Homeless residents pack to leave after being ordered to vacate privately-owned property south of downtown Raleigh. High rents and deposit fee requirements are making it impossible for hundreds of thousands of low-income Americans to gain access to a permanent residence. (Photo: Greg Childress)
Shakamie appeared comfortable holding court last week to discuss homelessness with a reporter and several of his friends in the Circle K parking lot off of Highway 70 near the Interstate 40, south of downtown Raleigh. He and others in an impromptu circle were part of an encampment for people experiencing homelessness on the expansive, wooded lot behind the busy convenience store.
The Raleigh Police Department had recently paid a visit to the encampment to give inhabitants a deadline to move. Several of those encircling Shakamie had been part of a similar encampment a few miles east of the Circle K near the Raleigh-Garner border. Law enforcement officials closed that camp in April.
A Raleigh police officer stands by his cruiser after helping residents from the encampment push a car to the gas pump at the Circle K convenience store on Highway 70/South Saunders Street. (Photo: Greg Childress)
Shakamie declined to provide a last name or to be photographed for this story. He told NC Newsline that he recently served a 20-year stretch in prison and wished to remain mostly anonymous.
The native of Trinidad and Tobago with long, graying dreadlocks that would fall below his waistline if he unloosed them, talked animatedly about the struggles of people experiencing homelessness and the recent order by law enforcement officers to vacate the private property on which the inhabitants had set up camp.
“They’re homeless already,” Shakamie said, referring to the people living in the encampment. “So, when you run them out of here, you’re creating a problem for the public because now they got to go on park benches, downtown, on people’s doorsteps.”
A massive and vexing problem
Julia Milstead, spokeswoman for the City of Raleigh, said law enforcement officials had received numerous complaints about the encampment from individuals and nearby businesses.
“Officers provided information to those camping on the property at I40 and South Saunders Street,” Milstead said in a statement to media. “’No Trespassing’” signs are clearly visible, and officers informed those on the property that trespassing is illegal. In this case, officers provided verbal warnings rather than citations or arrests.”
The statement noted further that the city is launching the Unsheltered Homelessness Response Pilot Program in order to provide a “holistic approach to supporting individuals living unsheltered in the City while addressing the root cause of homelessness.”
Those who were living in the encampment are not unique. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) 2023 Annual Homeless Assessment Report (AHAR) to Congress reported that, at the time, more than 650,000 individuals in the U.S. were identified as homeless. That figure represented an increase of 70,650, or roughly 12 percent, over 2022. In North Carolina, nearly 10,000 people experienced homelessness, including 2,554 people in families with children, according to the HUD report.
A by-the-numbers snapshot of the homeless population in the U.S.
About 20 of every 10,000 people – 653,104 people — experienced homelessness across the United States during a single night in January 2023. This is the highest number of people reported as experiencing homelessness on a single night since PIT count reporting began in 2007.
Six in 10 people experiencing homelessness were staying in sheltered locations, and four in 10 were unsheltered, that is, staying in a place not meant for human habitation.
Seven in 10 people experiencing homelessness were in households with only adults (71%). Households with only adults staying in unsheltered locations comprised the largest single segment of the total population experiencing homelessness (36%), followed by adult-only households staying in sheltered locations (35%).
Twenty-nine percent of people experiencing homelessness did so as part of a family with at least one adult and one child under 18 years of age, and most people in families were sheltered.
Less than one percent of people experiencing homelessness, 3,240 people, were unaccompanied children, people under 18 without a parent or guardian present.
Source: U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Black people such as Shakamie and several others who gathered to discuss the encampment are overrepresented among the population experiencing homelessness. While they make up 13% of the U.S. population and 21% of the population living in poverty, Black people comprise 37% of Americans experiencing homelessness and 50% of people experiencing homelessness as members of families with children.
Nowhere to go
Shakamie struggled to understand why the folks in the encampment were being forced out when the owner doesn’t appear to have immediate plans for the property.
“If they came in and were going to do some construction, I guarantee you none of those dudes [in the encampment] would argue with them,” Shakamie said. “They would give them no problem because they know now that a construction site is coming and we got no choice, we got to move.”
Shakamie acknowledged that some people in the encampment struggle with drug and alcohol addictions. But high rents and a shortage of low-income housing is the major reason people choose to live in the woods, he said.
“Where’s the low-income housing?” he asked. “I tried to go rent an apartment. When you go rent the apartment — $1,600 — your monthly rent. Then they say I gotta pay three months or two months payment. The paycheck people making on them job — where you gonna’ get two or three months’ payment?”
