Overview:
• After opposition emerged to building the center on Hawley Lane, the county in October 2025 began looking for other locations.
• A year later, the county is still looking, and the opening date has been delayed.
• County Commissioner Glenn Adams and two former commissioners are disappointed the shelter and support center remains unbuilt.
Cumberland County commissioners and staff stood behind a mound of soil, smiled for the cameras, and scooped 10 shovels of dirt into the air during the groundbreaking ceremony for a homeless shelter and services center planned for Hawley Lane near downtown Fayetteville.
That was February 19, 2024. They aimed to come back for a ribbon-cutting within two years.
But as the groundbreaking at 344 Hawley Lane approaches its third anniversary, no ribbon has been snipped, no more dirt has been moved, the ceremonial soil mound is covered with grass and a few wildflowers, and the project has been scaled back. The county is now looking for at least five other potential places to build the $17 million center.
The project, now dubbed the Unhoused Support Center, is delayed, not dead.
“This board remains committed to getting a permanent facility in place,” Commissioners Chair Kirk deViere said. Officials hope to open it in early 2028.
In the meantime, the county offers 60 beds through a partnership with the Salvation Army, he said, and provides 150 beds on nights with freezing temperatures. The county is actively seeking another partner to provide additional beds.
While the Unhoused Support Center remains on hold, homeless people remain visible around Fayetteville. In 2025, the Point-in-Time Count—a census of people without housing taken in a 24-hour period every other year—documented 383 people in the county. Advocates working to end homelessness said the number is likely a vast undercount.
More Than a ‘Homeless Hospice’
The Unhoused Support Center would be far more than what former County Commissioner Jimmy Keefe called a “homeless hospice.” That is, a place for homeless people to stay that doesn’t truly help struggling people get into homes and jobs. Keefe is disappointed that the project is unfinished.
Keefe, former Commissioner Toni Stewart, and Commissioner Glenn Adams envisioned a game-changing project when they took part in the February 2024 groundbreaking ceremony. It would help families break free from the cycle of generational poverty, Keefe said.
“It would have been one of those programs where people would have come across the country to look at it and say, ‘Look what Fayetteville’s doing,’” he said. “It truly would have. Because nobody’s fixing homelessness. Everybody’s just making homeless people comfortable as best they can—give them a place to stay.”
The plan was—and still is—to provide multiple services, according to interviews with deViere, Keefe, and other officials.
Among them: emergency shelter for homeless people in crisis, a place for homeless individuals and families to stay temporarily while they seek a permanent place to live, access to adult education programs and job training, employment services, and other programs to help struggling people get on their feet.
The county is working on a plan to partner with Cape Fear Valley Health to provide behavioral health services to clients of the Unhoused Center, deViere said.
The center is budgeted at $17 million, plus $900,000 more to buy land, if necessary, according to county staff. The legislature in 2022 gave Cumberland County $1 million to help pay for it.
Setbacks Caused Delay
Several factors delayed the Unhoused Support Center, according to deViere and a history of the project that he provided to CityView.
In November 2024, nine months after the groundbreaking ceremony, the county found that the original proposal would cost $32 million—nearly double the $17 million budgeted to build it. The original plan was for a 157-bed, 45,536-square-foot building.
Over the next year, the county and the architect, LS3P, scaled it back to a 100-bed, 24,000-square-foot building. A recent rendering shows living areas and outdoor courtyards allocated for women, men, and families.
Other wrinkles emerged since February 2024 that are pushing the project away from the county-owned Hawley Lane site.
People from the B Street neighborhood protested the Hawley Lane site, saying they didn’t want a homeless shelter in the area, said Commissioner Veronica Jones, the board’s vice chair.
The Hawley Lane site adjoins the campus of the recently opened Pauline Jones High School, and there are concerns about making them neighbors, Jones said. Pauline Jones is an alternative school serving students with behavioral problems.
“I feel like the shelter and the school—that’s not necessarily the best combination. Mix two vulnerable populations that are there, that are in need of help, and stress factors, mental health, substance abuse,” she said.
Back in 2022 and 2023, when the Unhoused Support Center’s plans were first developed, Cumberland County Schools had shuttered the Pauline Jones campus. It previously had been a middle school.
During the planning stages for the support center, Fayetteville Technical Community College used the Pauline Jones campus for adult education. Fayetteville Tech’s program next door was expected to be a good match to support homeless people at the Unhoused Center.
But Fayetteville Tech later vacated the Pauline Jones campus and moved the adult education services to its main campus. In August, the county school district reopened the campus as a high school to replace a recently closed school on Ramsey Street.
In October 2025, commissioners voted 5-1 to seek other locations for the Unhoused Support Center. After a year without success, they did so again in October 2026, while keeping the Hawley Lane site as a possibility.
Looking Ahead
Stewart, a county commissioner from 2020 to 2024, was an advocate for homeless people and for the Unhoused Support Center while in office. In December 2025, she posted a photo of the 2024 groundbreaking ceremony on social media. It shows her and other leaders tossing dirt from their shovels.
“I began my campaign in 2020 as an advocate for our unsheltered neighbors, and for many, this image symbolized that their voices were finally being heard. Hope felt tangible. Progress felt real,” she said. “What makes this photo even more powerful—and painful—is that we were closer to seeing this building manifest then than we are today, as our community now faces the coldest temperatures of the year.”
She said there was no reason for the project to have stalled.
Adams had similar thoughts.
“It would have been built by now if we had moved, kept going on,” he said. He still prefers the Hawley Lane site, and has voted against the decisions to look elsewhere for a location.
No matter where the shelter is built, Fayetteville Tech will work with the county to provide education to its clients, college President Mark Sorrells told CityView.
The county is looking for a new, more suitable location because conditions around the Hawley Lane site have changed, deViere said, with the neighborhood opposition and the reopening of Pauline Jones.
The center will open, deViere said.
“Addressing the lack of emergency shelter for families, women, and men in our community has been a priority for me and for this Board, and I share the frustration of those who need it and those who advocate for it,” he said. “Our focus has never been just a building. It is on providing a safe, secure, and dignified place for people in our community who need it at one of the most difficult times in their lives.”
Senior reporter Paul Woolverton can be reached at pwoolverton@cityviewnc.com.
