There’s one thing that just about everyone in Greensboro agrees on: The city should do what it can to help the homeless population.
The homeless are facing a plethora of difficulties in their lives and one current goal of Greensboro and Guilford County government officials is to help them in multiple ways.
However, as the county and the city address the problem together, there’s another worry – that Greensboro, Guilford County and compassionate community organizations are making Greensboro and the surrounding area a magnet for homeless people across the state.
City and county officials say that many of the problems with the downtown Greensboro homeless refuge – the Interactive Resource Center – are simply the result of overcrowding.
One question is why so many homeless people have been coming to the Greensboro area. Some say the city’s and county’s good faith efforts to help the homeless are attracting more of that group.
Chairman of the Guilford County Board of Commissioners Skip Alston said this week that one difficulty of dealing with the problem was that, on the one hand, county government wants to do whatever it can to help the homeless; however, on the other hand, it wasn’t beneficial for the county to take actions that attract homeless people from around the state.
Alston said he’d heard suggestions from some other elected leaders that, before the city or the county provides services to the homeless, the recipient of those benefits should be required to provide evidence of city or county residency.
Alston said there were some major problems with that approach.
Number one, the chairman said, is the fact that, for the homeless, it’s often very difficult to prove where they’ve been living, and, number two, these are all people in need no matter where they were before they arrived in Guilford County.
“These people are human beings who are asking for help,” Alston said.
He also said he’d heard that the Interactive Resource Center – which was just approved for nearly a half million dollars in funding from the City of Greensboro for the fiscal year that began on July 1– was planning to ask Guilford County government for additional funding.
He said Guilford County had already adopted its fiscal 2024-2025 budget, and he added that the county was already strapped for money, given all of its other responsibilities.
“They’re asking us for money we don’t have,” Alston said, adding that the IRC should have made a formal request before the Board of Commissioners adopted its fiscal 2024-2025 budget in mid-June.
Alston added that Guilford County government was already spending a great deal of money addressing the homeless problem, including building shelters with beds for those without homes – even for the homeless who have children. Those places, Alston said, will provide the formerly homeless a stable place to live while they get back on their feet.
The Interactive Resource Center isn’t a homeless “shelter” – there are no beds there – however, the center is now open both night and day so the homeless always have a place to shower, escape the summer heat, check emails, etc.
Greensboro and Guilford County have been implementing a lot of other measures in recent years meant to help – as have the community-based organizations that benefit the homeless.
One thing is clear: The word among the homeless in North Carolina is that Guilford County is a very desirable destination.
Even before the latest efforts by the area’s local governments to help the homeless, Greensboro and Guilford County had a reputation in North Carolina as the place that those down on their luck should go when they got out of prison.
The Rhino Times spoke with several former state prison inmates years ago who said that, in the state’s prison system, the common advice from one inmate to another was that Guilford County was the place you want to go after you’ve served your time.
“They say that, when you get out of prison, head to Greensboro,” one former prison inmate told the Rhino Times.
That former inmate, like others who had served time, said that the word regarding the attractiveness of services for the homeless and financially challenged in Guilford County was well known across the state prison system – and a considerable number of people who got out of prison took that advice by getting on a bus headed for Greensboro.
Mike Haley, a prominent Greensboro businessman who used to own many McDonald’s restaurants, is now a resident of Florida who has an office on Summit Avenue in Greensboro.
Haley said the homeless on Summit over the years had become more and more of a problem, resulting in trash, loitering, panhandling, traffic issues and other concerns.
He said the radical decline he has witnessed on that street over the years had been amazing.
Haley opened that office on Summit in 1990 and, in recent years, he said it has been going downhill.
“I have sympathy for the homeless,” Haley said, but he added that the city’s way of addressing the situation hadn’t been effective.
He said that he felt like the city wasn’t enforcing the laws on the books and that was really hurting the area and bringing down property values on his building and other property on Summit as well as in other parts of downtown.
“You could see it starting here,” Haley said of the Summit Avenue area.
“They helped me with the trash, but there is no enforcement of the laws,” he said of the city’s rules on panhandling.
