During Monday's council work session, some Fayetteville City Council members voiced safety concerns about the new Day Resource Center — a central hub for people experiencing homelessness to receive everyday support services. But advocates and unhoused folks at the center told CityView on Tuesday security has not been a major concern of theirs.
The discussions came after the council’s Homelessness & Mental Health Committee presented a set of recommendations to the board. The recommendations included reinstating the joint city-county homelessness advisory group, financing more affordable housing options at “extremely low” income levels and directing funding to the Fayetteville-Cumberland Continuum of Care (CoC) to hire a professional director.
Councilwoman Courtney Banks-McLaughlin said she had “several concerns” about the resource center after visiting a few days ago, especially in regard to safety at the facility.
“I've had conversations with individuals that were present,” Banks-McLaughlin said. “One of the main things was a safety concern.”
Banks-McLaughlin said there was only one security guard when she visited the center, and she was told “one of the homeless individuals was chasing somebody with a machete.” She acknowledged some of her concerns amounted to “he said, she said.”
Councilmembers Shakeyla Ingram, who claimed to be visiting the center about twice a week, also said she was aware of “major security concerns” at the center, including staffing issues with security guards. She said there’d recently been a changeover in security services providers.
“There was a switch over in security,” Ingram said. “However, that is still progressing.”
Despite the legislators’ concerns, two security guards and several unhoused people at the resource center on Tuesday told CityView they had not been aware of any recent security problems; no one had heard about the alleged machete incident, either.
In an interview at the center Tuesday, Joseph Wheeler, the leader of homeless advocacy group, the Homeless Assembly, acknowledged there was an issue with security staff turnover at the center, but refuted the idea of major security issues. He described the council members’ concerns as an attempt to misdirect other, more pressing issues facing the homeless community, such as police shifting unhoused people around the city under the no-camping ordinance.
“They're trying to make all these incidents go off, like there's a whole bunch of violence and stuff going on,” Wheeler said. “I don't know about that. I haven't heard about that.”
According to the city’s contract with Cumberland HealthNET, which runs its day-to-day operations, the center’s 2023-24 budget includes $14,000 for security camera monitoring and $49,420 for the security guard.
During the council meeting, Banks-McLaughlin and Ingram also expressed a desire to use the center as emergency shelter space, such as during “White Flag” events in which temporary emergency shelter is offered to people experiencing homelessness during severe weather.
“Just like many of you, I was also shocked that we were not open for emergency shelter because what I can say confidently is when we were going through this process in 2020, 2021, we were told that it would be emergency shelter,” Ingram said at Monday’s meeting.
City Manager Doug Hewett said during Monday’s discussion the city would need to coordinate with the county in order to open the resource center for emergency shelter space. He said the city only opens up emergency shelters — usually at its recreation centers — after receiving direction from the county.
“The Day Resource Center was designed potentially as an emergency shelter, but that was ideally for if we had a long-standing issue such as a hurricane or something else like that, where we needed recovery afterwards,” Hewett said. “The county will call us and say we need to activate a shelter. They will then staff it. They will then provide the beds. They will provide the food. All we do is provide a room.”
Banks-McLaughlin suggested the city allocate funding for emergency shelter space at the center.
“I'm hoping when we consider allocating funding,” she said, “we look at some of those issues as far as providing additional or having our law enforcement patrol that area, utilizing a facility with some beds just in case, as a backup plan if the Salvation Army is not open, which they should be. And also a calendar with the dates — because when I went there, I didn't see any agencies. I didn't see anybody there providing any service.”
Council members have described the center as a place for various nonprofit organizations to gather and offer support services, but it’s unclear to what extent the organizations are at the center. On Tuesday, one nonprofit organization was present at the center offering services. The organization was providing people with cellphones, and a member of the organization said it took the organization three weeks to get approved to offer services there.
The council voted unanimously Monday to authorize funding for a director position for the CoC, as per the recommendation of the council’s homeless committee.
City staff and council members and unhoused people in the local area have pointed out a lack of organization and clear communication between support agencies. Having a paid position to oversee the CoC’s operations should help streamline the process for individuals experiencing homelessness to get help, members of the Homeless Committee said.
Mayor Mitch Colvin indicated Monday that council members should discuss these issues after taking into consideration the homeless committee’s recommendations.
“There are people who stop us in various places and raise concerns,” Colvin said. “It's good you saw something and generated some really legitimate questions. But I think for today, the committee's focus was to get us a strategy to get to first base because this is a comprehensive solution.”
Contact Evey Weisblat at eweisblat@cityviewnc.com or 216-527-3608.
