The topic the Greensboro City Council discussed the longest at the Tuesday, March 7 meeting was once again the homeless population.
The discussion began with Councilmember Zack Matheny noting that in the past two weeks two homeless men have died on the streets downtown. He said, “We don’t need to do better. We’ve got to do something.”
Matheny said, “Fundamentally health and human services are the responsibility of the folks across the plaza. It is a county function.”
He added, “I believe that as a city we have invested above and beyond what any city in the country has done.” Matheny said that since 2016, Greensboro had spent about $100 million in an attempt to help the homeless population. He asked, “What do we have to show for this investment.”
Councilmember Sharon Hightower, who is on the Continuum of Care (COC) and the Homeless Task Force, said, “Government moves slowly, period.”
According to the Guilford County website: “The Guilford County Continuum of Care (Guilford CoC) is the planning body in Guilford County, North Carolina that coordinates the community’s policies, strategies and activities toward ending homelessness.”
Matheny responded, “Tell us the process. If I see someone in need, what do I do?”
Councilmember Tammi Thurm said, “We asked that question two years ago and there was no answer then and there is no answer now.”
She said, “I understand that the Homeless Task Force is working on a big plan and it takes time, but what do we do in the interim?”
Thurm added, “We need a response other than we are waiting for the Homeless Task Force to come up with an answer.”
Mayor Nancy Vaughan said, “We’ve been running around doing shelter things when we should be doing housing things.”
She said, “When we invest money in temporary shelters, we are taking it away from long term housing.”
Vaughan added, “The fact is, when I ask questions I don’t get answers from the COC. We need to get an update on who is doing what.”
Hightower defended the COC and the Homeless Task Force and said the key was “coordinated entry.” She said, “We’ve got to look at something long term. Something sustainable.”
Thurm said, “Coordinated entry doesn’t work if the requests for help are ignored.”
All pass the buck BS. Another SNAFU that you voted in. If an accurate number…100 million spent since 2016….for what? Audit time don’t you think?
That’s odd. When I inquired to Matheny about what I considered to be a retaliation strategy on the part of my apartment community which left me homeless and, eventually, indigent, he did nothing to assist me. HE needs to do something…anything…like following up on concerns to avert this kind of behavior.
They gave them some shelters in the Pomona ballfield, not their toney neighborhoods and forgot about them. Govt, especially Dems, destroy people and the economy, if y’all hadn’t noticed. If they didn’t foster racism and poverty, they’d have no party.
ps what is worse than a racist? A condescending white self professed liberal!
You can throw money at this until you turn blue but the facts are that some folks want this life style and no matter how much resources you throw at it these folks simple do not want another life style. Some of this is drug related, some is mental issues and some we will never understand. There may not be any one solution. I believe that the ones that want to turn it around are the ones that should be focused on, the hard core that do not want to change are not going to. Was downtown last week, saw several folks asleep in doorways, saw two individuals in a cussing match, one giuy was arguing with himself another lady was high on something. This was all in a two block area. It is a sad situation but dumping money on top of money is not the solution. This council thinks that all things can be solved by spending tax payer money but they can not.
Some folks dont WANT housing? They just want to be homeless? Sometimes i FORGET that ppl actually BELIEVE that rhetoric. In reality, anyone who says to YOU “i just want to be homeless”, has given up WASTING THEIR TIME TALKING about it – because they know that what they need simply does NOT exist. Thats why the majority of the elderly homeless live in their cars to BUY MEDICINE!
How is it possible they spend a hundred million dollars and all they’re doing is literally attracting more transients to the area.
They jump at the chance to increase cost and taxes for working people so they can throw money at others who contribute nothing.
A good start would be to ban panhandling and enforce public drunkenness as well as loitering laws.
I think instead of calling them the city council a better time would be the city idiots. I can’t believe people in Greensboro keep electing them.
Mandate Mayor and Matheny could take low cost solutions like unlocking public restrooms overnight or maybe spending on actual city functions instead of streetscapes and Performance Arts Palaces surrounded by ten foot high fences. Area Churches that ignore the issue are complicit as well. Also all the regulations about where folks are allowed to temporarily shelter could be relaxed or removed. But instead please cue up ” Send in the Clowns”.
Just more government waste! Imagine if they’d taken that $100 MILLION and used it to build, own, and operate beautiful, mixed income housing all over the city. That would increase the number of affordable units in and help keep rents down for all of us! It would also return a profit that could be reinvested in more affordable housing! So tired of Government and these politicians WASTING so much when they could be investing it!
Sounds like a Govt SNAFU to me.
I have a simple solution: Rehab or jail.
Or, on second thought, we can bus them all to the center of NC liberalism: Chapel Hill.