affected by homelessness, a joint strategy was presented to both city and county officials on Sept. 6, 2024. The three goals identified were:
- Grow capacity of service providers and the Cape Fear Continuum of Care, the lead agency for homeless service and federal funding coordination under the Cape Fear Council of Governments
- Increase capacity of facilities to meet the needs of the unsheltered population
- Supportive regulations, incentives for developers, property management and housing assistance
After being unveiled last year, the next step was for county staff to bring forth a plan and cost estimate for expanding the CoC within 90 days; those days passed with no follow-up meeting scheduled. It was only recently revealed, amidst conversations over Waddell’s anti-camping ordinance that the county commissioners made a decision to forgo continued work on the joint strategy in January 2025.
Mayor Bill Saffo is hopeful they could come back to the table.
“I can’t do this without the county; I can’t do this without The Endowment,” Saffo said in an interview with PCD. “They have an important role to pay for public health, which is one of the reasons that The Endowment was created. We’re going to need everybody here.”
He noted the county has the capacity to change course, as it did Thursday when it restored school nurse funding to ensure one was in every school.
Saffo said the county, as an extension of state government, should not be absolved of responsibility because they “get the lion’s share” of tax funding. He pointed to the city’s $306-million budget, compared to the county’s budget of $488 million. He also noted both the state and federal government should help too.
The mayor said he’s been in this situation before, pointing to 2007, when the two governing bodies put together the 10-year plan to end homelessness. He remembered there was reluctance from the county then to come together. Ultimately, the Continuum of Care was born out of the partnership, though it wouldn’t become the lead agency for homelessness until 2015.
Saffo didn’t think it was a good idea for the city to tackle this alone.
“My concern is if we’re the only ones providing that model and nobody else is doing it, everything is pointing our way,” he said. Essentially, the thought is if the city is the only one offering services, more homeless people would be concentrated within its limits and other governing bodies would be let off the hook.
Several members of council, not just Saffo, are sensitive to the concentration of homeless services, and thus attracting more homeless people, in city limits. However, CoC data shows most people that report being homeless to the CoC are from the area.
The mayor also indicated he wanted to get more information, not feeling as if the complex issue had been fully grasped yet, before moving forward with the joint plan.
This reluctance to move forward is in contrast to the message service providers issued at the city council’s Aug. 18 meeting, where council was urged to move forward with making more resources available. Additionally, in an email sent on Aug. 17, Laura Bullock from Vigilant Hope outlined its main focus areas for the city to implement a strategy, including expansion of downtown social work support and prioritizing increased access to rental and affordable homes.
Thus, the next logical step in many service providers’ eyes is more funding. Saffo said he would support going to The Endowment, but thought, again, more than one government would need to be involved.
“I think if The Endowment is sitting on the sideline and watching the city and the county bickering and no direction and no talking, The Endowment would say we’re not going to touch that right now,” Saffo said.
Should city dollars be needed in full or in part for the joint strategy, Port City Daily asked councilmember Andrews what she viewed as the community’s appetite for funding the strategy, especially being the sole-bearers now.
Andrews pointed to an analysis from nonprofit Community Solutions. It shows that a chronically homeless person costs the taxpayer around $35,000 per year due to their use of community resources, including law enforcement, jails, hospitals, and service providers.
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“We’re paying the money; this money is being spent on our behalf or these people, one way or another,” Andrews said. “And so we might as well come up with solutions that are cost-effective and humane.”
She pointed to Eden Village, a community of 31 individuals in tiny homes started by physician and local resident Tom Dalton. Though the tenants pay a small rent, the facility doesn’t pay for itself and costs around $500,000 annually. Still, when broken down per tenant, the cost is a little more than $16,000 per individual — less than half of what it would cost, per Community Solutions, for them to be on the street.
When it comes to the strategy’s implementation, whether spearheaded by the city or the CoC, Saffo and Andrews agreed the CoC plays an important role in the deployment of any plan.
“They are the experts,” Andrews said. “They have the data in the [Homeless Management Information System]. What they don’t have is the funding, staff and the administrative capability to really enact the strategy, right? That’s where I think the city can be helpful.”
The CoC
Andrea Stough couldn’t agree more. The homeless services director for the CoC since September 2023, Stough talked with Port City Daily about the role of the CoC amidst shifting government perspectives.
She said they’re biggest issue is being unable to find shelter for their clients, as the beds in current rotation are almost always full. The CoC is the lead agency for homelessness in the area and decides what local providers receive federal funding. It also runs the coordinated entry system mandated by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, to track a person as they move through different shelters, treatment centers or housing units.
“In the best case scenario, someone would call me and I’d be like, ‘Oh, whichever has an opening,’ and then we would be directing that,” Stough said. “And that happens in a lot of ways, and it could happen here, our biggest issue is, there’s never an opening.”
Stough said the unveiling of the joint strategy last year was a great way to get everyone — the CoC and service providers, the county, the city — on the same page. However, she said the goals that came out of the strategy, particularly growing the capacity and efficiency of the CoC, weren’t news to her team, who had already had plans in place to do so.
