WILMINGTON — After an ordinance banning camping on its property passed first reading Tuesday, the City of Wilmington is now analyzing two ways to assist homeless individuals: using one of its surplus properties as a low-barrier homeless shelter and paying for more social workers to conduct outreach in downtown Wilmington.
The two items were directed by the Wilmington City Council at its Tuesday meeting. After being brought up by Mayor Bill Saffo, the strategies were paired alongside the passage of Councilmember Luke Waddell’s anti-camping ordinance targeted at reducing homeless individuals’ occupation of city property.
For several months the ordinance has been in conversation, the majority of vocal community members and homelessness service providers have asked council to reject the ordinance; however, it passed 5-2. It will need to come back before council for a second reading before its officially enacted.
The approved version comes without some of the original provisions. Criminal penalties were removed in favor of infractions, while prohibitions against people sleeping in cars were also taken out.
Salette Andrews and Kevin Spears dissented still.
Andrews said the ordinance “fails to solve the real problems of homelessness, which requires consistent enforcement of existing laws, effective partnerships with service providers and investments in shelters, transitional housing and supportive care.”
Some service providers have also denounced the passage; Port City Daily reached out to several nonprofit leaders, including Laura Bullock at Vigilant Hope. She said her team is “disappointed” in yesterday’s result.
“But we are used to being disappointed,” she wrote in an email. “Today, just like yesterday, hundreds of people woke up in our city after a horrible night’s sleep in a doorway, on a friend’s couch, in a shelter, or in a car, and they spent the whole day surviving — demonstrating a resilience that most of us will never have to imagine, much less embody. Last night’s vote did not change that, nor will it prevent more people from losing their homes. Until we come together as a community and start talking about solutions – particularly addressing our 7,000+ housing unit shortage for the low-income community – we will continue to be disappointed.”
Though the ordinance will take effect immediately after passage, Mayor Saffo’s shelter proposal could take years to come to fruition. The mayor preceded the suggestion with a lengthy monologue, which left him hoarse, inclusive of all homelessness and affordable housing initiatives the city has done in recent years. He also said the city could not resolve homelessness without other community partners, like the county, before ensuring the city would do its part.
“The city has a multitude of different properties, and I’m going to ask the city manager to evaluate all of those properties, bring it back to the city council, and we will give that property to a nonprofit or to an organization that will help us with the low barrier place
for people to go to,” Saffo said.
On a call with Port City Daily Wednesday, the mayor said the idea came to him after hearing from providers about the limited shelter space, particularly with low barriers to entry like curfews and sobriety requirements. The mayor envisions what’s called a “wet shelter” where people in active addiction or who are impaired could seek relief.
Saffo said he didn’t have a particular property in mind and noted wherever is assessed, the neighborhood surrounding it would need a say in the process. The city has several surplus properties, intended to be sold to pay down the city’s debt on the purchase of the Skyline Center for its new city offices. With that debt anticipated to be paid down in three years, the city recently paused the sale of the 1021 N. Front St. property due to its potential future use by the city.
After the properties are identified, the mayor said council could decide on one that seemed the best fit and from there issue a request for proposals. Nonprofits would then submit their ideas and operating plans. The one selected by council, according to the mayor, would be given the property free of charge.
“[The land donation] is to show the community we’re serious about this,” Saffo said. “We want to take citizens’ property and give it to a nonprofit that would do this kind of work, because it’s needed.”
Saffo also put forth a request for the city to fund four social workers embedded “within the city department.” As the mayor told PCD, this means separate from the city and county’s joint Getting Home initiative, which pairs county social workers with Wilmington Police Department officers. The original goal was for the social workers to conduct street outreach alongside officers, but that model has recently shifted to a caseload approach instead of patrolling.
The city’s social workers would be full-time employees, though the city doesn’t have a health department. Per Saffo’s vision, they would be placed in a department at the discretion of the city manager or within WPD.
In Tuesday’s meeting, Saffo indicated he wanted both the social workers and shelters to be part of the ordinance. Both the city manager and city attorney advised against it, noting it wasn’t the right path and both have budget implications staff need to review. New Hanover County allocates its four Getting Home social workers $218,000 in annual salaries.
Saffo initially replied he didn’t care about the budget implications — “we can find the money” — but eventually complied.
Port City Daily questioned Saffo about the efficacy of additional social workers if all the beds the workers could connect them to were full — as is currently the case.
As of Aug.18, 220 emergency shelter beds were available in New Hanover County, with 219 filled. Attainable housing options for people in the shelter to move into also remain elusive, with transitional and permanent supportive housing options also full and the average one-bedroom apartment costing $1,427.
