Cumberland’s Unhoused Support Center location may change

Editor’s note: This story has been corrected to clarify that the county commissioners voted to proceed with design work for the Unhoused Support Center, but they did not vote to do further construction-related work beyond that. CityView apologizes for this error.

Long-simmering plans for Cumberland County to build a $17 million shelter and assistance center for homeless people advanced on Monday when the Board of Commissioners voted 6-0 to proceed with the design work for the project.

And the location for the Unhoused Support Center is tracking to move away from the vicinity of the B Street neighborhood on the edge of downtown Fayetteville. The seven-person board voted 5-1 to look for other sites. Commissioner Glenn Adams had the “no” vote. Commissioner Jeannette Council was absent.

The county is seeking an operator for the center, and that entity is to participate in the design process.

The shelter is planned to have 24,000 square feet and 100 beds, Assistant County Manager Heather Skeens told the commissioners. This would include 53 beds for men, 28 for women, 18 for families, and one for a person who needs isolation. “We could change this or increase this bed count up if we went to more bunk beds,” she said.

The Unhoused Support Center had been in the works long before The Salvation Army of the Sandhills suddenly quit operating its emergency shelter near downtown Fayetteville this past April. The new center will provide emergency shelter services as well as programs to help people get out of homelessness, says a county news release.

Moving away from B Street area?

The county held a groundbreaking ceremony for the project in February 2024, but there still is no date set for when construction would start or when the shelter would open, Commissioner Veronica Jones told CityView on Tuesday. That is contingent on a decision for where to build it, she said.

The county commissioners previously planned to build the shelter at 344 Hawley Lane, beside the former Pauline Jones Elementary. This is in between the downtown area and the B Street residential neighborhood. Under the previous plans, Fayetteville Technical Community College was going to use the former elementary school as classroom space to provide job training to the clients of the Unhoused Support Center.

But residents of the B Street community were uncomfortable with having the homeless shelter nearby, Jones said, and Fayetteville Tech has moved the job training program from the Pauline Jones Elementary site across town to its main campus.

“I just feel like a community neighborhood where individuals are buying their homes was not the most feasible,” she said. “Not just in consideration for the unhoused population, but then that to individuals that are already standing on their feet. I don’t think it made for a good mix for either-or.”

Jones suggested it would be better to build the Unhoused Support Center near the Fayetteville Cares Day Resource Center, about a half mile away off Person Street near Eastern Boulevard. That would make the Day Resource Center’s services convenient to the clients staying at the county’s shelter, she said.

The city-owned Day Resource Center, which is not an overnight shelter, helps homeless people with basic needs, such as showers, laundry, haircuts and access to computers, and provides professional services to help them find work, get medical care, and obtain housing.

“It to me makes sense,” she said. “If you have all this land in that specific area where there’s a nice bus line, you already have the Day Resource Center, and there’s a lot of homeless population that migrate in that area already.”

The county should look for other potential locations too, Jones said. The county previously considered building it by the Food Lion shopping center on Eastern Boulevard, she said, which is near the Fayetteville Cares Day Resource Center. Another previously considered location was south of downtown, toward the Massey Hill community, she said.

Senior reporter Paul Woolverton can be reached at pwoolverton@cityviewnc.com.

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