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For Toni Stewart, making a difference is central to her role in county leadership

Commissioners chair focused on helping the homeless, addressing other needs

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(Editor's note: This story has been corrected to reflect that Jeannette Council  was the first  African American woman to chair the Cumberland County Board of Commissioners. CityView regrets the error.)

Toni Stewart was visibly irked when Cumberland County officials told state lawmakers that the county has only 38 emergency beds available for an ever-growing population of homeless people.

That’s a small number for a county this size, she quipped. With a 2021 population of 325,508, Cumberland is the fifth most populous county in North Carolina. And because it is ranked as one of the poorest counties on the three-tier system used by the N.C. Department of Commerce, there is no reason that only 38 beds are available, according to Stewart.

The topic arose when members of the Cumberland County Board of Commissioners met recently with the county’s representatives in the North Carolina General Assembly.

Homelessness wasn’t the only topic of concern. Stewart, the newly elected chairwoman of the county’s governing body, readily admits there are other important issues facing county leaders.

Those include the need for safe drinking water for Gray’s Creek residents whose wells were contaminated by dangerous chemicals from the Chemours plant off N.C. 87 near the Bladen County line. Then there is opioid addiction, school construction funding, and expanding the county landfill, which is due to run out of space in seven years if the county does nothing to remedy the problem.

But Stewart’s passion is focused on the homeless, their need for shelter, and their needs for mental health services. Her concern for the homeless is steeped in her need to serve and her affiliation with True Vine Ministries, where she is special projects manager and an ordained elder.

During an interview at her True Vine Ministries office, located adjacent to the church at 5315 Morganton Road, Stewart talked about serving her community, both as an individual and as a politician who can make a difference.

In her work at True Vine Ministries, Operation Inasmuch, and the Hope Center for women, she has had the opportunity to get to know homeless people.

“I've begun to have relationships with them. I’m able to see what’s behind homelessness. That’s when I became less important because I have shelter, I have food,” Stewart said.

Stewart previously was executive director of the Hope Center, a shelter owned by the city of Fayetteville that serves the female homeless population. True Vine operates the facility seven days a week, 365 days a year, from 6 p.m. to 7 a.m.

Stewart believes that as a society, Americans are too used to seeing men and women pushing shopping carts and never knowing how they got in a dire situation or even care.

“But when you put faces to it, it becomes real,” she said.

“We’re one paycheck away from being homeless. Athletes are one injury away from being homeless. Lottery winners are one bad decision away from being homeless,” she said.

Stewart’s father would tell her: “Toni, the world doesn’t revolve around you.”

“He would always tell me that,” said Stewart of her early upbringing in Lima, Ohio.

Her father instilled in her the need to serve others, and her God told her to do so as well, she said.

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Finding a platform

As chairwoman of the Board of Commissioners, she hopes to make a difference in the lives of those less fortunate. But it’s not her first platform to serve those in need.

She came to the Fayetteville community as many do, by way of a military spouse. That was 19 years ago, and she decided to stay and raise her four children, two of whom are students at Gray’s Creek area schools.

In her role as a county commissioner, Stewart sits on several boards and committees: the Department of Social Services and Cape Fear Valley Hospital boards; and Fayetteville-Cumberland County Homeless and City-County Liaison committees. Then there are the Board of Commissioners committees, which include Finance and Audit and American Rescue Plan Act committees.

They all serve as a platform that allows her to add her opinions on issues of homelessness, affordable housing, and mental health services.

Her political career started in earnest in 2017 when she ran for a seat on the Fayetteville City Council, taking on a popular incumbent, Bill Crisp. She came within 300 votes of unseating the longtime councilman. Although most of her passions involve issues addressed on the county level, she ran for City Council because she was eager to serve and the next county commissioners race was too far down the road.

“I was ready,” she said.

In retrospect, she is glad she did not win the council seat. She believes that as a county commissioner, she is closer to the issues that are important to her and she is closer to the people she strives to serve.

However, the city race made her a better candidate. It allowed her to meet with the people she would serve. Her campaign for county commissioner in 2019 came during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, and campaigning face to face with people was done at a distance. Yet she is amazed by the support she got in areas where she believed no one knew her.

Her District 2 encompasses most of the county, from Linden and Wade in the north, Stedman to the east, and Hope Mills and Gray’s Creek in the south.

Stewart took office in 2020. Her fellow commissioners chose her as vice chair in 2022. This past December, the board voted her in as its chair. It was not a unanimous vote, and Stewart immediately went to those who did not vote for her to mend fences and assure them she was up to the job. Her current term expires in 2024.

For now, she wants to do all the right things a county commissioner  is supposed to do for the good of all residents.

But there are frustrations for Stewart. Things are moving slowly.

“It’s government,” she shrugged.

And she fears there is a waning interest in the homeless situation, at least on a collaborative level for politicians. The joint city-county homeless coalition has not met in several weeks.

Help for the homeless

In the 2022 point-in-time count, 475 sheltered and unsheltered homeless people were identified in Cumberland County. Of the 424 without children, 387 were sheltered and 37 were unsheltered. There were 51 homeless families consisting of one adult and one child.

The county is building a homeless support center, but progress has been slow.

“At this point, the county is in the process of identifying a site for the homeless shelter," Assistant County Manager Brian Haney recently told CityView.

The county has been looking for a site for the past several months.

Until the county identifies a location and hires an architect, what that homeless center looks like and even what services it can provide are still undetermined. The General Assembly gave the county $1 million toward the cost of the center, but the overall price tag is still unknown. County commissioners hinted that the board might ask the General Assembly for more money.

The city of Fayetteville's proposed Day Resource Center is further along. It is still under construction, with the anticipated completion date by the end of June, barring any problems such as delays in the nation’s supply chain, according to Loren Bymer, a city spokesman.

The city contracted with Cumberland HealthNET to operate the Day Resource Center. The nonprofit organization is developing community-based partnerships to provide services to the homeless population.

According to Bymer, the city designed the facility to allow for one-on-one case management; laundry and shower facilities; and two medical offices the organization hopes to staff with volunteer medical professionals.

Asked what needs to happen immediately to stem the tide of homelessness here, Stewart said:

“First, we need to get some beds. Then we need to find out the causes of homelessness. And then we need to deal with the mental health issues. We need to bring all of our resources together and make them accessible.”

For now, Stewart is looking forward to the day the city’s Day Resource Center for the homeless opens, quickly followed by the county’s proposed homeless support shelter that will house people who desperately need help.

“We’ve got to get people where they belong,” Stewart said.

Cumberland County, Toni Stewart, homeless, Board of Commissioners

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