As reported by Raleigh’s News & Observer, rent for a one-bedroom apartment was $1,260 a month in August, which is down 3.8% month-over-month and 9.4% from a year ago, according to Zumper’s recent rent report. The median rent for a two-bedroom unit was $1,560, which was down 2.5% from the previous month and 4.9% from 2023.
Shakamie also highlighted a major problem identified by many experts with respect to forced evictions of people experiencing homelessness from such wooded encampments. Where do they to go after they’re forced to leave?
Dr. Latonya Agard (Photo: NC Coalition to End Homelessness)
Latonya Agard, executive director of the N.C. Coalition to End Homelessness, said the reality is that people living in encampments often have nowhere else to go.
“The demand to go somewhere else without the resources and the support to do so is quite cruel and it’s ineffective,” Agard said.
Improving the plight of unhoused people will require major shifts in policy and resources, she said.
“We continue to do the same thing because we don’t want to make the critical changes in our economy and our policies that would cause a shift so that people who need the most assistance and resources can get them,” Agard said. “There is profit to be made, unfortunately, and there are structures that are maintained by continuing to shuttle people from one section of the city to another and from one trauma to the next.”
A possible ray of hope
Near the entrance to the wooded lot, inhabitants had begun to stockpile their belongings in preparation for the move. Bikes, chairs and borrowed shopping carts filled with clothing, tents, cooking utensils and other goods needed to survive outdoor living were parked under a large tarp.
Some inhabitants told NC Newsline that they planned to move to a wooded lot near Healing Transitions, a residential center for people (especially those experiencing homelessness) who are battling addiction. Healing Transitions doesn’t own the property across the street from the center where people from the Highway 70/South Saunders Street site have already begun to pitch tents, a staffer told NC Newsline.
Several people from the encampment said members of Raleigh’s ACORNS (Addressing Crises through Outreach, Referrals, Networking and Service) program had also visited. Members of the team work with residents in crisis and try to direct them to available resources. ACORNS combines social workers and law enforcement officers to help people in crisis using the most appropriate and least invasive interventions.
Families trying to stay together face extra challenges
Drayton Edgerton was living in the encampment with his wife. The couple planned to move to the Healing Transitions site, Edgerton said.
“That’s where my sponsor is … he told us to come over there,” said Edgerton, who asked that his photo not be published. “They’re going to help us get out of this little situation.”
Edgerton said he and his wife choose the woods over homeless shelters. At shelters the two would have had to separate, he said.
“We’re not trying to get separated, let alone go to a dirty shelter,” Edgerton said.
The couple has been together 10 years, Edgerton said, and have five children, including a child born June 26. The children, who range in age from 10 to almost three months, live with his sister, he said.
People experiencing homelessness are often critical of shelter policies that don’t accept families with older children, pets or couples. Many of them would rather live in camps together than apart in a shelter.
When asked how his family came upon such hard times, Edgerton explained that he worked in a restaurant for 13 years. The family, he said, spent lots of money on hotel rooms and fast food before running out of money.
Patrick O’Neill, a Wake County advocate for people experiencing homelessness, said many of the people he helps aren’t comfortable moving into shelters.
“Some of the homeless people have paranoia or they had one bad experience and they don’t go to shelters,” O’Neill said. “The other thing is a lot of people have pets, they have dogs and they have cats, and they can’t have those at shelters and couples can’t stay together in shelters.”
One possible model?
In Grants Pass, Oregon, the town whose ordinance banning camping in public spaces gave rise to recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling upholding such policies, the city council recently agreed to set aside four sites for homeless campers.
Simmie Williams (Photo: Greg Childress)
According to media reports, the city-owned sites will have chain-link fencing, bathrooms, handwashing stations and trash service. Two sites are supposed to have security cameras. Homeless residents began moving into two of the sanctioned sites in late August.
O’Neill thinks Raleigh should explore such a solution for its homeless population in addition to increasing its supply of affordable housing, particularly for people on the low end of the earning scale.
“The people on the street aren’t even crying out for housing, they just want a plot of grass, an 8 x 8 plot of grass, where they can pitch their tent and not be harassed by the police,” O’Neill said. “We’re not willing to give them the bare minimum.”
Simmie Williams is aware that some people see homeless encampments as a detriment to the community. Williams, a shy 29-year-old who quickly tells a reporter he was reared in foster care, sees the encampment on Highway 70/South Saunders Street as a supportive community for people struggling with mental health issues and addiction.
“We make sure each other are OK mentally, physically and emotionally,” Williams said.