Last week, Chairman of the Guilford County Board of Commissioners Skip Alston announced that he was going to start a county task force on homelessness and related issues – and it didn’t take long before a special meeting was called to begin discussing solutions and changing things up.

On Monday, Sept. 26, the Guilford County Board of Commissioners announced a meeting for Wednesday, Sept. 28 at 5:30 p.m. in the Carolyn Coleman Conference Room – formerly known as the Blue Room – on the first floor of the Old Guilford County Courthouse in downtown Greensboro.

The official stated purpose of the special meeting is “to discuss a resolution to amend the Joint Cooperative Agreement for Greensboro/Guilford/Burlington/Alamance Housing Consortium and conduct any other necessary business.”

The meeting will be open to the public and also live streamed.

Alston told the Rhino Times that he wants Guilford County to use $8 million in federal American Rescue Plan (ARP) funding to go toward addressing the problem of homelessness and he said the problem needed more resources from others as well.  He said he realized at a meeting last week that various community partner groups were all over the place but a coordinated effort was badly needed instead.

Alston also said he planned to move fast on the issue because it’s very serious and pressing.

Those interested can watch the meeting over Zoom by visiting:

https://www.zoomgov.com/j/1602210432, completing the webinar registration and selecting the option to join from the confirmation email before the start of the meeting.

The meeting will also be livestreamed on Guilford County’s Facebook page.

Copies of the agenda will be available for review prior to the start of the meeting at https://guilford.legistar.com/Calendar.aspx.

Those with questions should contact Deputy Clerk Ariane Webb at awebb@guilfordcountync.gov.