Aaron Goldfarb of the Salvation Army of the Sandhills Region had one message for the Cumberland County Board of Commissioners on Monday: If the board wants the organization’s Pathway to Hope homeless shelter to reopen, it needs funding support from the county.
“We need somebody to commit to help us open,” Goldfarb said at the May 19 special meeting prompted by the shelter’s closure. “That’s the bottom line.”
The commissioners are willing to support the Pathway to Hope shelter’s reopening, voting 4-2 at the meeting to direct Cumberland County Manager Clarence Grier to negotiate a yearly contract. The contract would allocate up to $563,000 annually to the Salvation Army for shelter operations. As of the meeting, Grier has yet to determine funding sources but stated the funding could come from the county’s general fund or its American Rescue Plan allocations.
“We can’t have mothers and families and women in our community not have a place to put their head tonight. It’s unacceptable,” Kirk deViere, the commissioners’ chair, told CityView. “I don’t care if it’s a law, if it’s our requirement. It’s morally wrong, and it’s our responsibility as elected officials [to provide them shelter].”
It’s been over a month since the Pathway to Hope shelter on Alexander Street abruptly shut its doors, citing funding issues. The closure left Cumberland County without its largest emergency shelter and its only shelter for women and families. As a result of the closure, 50 to 60 individuals staying at the shelter were also discharged.
The closure also added to the county’s shortage of homeless emergency shelter beds, increasing it from over 120 to 170 beds, deViere said. Since the Pathway to Hope shelter closed, 39 individuals and families have requested shelter through the Fayetteville-Cumberland County Continuum of Care, the federally authorized homelessness case management organization.
Per the board’s request, the contract — called a memorandum of agreement — would require the Salvation Army to report back performance metrics in exchange for financial support. It would also require an inspection from the Cumberland County Department of Public Health to determine whether the shelter is free of asbestos and other hazards.
“I believe that our staff will ensure that we have the checks and balances in place to make sure that the money is used accordingly, that they’re responsible for those dollars,” deViere said. “I think we’ll put the metrics and the reporting in place to ensure that we see that that investment is what it needs to be.”
The contract replaces an emergency shelter proposal the board voted on earlier this month. That proposal, which the board scrapped in favor of funding the Pathway to Hope shelter on Monday, would have used $400,000 to pay for 50 beds for men at the Cornerstone Christian Empowerment Center and hotel rooms for families and single women for three months.
“Looking at it from a math standpoint, what this board was presented in the agenda session was spending $400,000 to house people for 90 days at a cost of $100 an individual, versus having this solution here, which would be $31.25 person [for a year],” Commissioner Henry Tyson said in the meeting. “This makes the most financial, economic sense for our taxpayers.”
Commissioners Glenn Adams and W. Marshall Faircloth voted against funding the Salvation Army’s shelter.
Adams told CityView he was concerned about the Salvation Army’s finances and its attempts to resolve its decreasing funds. He said the nonprofit should have asked more community partners for help when it realized it was in financial trouble, which Goldfarb told the board was in January.
“I didn’t see their plan to get out of this,” Adams told CityView. “The plan now is, ‘You give me the money and I can get out of this.’”
Adams was also skeptical about the Salvation Army’s ability to hire permanent workers to staff the Pathway to Hope shelter after struggling to hire people before its closure. The Salvation Army was using Dreamville Staffing, a temp agency, to supply staff for the shelter. It paid Dreamville Staffing over $18 per position staffed, a price Commissioner Pavan Patel said didn’t work financially. As of April 24, the Salvation Army owes the company $80,000 to $100,000.
A city or a county issue?
Goldfarb also requested $200,000 in funding from the City of Fayetteville. However, Goldfarb told the county commissioners that one of his board members and Fayetteville City Council member Deno Hondros, said the shelter “is a county function, not a city function.” (Hondros did not immediately respond for comment by the time of publication.)
“So I’m putting the burden now on the county,” Goldfarb said.
Grier, the county manager, said he spoke with Fayetteville City Manager Doug Hewett before the Monday special meeting, and believes the city will follow the county’s lead on funding the Pathway to Hope shelter.
“Whatever we decide to do, they would probably work with us to join this,” Grier told the board. “That’s what I took from that conversation.”
DeViere acknowledged that “the city only has one statute of responsibility” to provide shelter for homeless residents while “the county has several.” However, he is hopeful the city will fund a portion of the Pathway to Hope shelter, ultimately decreasing the amount of financial support the county needs to provide.
“I believe that we’ll see the city become a partner,” deViere said.
Goldfarb said it will take two to three weeks to negotiate and sign a memorandum of understanding with the county, and open the shelter. That puts the shelter reopening sometime in early June.
While reopening Pathway to Hope helps address the county’s need for emergency shelter, Debbie Brown, chair of Fayetteville-Cumberland County Continuum of Care, said the county’s Unhoused Support Center is one of the solutions to homelessness she is most excited about. Set to open in 2027, the Unhoused Support Center will be a 24-hour, about 157 bed county-homeless shelter on Hawley Lane.
“I’m ready to see it be at the fruition level,” Brown said.
CityView Reporter Morgan Casey is a corps member with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists into local newsrooms. Morgan’s reporting focuses on health care issues in and around Cumberland County and can be supported through the News Foundation of Greater Fayetteville.