As for the other tenets — increasing provider capacity and incentivizing developers — Stough said providers had been speaking to this for some time as well, and the Coc’s strategic plan mentions them.
While adding to the CoC’s staff of three would always be welcome, Stough said it will be important to do so in tandem with the expansion of housing options.
“We used an analogy like a waiting room: You could have the most pleasant waiting room in the world, but if you don’t have a provider to treat the person in the waiting room, it’s still just a waiting room,” Stough said.
Based on the CoC’s 2025 Point-in-Time Count, federally mandated to occur on a single night in the last 10 days in January, the tri-county has a homeless population of 506 individuals, the majority of them in New Hanover County. The count includes those who don’t have permanent shelter, as reported to the CoC by each facility, although this year, 53% of counted individuals reported no shelter at all.
The 506 total is a drop from the previous year’s 593, though the number is expected to be larger because providers and volunteers can never locate everyone experiencing homelessness on one occasion due to their transient circumstances. The count also includes calling shelters or service providers to get more accurate numbers, though one Brunswick County partner withheld information about its clients due to fears of them being targeted by immigration agents.
Based on shelter space, the county doesn’t have room for more. As of Aug.18, 220 emergency shelter beds were available in New Hanover, with 219 filled. Permanent supportive housing — a unit subsidized in some way and paired with supportive services — is available in 109 units, though 123 people are enrolled to receive it.
In between emergency shelters and permanent supportive housing is transitional housing, with 53 local beds available; 52 are spoken for.
As providers pointed out at the Aug. 18 meeting, people need affordable places to live in order to exit the Continuum of Care’s system and make room for others. The most recent figures show $1,427 is the average one-bedroom apartment rent in Wilmington.
Still, Stough said she didn’t think funding a solution could fall on one entity’s shoulders.
“No one government, no one entity, no one endowment, is gonna be able to do all the things that a community needs,” Stough said, noting it would take varied and creative funding mechanisms.
One of the most successful models in the country has come from Houston. The city has reduced its homelessness population by more than 60% in the last decade by leveraging a variety of funding sources, including private philanthropy, but most notably with minimal fund contributions from the city itself. In the latter half of the last decade, Houston’s The Way Home initiative has relied on Covid-19 and disaster relief funding, but with those dollars expired, The Way Home launched a $70-million campaign this year to end street homelessness by 2026.
Houston contributions make up $3.5 million and Homeless Housing and Services Program is dedicating $700,000; Harris County is in talks to dedicate between $5 and $8 million. Verbal commitments include $2.6 million from the Housing First Corporation, $10 million from the Houston metro system, and $14 million from federal funds.
Houston has also implemented Tax Increment Reinvestment Zones, areas of economic development opportunity using property tax revenue reinvestment into public improvements. The zones are estimated to generate between $8 million and $16 million for the homelessness initiative.
Houston’s ability to leverage funding — along with its geography and lx zoning laws — has made it unique among other cities grappling with homelessness, despite using the same Housing First principles HUD requires of its funding recipients.
PCD talked Houston’s model with Kelly Yong, president and CEO of Houston’s homeless coalition, last year. What’s worked for the city has also been a very consolidated authority on how dedicated funding gets spent, with The Way Home team dishing out money based on what kinds of help the community needs.
For example, the new initiative puts more than 60% of funding to rapid rehousing and the next biggest chunk toward permanent supportive housing. This is easier in a city with more room to grow than New Hanover County and looser zoning regulations to promote housing stock.
“How do you find the space to do that in a place that has no space and everyone’s arguing over every last inch of everything?” Stough posited.
Upon asking Stough if Cape Fear CoC should follow Houston’s centralized approach, she said: “That’s ultimately what we’re asked to do.”
A large part of being able to secure funding, particularly from the federal government, comes from having rock solid data and financially sound funding distributions. The three-county CoC has a population around 500,000 and $1 million in federal funding ($200,000 of which is administrative). In fiscal year 2023, the Cape Fear CoC was the lowest in funding amounts compared to the six other CoCs in the state; now its second lowest, according to Stough.
Stough attributed it to not having the most reliable data in the past and undergoing a few missteps in understanding the federal government’s regulations on funding distribution. Stough said the CoC has been “aggressive” in improving data quality by asking for federal technical assistance.
“One application we did prior to me, we only scored like 14 out of 60 for our data, whereas the next [application] was 45,” Stough said.
The CoC is currently working on a predictive analysis for the number of permanent supportive housing beds the tri-county needs now and in the future, a data that could help inform the joint strategy’s implementation.
Though, building back trust between the federal government and local partners takes time, as well as bringing new programs and developments online.
Stough said there’s already plenty of communication among service providers but would like to see the CoC improve efficiency — the caveat being the most well-oiled machine wouldn’t reduce homelessness without places for people to move into.
The director also noted the CoC could be better about messaging, in order to keep the public and government entities informed. At several points in the interview, Stough pointed out discrepancies between recent public discourse and what CoC data show, including the notion that the 10-year plan to end homelessness didn’t produce any success.