“We know that these homeless providers will tell you they need more beds, they need more this, they need more that — there’s no doubt about that,” Saffo said. “I think we’re going to do the best we can … but I would speculate that the social worker will know what all of the services are, who’s got beds, who doesn’t have beds.”
The lack of capacity has been a major point of rebuttal for critics of the anti-camping ordinance and who argue there must be an open bed to send someone before they can be cited for breaking city code. Testimonials from Ralph Evangelous, interim chief of police, show the majority of the original anti-camping ordinance was already covered in city code and wouldn’t change much with officer response. He said officers can ask someone to pick up their belongings and leave, but unless they have somewhere else to crash, officers are liable to encounter them shortly thereafter in another area.
Waddell has maintained the ordinance was another tool to help address the homelessness issue, which has continued to be discussed in Wilmington for years now, but wouldn’t be an overall fix. It was broached last year, but tabled, and came up again recently amid concerns from downtown business owners dealing with homeless individuals sleeping, loitering and even reportedly defecating near business entrances, though some of this is already covered in city code. There have also been a handful of incidents of individuals harassing downtown visitors.
The passed ordinance slightly expands city authority, prohibiting occupying, camping, sleeping, erecting any tents, or using any cooking equipment or bedding between the hours of 10 p.m. and 7 a.m., setting a specific time period in city code. It also explicitly gives city employees the authority to deem unattended property abandoned and dispose of it. The ordinance stipulates entrances to city facilities are for ingress and egress only, too.
The most substantially different part of the ordinance, banning sleeping and camping activities in surface parking lots, was removed from the approved ordinance on Tuesday at the behest of Councilmember Daivd Joyner.
“No one has complained about people who are sleeping in their vehicles; not one single criticism has come to my attention, that sleeping in vehicles overnight is in any way associated with the conduct that the proponents of this ordinance have brought forward under a criminal misdemeanor structure,” Joyner said at the meeting. “That piece of the ordinance is merely copy and pasted from the ordinance passed by the county commissioners in 2022.”
He added he was told people living out of their cars often get out of homelessness the quickest because they have vehicles that allow them to get to work, school, doctor’s appointments and the like.
Joyner moved to strike the ordinance’s references to parking lots and decks, which was accepted by council.
Saffo also wanted to stipulate violators of the ordinance be given an infraction instead of the default class 3 misdemeanor, the highest criminal penalty a municipality could impart. The fine associated with the charge is $500. City attorney Meredith Everhart noted the likelihood of jail time was low, though it could be possible after the fourth occurrence. An infraction would never result in imprisonment, no matter how many were accrued.
Joyner, an assistant district attorney, said he would be able to support the ordinance with that change.
“It does not come with sentencing points; it does not come with the option of jail time for a judge,” Joyner said. “It’s not even a guilty or not guilty situation. They don’t get that far. It’s about being responsible or not responsible.”
Still, not everyone was convinced. Councilmember Spears said he would like to go back to the drawing board with the mayor’s suggestions: “I don’t think we need to pass a weakened version of criminalization, or whatever it is, to appease people in this community.”
Andrews, who also presented slides of her pictured with three homeless individuals she talked to recently, claimed the ordinance violates several constitutional principles, including the First and and Fourteenth amendments.
“Criminalizing overnight presence punishes people for circumstances beyond their control,” Andrews said. “If Wilmington wishes to honor the Constitution, not just in words, but in practice, the path forward is clear: reject measures that criminalize presence and instead pursue compassionate constitutional solutions to the challenges of homelessness and public space.”
Andrews’ request, as previously covered by PCD, to address homelessness still stands, though it is unclear when staff will bring it forward. She is asking to fund the former joint strategy between the city and county, unveiled in September 2024. It was compiled by both government staffs after months of conversations with service providers and those affected by homelessness.
The strategy’s three goals were identified as:
- Grow capacity of service providers and the Cape Fear Continuum of Care, the lead agency for homeless service and federal funding coordination under the Cape Fear Council of Governments
- Increase capacity of facilities to meet the needs of the unsheltered population
- Supportive regulations, incentives for developers, property management and housing assistance
The county has since pulled out of the strategy’s implementation, so Andrews has asked city staff to compile a plan for how the city could implement it and cost estimates to do so.
The ordinance will undergo a second reading at council’s next meeting on Sept. 23. If passed there, it will take effect immediately.
Tips or comments? Email journalist Brenna Flanagan at brenna@localdailymedia.com.
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