Charlotte's internally displaced

Common Ground’s Vulnerability Index brought home a lot of issues I’ve observed at the Urban Ministry Center this fall. Instead of people coming to the center, we went to them. Driving through Charlotte before dawn, my team visited wooded areas home to tents, water logged mattresses, strewn trash, and people. In an effort to create a list of Charlotte’s chronically homeless and rank them in terms of vulnerability, the Urban Ministry Center spearheaded an effort to survey the city’s least visible and most desperate population. Some people didn’t mind seeing a friendly face and sharing their story, others were annoyed by the intrusion, some were angry and scared.

Tipped off by the police, we visited an abandoned house and were not welcomed by its inhabitants. The two men with whom we spoke were concerned that talking in front of the house would alert the police and they would be arrested. We walked to a nearby parking lot and talked to Levi for almost an hour as daylight was breaking. He’s been homeless for over ten years, he struggles with addiction, and one night out of the cold in a shelter doesn’t solve those issues. Determined and desperate, he shows us the receipts from his child support payments – he’s trying, but it’s not enough. He needs to find a place to stay tonight; who knows when the police will visit the house and kick out or arrest its inhabitants? Levi was kind, witty and bright to strangers at 6am: “we need more hedges of support surrounding us…the revolving door at the shelter is not a long term solution.” He questions the stimulus bill and whether it is making any impact for the growing number of homeless in the US. Before the vulnerability index, it was estimated that Charlotte’s chronically homeless population (homeless for over one year or 4 times in the last 3 years) was around 500 people. Volunteers who visited jails, shelters, service agencies, and camps this week found over 800 people who are chronically homeless and almost half of those with a high mortality risk (based on physical health, mental health, age, hospitalization, and substance abuse). How did this happen in the richest country in the world, a country that just rallied to donate millions of dollars to victims of Haiti’s natural disaster? America’s internally displaced population is a natural disaster every day, a failure of compassion, coordination and action.

For more info, check out the local radio and news stories.