Brevard's Homeless Challenge: Balancing Empathy and Consequences
Brevard City Council members have blasted the idea of filing criminal charges against homeless people camping on city property. But how else can the city control this potentially dangerous practice?
BREVARD — A Brevard Police Department officer, responding to a call about a possible case of hypothermia on the freezing morning of Nov. 20, arrived at a small cluster of tents behind the city’s community garden west of downtown.
He found a woman who had reportedly slept uncovered, according to his report. She was unresponsive and her skin was an unnatural shade of “purple,” his narrative also said. The officer discovered what appeared to be a pipe for smoking methamphetamine in her tent, and a paramedic later measured her core body temperature at 82 degrees.
The woman, whose name is being withheld to protect her medical confidentiality, survived but has not fully recovered, her girlfriend, Regina Brock, 53, said in an interview last week at the Transylvania County Library.
“She’s on dialysis,” Brock said. “She’s still got a long way to go.”
This frightening incident has brought home a point that should be obvious, said a range of people with a stake in the issue of homelessness in the city of Brevard and Transylvania County: It’s not good for unhoused people to sleep outside, especially in cold weather.
It’s unsafe, unsightly and potentially unsanitary. And from the looks of the vacant encampment Monday afternoon, it’s also miserable.
One of the three remaining tents in the stand of bare, immature trees behind the garden had collapsed. The muddy ground around them was littered with sodden sleeping bags, blankets and bags of trash.
“This is a much safer, even more humane, way to take care of (homeless people’s) needs,” said the Rev. Brad Snipes, sitting at a clean white dining room table at a cold-weather shelter run by his Cove Church, a few blocks from the garden.
Brevard Police Chief Tom Jordan presented one option for controlling homeless camps at a City Council meeting last month — a proposed law that would make camping on city property a third-degree misdemeanor.
It was resoundingly rejected by a majority of Council members who said homelessness in a town with sky-high housing costs should never be treated as a crime.
The Council’s Public Safety Committee will start considering other options at a special meeting scheduled for 6 pm on Jan. 4 at the Mary C. Jenkins Community and Cultural Center, trying to strike a balance that has eluded cities throughout the country: Creating an enforceable ordinance while avoiding penalties that compound the struggles of an already struggling population.
“Adding to (unhoused people’s) criminal records is not going to solve their problems,” Snipes said. “But a law without consequences is not a law. It’s just a suggestion.”
Open Beds
Anyone who needs a warm place to sleep and a hot meal can go to the 20-bed shelter at the Cove any night between Nov. 1 and the end of March, he said.
It usually has plenty of openings. So does The Haven of Transylvania County, a long-term, year-around shelter on South Caldwell Street. Both refuges are within easy walking distance of the community garden and the Library — a regular daytime destination for unhoused residents.
Why didn’t the woman who slept outside on that cold night in November head to one of these shelters? Why do homeless advocates in Transylvania County regularly count several dozen people sleeping outside during an annual tally conducted in January?
According to interviews with unhoused people and their advocates, it comes down to three main factors: dogs, personal relationships and addiction.
Residents of the Haven, which typically allows 90-day stays, must commit to being drug free. The shelter recognizes the crucial role that dogs can play in providing safety and companionship, said Executive Director Emily Lowery, and welcomes pets if they are not disruptive and have been approved as service or emotional support animals.
The Cove will accept intoxicated residents “as long as they can function,” Snipes said. But it does not permit them to use drugs or alcohol on the premises and doesn’t have the space to accept animals, he said.
The Haven offers four rooms for homeless families, which are sometimes headed by couples, Lowery said, and the Cove has plans to add a family shelter. But most beds at both the Haven and the Cove are currently reserved for single adults.
Chuck Chapman, 61, a 2021 candidate for Brevard mayor, has no problem with the idea of filing criminal charges against people sleeping on city property.
Allowing the practice exposes the city to liability he said, and “I can think of better uses of city funds than paying off lawsuits.”
Until recently, Chapman lived and worked at a custom wood shop in Pisgah Forest. But since taking a job at restaurant in Brevard several weeks ago, he said, he spends most nights at the Cove.
“There are beds at the Cove and there are beds at the Haven,” he said. “The only reason (homeless people) are outside is because they can do drugs and alcohol.”
It isn’t that simple, said Brock, who is currently drug free and staying at the Haven. While acknowledging past substance abuse, she said she and her romantic partner set up a tent at the community garden mostly because they wanted to be together.