The plan was established in 2008, with local governments appropriating thousands of dollars to United Way in the goal of cutting homelessness in half. The Council of Governments then became the recipient of city funds when it took over as lead agency for the Continuum of Care in 2015. The city now allocates $73,116 to CoC annually to support its efforts; the county no longer funds the CoC.
Data shows the 2009 PIT Count was 630, making 2025’s population count a 19.8% decrease in homelessness, though the population increased roughly 35%. The trend was on a downward trajectory, reaching 322 in 2018, the year Hurricane Florence devastated the region. The next year’s count shot up to 431, and then the world was faced with the Covid-19 pandemic.
Itjumped to 558 in 2023, though some of the increase could be attributed to the CoC’s improved ability to locate people. In 2024, the chronically homeless population returned to triple digits for the first time since 2009.
Additionally, Stough said development has ramped up in the county, leaving less wooded areas for unsheltered individuals to take refuge, contributing to the public’s sense that the problem is worsening because more people are visible.
CoC wants to expand its messaging by level-setting this narrative and showing proven strategies.
“I do think that we need to be very strategic in what we’re seeing, what we need, and then try to find out who’s doing those things and writing those things and calling attention to those things,” Stough said.
Mayor Saffo said he thinks there’s some siloing happening among service providers, specifically mentioning the frequency of homeless individuals leaving the hospital without anywhere to go, though one of the most recent examples comes from within the city.
In an Aug. 17 email, Laura Bullock of Vigilant Hope called attention to the Wilmington Police Department’s purchase of mobile shower and laundry trailers that had yet to be deployed. She suggested the trailer be distributed to a service provider; Vigilant Hope and the Hope Recovery UMC already operate mobile shower trailers for the homeless population.
Councilmember Andrews asked City Manager Becky Hawke and WPD Chief Ralph Evangelous to look into the issue. It was revealed the trailers arrived in early 2025 without the WPD staffing to deploy them.
“WPD has no plans to use these items,” Evangelous wrote in an email. “Our staffing levels cannot support such an endeavor at any time in the foreseeable future. WPD would like to see these items be transferred to another city department or a church/outreach service within the city to be used for their intended purpose.”
Hawke said the trailers were initially ordered with American Rescue Plan Act funding for the Getting Home Street Outreach team to manage, though that plan fell through. She agreed the trailers should be loaned to a service provider and said she would continue to look into it.
Port City Daily asked the WPD if it communicated with the city or any service provider about the inability to operate the trailers in an effort to see they were put to use. There was no response by press.
Andrews said it was hard to know where the ball was dropped, but noted the city has undergone the appointment of both a new police chief and city manager since January.
Getting Home
Though the county government gave up its seat on the CoC board when it halted its funding, Stough said county partners still remain engaged, most notably through its social workers as part of the Getting Home Street Outreach Team. According to county emails, staff are considering expanding the program.
Community Justice Services Director Michelle Taylor has granted the county’s social workers — of which there are four plus supervisor Rashad Gattison — office space at 320 Chestnut Street. The office space will allow social workers, who no longer patrol with the WPD downtown on a regular basis, a quicker response should their services be called in.
At a council meeting earlier this month, the police chief said social workers have moved from a proactive, “boots on the ground” approach to a “caseload” model, leaving WPD officers often without on-site support. NHC Health Department Director Jon Campbell confirmed the county’s participation in the program is actively functioning and evolving, with social workers managing their caseload of existing clients, while still accepting new ones, adding the county is fulfilling their duties for the program.
Additionally, emails obtained by Port City Daily show county leadership, including County Manager Chris Coudriet, is interested in making the program’s social workers available seven days a week instead of five.
Chief of Health and Human Services Tufanna Bradley shared in the email a 2024 assessment on the program, which details why the shift was made from connecting homeless individuals to services through street outreach to a caseload model:
“In the initial program proposal, it states that the purpose of the program is to prepare unsheltered residents for sheltering and re-homing through service provision and enhance safety of the public via cleaning up the downtown area. It needs to be determined whether the true purpose or mission of the GHSO program is to make a significant impact toward positive change with persons experiencing homelessness based on their desire to do so, or to be available to respond to a call at any time to encourage a homeless individual to receive services because they are at risk of being trespassed.”
It goes on further to say significant change would require the program to move toward a model with client lists, discontinuing the philosophy that each social worker is everyone’s case manager. This model also sets the expectation that workers will attend appointments with clients, and thus, won’t be available to respond to as many immediate service calls.
Thus, the caseload model was determined to fit best with an 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. work schedule, as it mirrors the hours of service providers as well. Data from 1,572 homeless interactions cataloged from November 2023 to April 2024 showed 63% of them occurred during weekday business hours and 20% of them during weekend business hours.
Though, the expansion of the program will have to wrestle with Stough’s conclusion — expanding staff is helpful, but only if you have the shelter to send someone in need.
[Ed. Note: A former version of this article said the county lost its seat on the CoC board when it halted funding; in fact, the seat remains reserved for the county, but the county has chosen not to staff it. It also noted Michelle Taylor was the director of the Community Justice Center, rather than the county’s Community Justice Services department; PCD regrets the error.]
Tips or comments? Email journalist Brenna Flanagan at brenna@localdailymedia.com.
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