Haley said Greensboro was now in danger of going the way of Asheville, which has become a magnet for the homeless across North Carolina.
Asheville has seen a dramatic increase in its homeless population the last few years. A recent opinion piece in The Carolina Journal stated that Ashville was turning into the “wild west” of North Carolina and was “becoming synonymous” with “violent crime, an exploding homeless crisis, and an [housing] affordability problem.”
Haley said there are signs up on Summit saying that panhandling isn’t allowed, but police don’t enforce the rules. He said a bus stop placed near his building years ago and the reluctance of Greensboro government to enforce the laws meant to prevent these problems had led to the decline on the street.
“It destroyed my area,” he said.
As a Florida resident, Haley said, he tries not to get involved with Greensboro politics, but he added that this had been such a pervasive issue for his business that he was willing to speak out.
Haley also said he felt that Greensboro City staff was doing what it could to try to address the problem; however, it was an uphill battle and the city’s efforts weren’t enough given the extent of the homeless situation in his area.
Greensboro Mayor Nancy Vaughan told the Rhino Times after the Greensboro City Council voted on Monday, Aug. 5 to extend funding to the Center, that she did feel like the Center was attempting to address complaints.
“I do feel confident that we had our concerns heard,” Vaughan said after the City Council meeting.
Vaughan said that the City of Greensboro was taking actions meant to address the problems that stemmed from the Interactive Resource Center and the homelessness situation downtown, such as moving the “Safe Parking” program away from the Center.
The Progressive manifesto holds that no one should be responsible for the consequences of their poor choices, and that those who have made good ones are obliged to share the bounties that result with those who haven’t.
Don’t put people in jail who commit property or personal crimes? They’ll keep on committing them.
Make the discomfort and risk of choosing to self-medicate with unlawful intoxicants less, and more of that is encouraged.
We still put drunk drivers in jail, or at least take away their driving privileges, but the next stage in the Progressive Pogrom will be to “understand” why someone might get loaded, and choose to ply our roads anyway, then excuse them when they cause damage to somebody else’s property, or even do them physical harm.
And spread the costs of their behavior to responsible, contributing taxpayers.
That’s the Progressive Way.
Great article Scott.
The defunding of the police and council wanting the police to pat the homeless on the back and asking them to move on has given the homeless a green light to take over downtown GSO and do as they please. When business start leaving downtown maybe the city will get the message. Nov 2025 we have the opportunity to replace most of the sitting city council and vote in folks that will give the police the green light to send a message to those that break the law.
As long as the city is divided into districts, most of the same losers will get reelected. You know who they are. Districts were designed to give voters in each district a representative of their own. The problem is, the city voters’ mental acuity and understanding of issues are not spread equally among the districts.
That and creating it via high property taxes and over regulation.
I’d like more sources for the notion that Greensboro is a target for ex-convicts. I can say the city of Greensboro has many kind and community oriented folks so I can’t fault the logic.
Rich man complains about homeless people. Please tell us more.
I have never worked for a poor man…and never a criminal like the IRC “executive director” that was charged as a shoplifters by the woke Target in past year…the gas in Greensboro is highest in the state due to high operating costs including the highest taxes in the stare!
Sas
score! . . . from your cedar st neighbor.
Rich people can’t have an opinion? Maybe, just maybe, the rich man is spot on.
As a former contracted employee for the Bureau of Prisons, I can confirm that Greensboro and NC are both a “hot spot” for Federal releases. There are numerous sex and violent offenders releasing in GSO and throughout the Triad monthly.
You should be equally as poor as the BUM you so desire to feed clothe and take care of like these grown fools are children. Oh! I know! Lets make a ‘space”(IRC) where these dregs can hang out, get fed, get clothes, get a shower and a place to sleep who are mostly self made burdens on the tax payers (responsible folk) due to drug and alcohol abUSE. Tell me ol’ wise libtard, why in hell would these dregs want to get clean and/or sober and get a job when some fool like you will GIVE them all the basic necessities? Oh yes, get up early, go to work and slave for the man or hang out all day , get high and have some booze and schmooze with your fellow dregs! Not a very hard decision for irresponsible people! In my own personal experience… bums are like stray dogs… if you don’t feed them they will MOVE ON! DON’T FEED THE DREGS!
