Chairman of the Guilford County Board of Commissioners Skip Alston and several other commissioners recently expressed their concerns over the speed at which the City of Greensboro was using federal money meant to help address homelessness in the county.
Greensboro Mayor Nancy Vaughan and Alston are both laser-focused on addressing the issue of homelessness in Greensboro and Guilford County right now – but that hasn’t stopped the two from disagreeing on the best methodology.
The issue came up recently at the Guilford County Board of Commissioners annual retreat at Bur-Mil Clubhouse in Greensboro.
The money in question comes from programs begun during the COVID-19 pandemic meant to help people who were struggling to pay rent due to the economic consequences of the pandemic. The federal grant money came to Guilford County and part of it has been distributed to Greensboro for the city to address the problem of evictions, which of course lead to more homelessness.
“I want to put a footnote out there that I am not very happy with this process,” Alston said at the retreat on Friday afternoon, March 19, after a staff report on homelessness. “People out there are being evicted and they are patiently waiting.”
Alston said the city has “an exorbitant amount of applications.”
“We need to do something sooner rather than later,” he said. “or we need to bring it back in-house and do it ourselves. I don’t think the city is getting it done like they are supposed to.”
Guilford County is also handling applications. The county is currently reviewing 1,300 applications from all over Guilford County and is spending about $600,000 to $700,000 a week. By the end of August, the county’s funds are likely to be exhausted, though there’s a chance the county may get additional money for the program.
Guilford County Commissioner James Upchurch also stated at the meeting that he had concerns about the city’s speed in getting the payments out.
“I agree with the chairman that this has been an issue for quite a while now,” Upchurch said. “I think this is unacceptable and I would like to see some action taken by them to speed up this process.”
Other commissioners expressed similar concerns at the meeting as well.
This isn’t the first time the board has complained: Alston, at a Board of Commissioners meeting on Thursday, Jan. 6, went into what can only be called a “rant” in which he said it appears that the City of Greensboro doesn’t care about fighting evictions because the city had not at that time accessed $10 million in federal funds that Guilford County government had for the city to prevent evictions.
Later, Alston said it had largely been a misunderstanding, and both Alston and Vaughan seemed to be in agreement about the progress of the payments.
However, on Friday, March 19, at the retreat, Alston and other board members were once again expressing their concerns.
After being told of the commissioners discussion, Vaughan said that the city was doing a good job of getting that money to those who need it.
“I checked with our providers,” Vaughan said. We are turning the checks around based on the scheduled we developed,” the mayor said. “My understanding is that DSS [The Guilford County Department of Social Services] has the slowest turnaround rate.”
Both groups tossing tax payers money on a dead end. Jobs are available.
At NC’s minimum wage below $8 dollars an hour, it isn’t worth the cost of gas to drive to work. If they can even afford a car. With inflation, gas prices, etc… it is a very difficult time to be poor right now. Just note the number of applications for assistance. I bet a good number of them ARE employed. Our Government loves to subsidize employers who don’t pay a living wage.
go to work
Grow some compassion, empathy, or care for others in your community.
Let’s argue about how fast we can send money out rather than doing due diligence as to who is truly qualified to receive these funds.
This program has experienced wide spread fraud in cities across the country. Landlords are left holding the bag when tenants claim to be victims and then buy a new car or spend their rent money on other things for their instant gratification.
City and County government have passed the buck here simply because they want someone else to do the trench work.
Uh, due diligence is why they have an application process and skip is pissy over how long it is taking to distribute funds. Duh.
you got that right
We also have a communist group called Guilford for all advocating for an unconstitutional permanent eviction moratorium. They have also endorsed several candidates running for city council seats. Cecile Crawford, Tammi Thurm, Franca Jalloh, Yvonne Johnson, and Tracy Furman. The crazy thing is that Guilford for all is a nonprofit, not a PAC. Yet they are actively taking actions to influence elections in NC. They have also endorsed a GC sheriff candidate and district court judges.
Guilford for all is a spin off of the group Durham for all which is funded by Liberation Road, an openly Pro CCP communist organization.
Guilford County better wake up and smell the communism before it turns into Durham.
I’ll tell you how it works. I put up my money and my time; you don’t pay your rent; you trash my property; you are out – pronto.