Preliminary results from a 24-hour count of Cumberland County’s homeless population appear to show a roughly 21% decrease from 2023, county officials said Tuesday.
The news came during a morning meeting of the Homeless Advisory Committee, which includes members from the Cumberland County Board of Commissioners, the Fayetteville City Council and the Cumberland County Board of Education. Commissioner Veronica Jones was not present at Tuesday’s meeting.
Tawana Dawkins, an analyst with the county’s Community Development department, said this year’s numbers are still preliminary. The data is typically sent to the U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) for review and final approval, but HUD experienced software problems that have caused a delay this year, Dawkins said.
She presented a breakdown of the 2024 numbers, which were counted during a designated “point-in-time” 24-hour period from Jan. 25 to Jan. 26. In that timeframe, there were:
Commissioner Toni Stewart, who serves as the chairperson of the committee, noted that the numbers are dependent on volunteers seeing individuals while they are conducting the count. People living in the woods or in their cars might not be included in that count, she said.
This year’s numbers represent a 100-person difference from 2023, when the county reported 474 homeless people, Dawkins said. The number of unsheltered people also saw a major decrease, going from 388 in 2023 to 253 this year. According to HUD, someone is unsheltered when their primary nighttime residence “is a public or private place not designed for or ordinarily used as a [regular] sleeping accommodation for human beings.” All unsheltered people are homeless, but not all homeless people are unsheltered.
Dawkins attributed those changes to a variety of factors, including Fayetteville’s recent enforcement of a 2022 ordinance banning encampments on public property and countywide efforts to place more homeless people in transitional housing.
Though the county’s numbers have improved, Dawkins cautioned that the count does not include every homeless person or household in the county.
“We couldn’t possibly count all our homeless in our community in 24 hours,” she said. “What we can do is give a brief picture for a point in time.”
Furthermore, only three emergency shelters reported their data to county officials: the Care Center, a domestic violence shelter; the Cumberland Interfaith Temporary Shelter; and the Salvation Army, she said.
Dawkins said the county was especially happy about the 100% occupancy rate at Robins Meadow, its 12-unit transitional housing apartment complex off Old Wilmington Road.
“We’re very proud of that,” she said.
Reorganization
The committee unanimously voted to change its composition so that four elected officials would be the only voting members. Previously, the voting membership had also included the chair of the Cumberland County Continuum of Care, but that meant more people had to be present to have a quorum, Stewart said.
“It had gotten so big that we could barely even get a quorum to even handle business,” she said.
Besides elected officials, all other members on the committee will become ex-officio members who can provide input, but not vote, according to the committee’s altered charter.
The committee also voted to elect Fayetteville City Council Member Malik Davis as vice chairperson.
The elected officials serving on the committee are:
The date for the committee’s next meeting has yet to be determined.
Reporter Lexi Solomon can be reached at lsolomon@cityviewnc.com or 910-423-6500.
This story was made possible by contributions to CityView News Fund, a 501c3 charitable organization committed to an informed democracy.