Yes – as in days of the Market Crash, “Hobo’s’ heard about the best towns for free services. Since the Mental Hospitals have closed, more people are on the street and forgotten. How about covering the crime with them as well, to them and from them. Then perhaps in throwing good money after bad an actual solution can come about. My experience in being from a Military Officer family is: “You are either part of the problem or part of the solution”. How is it that those in leadership positions do not live up to that. In the “real world” all our work is “Results” driven or one no longer has that position. Greensboro has no “real” law and order enforcement due to wages, nor mental locations for those to live, unless a non profit wishes to help or their family is involved in getting them treatment and a home. It certainly appears that we are repeating history in more ways than this, with rioting having no consequences, enforcement of city laws from spitting on the sidewalk to just using our sidewalks for their bathroom, to basic manners. Combative attitudes persist above being decent to others, or “Being the bigger of the two” in an exchange and just let it go. Human life now has gone by the same attitude, oh my oh my oh my.
Skip and Nancy issued the invite and they are both blowing smoke with the problem they created. Throwing millions at the created problem isn’t working but you the taxpayer continue to foot the bill. Skip must have gotten all his ideas from his good buddy the VP. See how that’s working?
The word on the street is that the IRC does such a good job caring for the Homeless in Greensboro that neighboring cities send there most disruptive and problem Homeless persons to Greensboro! Just wish Mayor Vaughan and Chairman of the Guilford County Board of Commissioners Skip Alston were as diligent in serving the taxpaying and law abiding citizens of this City and County! Now not only is Guilford County and Greensboro # 1 in the state for crime, we are now also the Mecca for the most disruptive and criminally behaved homeless population!
Give a man a fish, he will eat for a day.
Teach a man to fish, he will eat forever.
Unless your GSO or Guildford County in which case you give a man a fish and he’ll hang around forever and complain because all he got was a fish with no chips, nothing to drink, and he had to cook it himself, thus making all of us bad people,
And remember, almost everybody voted for these give-away Lords and Ladies.
YOU can change it.
many humans soon learn that all the ‘fish’ are ‘owned’ by ‘inheritors’ & face ‘punishment’ when they put their ‘line’ in the water.
That’s a cop out. Almost every business has a help wanted sign in their window. Homelessness is a multifaceted problem, not the least of which is the mental health aspect, which they are not addressing in the long term. For the other elements, some of the problem does lie with the homeless themselves and the methods GSO uses to address it. They are not incentivizing getting out of homelessness. As a homeless person, I can get 21 meals a week, a cell phone, cash on any street corner, access to a computer all day, a place to get mail, etc, etc. Other than a steady place to lay my head, GSO literally provides everything a person needs. If those same benefits were available but at the cost of the receiver having to do some work to get it, I would have less of a problem with it. But we don’t. It’s handout central on the taxpayers’ dime and it does nothing to actually end homelessness. It incentivizes it.
because desperate people do desperate things, consider offering low cost, bare bones barracks style housing with the free meal, porta pot, trash can & on site security/web cam ? we can put all this right where we want it rather than in our beautiful parks.
Certainly, some of you progressives may think my comments on the Homeless situation in Greensboro are cruel? Did you know Guilford County EMS will no longer respond to calls involving conflicts with the Homeless unless they are accompanied by a Greensboro Police Officer? This is for their own safety! What does that tell you about these poor Homeless people? Do they get a “Get out of Jail Free” card just because they are homeless? This is just another failure of Mayor Vaughan’s vision on crime in this City! This vision, or lack there of has destroyed this once fine place to live!
Get a Republican major!!!!
Vote for Perkins.
Just a quick question. Does the city or county have trash receptacles near or on the IRC property? That would be one low cost method of taking a small step towards one of the problems and complaints about the area around the IRC.
a city owned n maintained property downtown off smith street was just mowed . . . the pile of blankets, clothing n trash that has been discarded a month ago & in the middle of it is still there !
The beautiful Park in downtown Greensboro is not safe, (pathetic common sense) many of the homeless at the park have luggage where they just came in off the train or buses…. To enjoy the amazing Downtown Greensboro and all the history can be an incredible challenge and you have to deal with mental illness substance abuse criminal activities and of course people begging and sleeping on the streets just like in San Francisco… I’m so excited we’re going to get a new mayor because perhaps the new mayor will not bend over backwards for votes?
Mike Haley is spot on with his assessment of the homeless situation. You just can’t help someone who won’t help themselves. Mike was also my assistant derby director in 67.
Is there any data at all to actually back this up? City Council members have said it repeatedly and I’ve not seen a single person actually attempt to find out if it is true in anything resembling an empirical way. It’s always just a rumor heard from someone else like the man interviewed in this story. If you’d like to complain that the city and county spend too much money on homeless services, it’d be easier just to do that than to make up an unverified claim that people are moving here.
It would not be difficult to learn the answer; just ask each homeless person. Why not ask the Sociology Department at one of the local colleges to ask for volunteers to design a questionnaire that would get to the heart of the question about where the homeless person came from and why Greensboro was chosen. The questions could be probing but not confrontational. The college student volunteers could be offered extra credit. It could be done at the IRC as well as the downtown park. The questionnaire would be designed to get a cross section of the homeless. As a reward to the homeless for participating, a small denomination gift card to a nearby convenience store or such could be given. The participation by the college and students would not be paid for by the taxpayers or the city and would, therefore, seem more legitimate. The only expense to the city would be the gift cards, which could come from petty case. But first, there has must be a want to know the answers as to the homeless population.
Interesting, but your idea makes some sense so naturally it would be dismissed by the apparatchiks running the city.
Right, so the answer to the headline should be, “We don’t have enough data to say.”
From the smallest towns to the largest cities it continues to happen. Democrats implement rules, laws etc. that aren’t enforced. I guess it makes them feel good. What comes next is the decline of the living conditions for all citizens.
What happens when one leaves food crumbs all over the house?
The homeless create SO much trash along the greenway. Who’s enforcing litter laws? The city is pouring millions of dollars into the greenway and giving “tours”. It’s laughable. While I can empathize, it isnt the the city’s job to attempt to fix the homeless problems. Don’t you need a permit to pan handle legally? Who’s checking for those? The guy pan handling at the intersection of gate city and Murrow is going to be plowed by a car. He’s so high/mentally checked out that he walks into traffic regularly.
Lots of interesting topics in this report.
Skip-the-Hyp sez that their isn’t enough money to fund all the feel-good programs. Well, yes there is. All this cash extorted from the taxpayers goes to fund goodies for the faithful. Since the homeless don’t vote here, they can’t do a thing for Skip. What Skip wants is more taxes, and more taxes, while they retain power. If the voters don’t get out for the next election, the Socia…..uh, Democrats will retain power.
Scott is right about Asheville, too. We visit the Asheville area perhaps twice a year, but we stay in Black Mountain and seldom go downtown. Last trip in the Fall we went into woke-ville for three hours. Of course the Civil War monument was long gone, but the pig remained. Scores (hundreds?) of the small, independent retail stores and restaurants have disappeared, to be replaced by corporate cookie-cutter bars & joints. On Haywood St., a short block of independent stores and restaurants have all but disappeared, replace by one giant restaurant/bar/hotel. We did not see any buskers (incl the Spoon Lady) on the streets around the park. Having enough of this, we walked back to our garaged car – $28.00 for less than 3 hours.
All this started some years ago, when the WSJ ran a 3-page article on Asheville, the “Paris of the East”. Oh-oh, I thought. Then yet another article a while back. Now, it is overrun with big money, high-rises, condos everywhere, big city traffic, never-ending I-26 construction, you-name-it. A beautiful southern city destroyed by politics and money.
Oh, another thing. During the Floyd riots, the city agreed to Reparations. The press crowed about it, but the real reason was to avoid riots in the City, which it did.
Include me out. You can include me out of Greensboro & Guilford County, too. Soon.
Scott said that Asheville has had a problem with the homeless driving away businesses, but you’re saying the problem is too many large businesses. Which is it?
Two questions are not enough. There are many problems.
First this article is plagued with miss information or lack of information! Scott D Yost you should really come visit us at the HOPE Center and we can have a real conversation and take a poll straight from the source! Secondly Haley is clueless rich man that has benefited hundreds of thousands of dollars on the backs of homeless as nearly 80% of his Summit Avenue building was up fitted to house the housing hub that has failed because of his excessive rent rate!! Alston is clueless and reckless as he had the county to purchase an old nursing home building similar to the city of Greensboro purchasing an old roach motel that should have been torn down years ago. City staff members, Cindy Blue and Michelle Kennedy should be removed from their positions as they are the problem!! City Council is clueless, and one of their members is the Director of a nonprofit that is providing services to those experiencing homelessness. Let’s talk about the personal relationship between the Director of the IRC and the former Director of the IRC and no one wants to address that issue. The beginning of your article says that we’re providing too many resources and that may be partially true. Your article also says that many are coming through the prison system, but the fact of it is that a lot of the people that you think are homeless downtown are actually living near downtown in a senior center or they’re living in Borden houses off of Martin Luther King Dr. which is another interesting fact that that is Sharon Hightower district which is one the worst in the city of Greensboro. Scott D Yost ask the city of Greensboro why are they blocking Habitat from humanity from obtaining city on property and not allowing them to build? (FACT) mr. Yost investigate why the new apartment complex is supposed to be affordable cost $20,400,000.88 units which is over $231,000 Per unit. Now the elephant in the room or rhino is the IRC is a mistake and opening up 24 hours and safe parking should not be located at a Day center. Why has information not been released about a situation that happened involving guns just the day or so before the city of Greensboro approved the funding for the IRC??? I truly believe the city hindered the investigation and the report from being released because they knew they had to vote on the IRC funding situation. Once again, Mr. Yost not only do I invite you, but I challenge you come talk to me visit our HOPE center take a pole on the individuals there.
“They’re asking us for money we don’t have,” Alston said, ….” Really Skip, you have no money?? Property tax increased roughly 25% and the county has no money? Time to either elect new county commissioners or move to another county. I’ve never been more frustrated in our city and county government than at this moment.
Thats what I did. Lived in Guilford County since 1979, It was great until about the last 7-8 years, so I moved to the clean county of Randolph. Its peace and quiet and 1/2 the taxes on my property and vehicles. Haven’t seen a homeless person, trash, or had any other issues in my rural fresh air, trees and wildlife country area. Wish I had done it years ago. Skip Alston has ruined Guilford County. Vote him out is the first start of repairing the 3rd largest county in the state.
But they have $1.7 million to give away for Buddies of Skip
The headline is a rhetorical statement.
Scott Jones is totally clueless . I converted my building so it could be used as a housing hub and they not only negotiated rock bottom rent rates but inserted a cancellation clause in a long term lease after the deal was negotiated . Habitat vacated the largest space after a short period of time citing the inserted clause. I did the housing hub because I thought it would be beneficial to the GSO housing problem. Scott you should know what you are talking about before you offer an opinion.
When the street people started to build on Summit Ave, I warned our mayor that GSO was going the way of Asheville and not to make
GSO a destination for homeless. Well, we are there. These people offering uninformed opinions forget that I have been on Summit Ave
since 1960 and it was once a very nice street and hopefully be there again. I located my office on Summit Ave because it was virtually next to the first McDonalds opened in NC that continues to be highly successful after 60 plus yeas. I love Summit Ave but it was the
city that started the decline and then was slow to react after being warned.
I am not rich but have been successful and proudly donated to build the Tanger Center that should be GSO pride and joy.
The homeless population is also threatening our inter city , the Tanger Center ,the city park, and the wonderful renovation Roy Carroll did on the old Wachovia building. GSO was once a great safe city before our leadership became reactive instead of proactive. I am
excited that past mayor Robbie Perkins has agreed to run for Mayor and feel that help is on the way.
I am impressed with Scott Yost for airing a subject that needed to be aired and wish nothing but success with his GSO news coverage.
Ballot harvesting at a IRC would never happen.