So did another couple who sometimes stayed there, she said, while a single camper was too dependent on drugs for the Haven and had too close a bond with his dog to go to the Cove.
Brock said this man, along with her and her girlfriend, moved to the garden property near Silversteen Drive earlier in the fall after “very nice” Brevard Police officers asked them to leave the grounds of the Library.
The tent wasn’t a home, she said, but a base to store belongings and occasionally sleep. Otherwise, they went to the Cove, which is where she stayed on the night that, she said, her girlfriend consumed an excess of both methamphetamine and fentanyl.
“We didn’t stay (in the tent) every night, but at least we had that as an option,” said Brock, who also said she fell drug abuse and homelessness after the closure of a restaurant in town where she worked as a server for 20 years.
Charging people like her with a crime for camping on city property is “absolutely ridiculous,” she said. “How are they going to pay the fine? We’re struggling as it is.”
The Need for a Policy
Brock also said that the officers who asked them to leave the Library suggested the community garden as an alternative and checked up on them there later that night.
“We were there per the police,” she said.
Though Jordan said he does not know exactly what his officers told Brock, department protocol calls for referral to shelters, not to city-owned camping spots.
But he also said Brock’s interpretation is understandable due to the gap in the law that needs to be filled.
“When we’re asked by people (sleeping on city property) if they have to leave,” he said, “our response has been, ‘No, you currently don’t have to leave because what you’re doing is not prohibited.’ ”
He realized this was the case when he reviewed ordinances shortly after being sworn in as chief a year ago, he said. He had been planning to address the issue for months, and moved forward after the hiring of a permanent city manager, Wilson Hooper, in late August.
The action was not spurred by the establishment of the encampment at the community garden several weeks before the medical call there Nov. 20 — and not because of any surge in the homeless population.
An annual, national point-in-time count of unsheltered people — administered statewide by the North Carolina Coalition to End Homelessness — is conducted during the last week of each January and includes people staying in emergency shelters as well as camping in the city and other common homeless destinations such as Avery Creek Road in Pisgah National Forest.
The tally fluctuates depending on the weather and, since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, a limit on direct counts, Lowery said. But it shows no definite upward trend. A total of 44 unsheltered people were counted in 2018, for example, compared to 36 last January.
“Do I think it’s a growing issue?” Jordan asked rhetorically. “No, I think it’s a continuing issue.”
His officers have always encouraged homeless people to seek shelter and provided information about such options — as well as contacts for other services to help them get back on their feet.
Even if the law was passed, criminal charges would have been a last resort, he said at the meeting last month, and his officers would continue to treat “people experiencing homelessness” with “empathy.”
That approach will likely receive more emphasis in proposals discussed at the meeting on Jan. 4.
Council member Mac Morrow, chairman of the Public Safety Committee, said in a recent press release that he looks forward from hearing from the health officials and homeless advocates who have been invited to the meeting:
“We’ll be seeking input from those folks on how we can accomplish our public safety goals of keeping our public properties clean, safe, and open for their intended use without burdening those experiencing homelessness.”
Lowery has already sent the city her suggested policy, which is based on a protocol developed by the city of Hendersonville and its Thrive nonprofit.
When the city’s police officers or other employees come across a homeless encampment, they send out an email with a full description of the enclave to a range of relevant organizations. That includes Thrive, which sends representatives to the camp to offer shelter and other services.
But Thrive also tells residents they have two weeks to find other accommodations and remove their belongings. That message is repeated on signs, in English and Spanish, posted at the camps by the city.
If residents don’t comply, according to Lowery’s copy of the protocol, “all personal items on site will be discarded.”
A Shortage of Mental Health Counseling
Clearing camps of homeless people is only reasonable if the community can offer both somewhere better to go, which it does, and other needed resources, expecially counseling.
About 45 percent of Haven’s “guests,” as Lowery calls residents, have histories of mental illness or substance abuse, which frequently go hand-in-hand.
“Oftentimes, when people have substance abuse issues, they are trying to self-treat for mental health issues,” she said.
Because these conditions can lead to criminal charges and disruptive behavior, they also create major obstacles to placement in either shelters or public housing.
Treatment was once easily accessible at the North Broad Street location of Meridian Behavioral Health Services, which was integrated into the Blue Ridge Health nonprofit in 2021.
“When we first started here Meridian was our go-to,” Lowery said of the Haven, which opened in 2011. “Like, all our people went there and Meridian just fell apart. It had already fallen apart before Blue Ridge took over and they have never made a comeback.”
Blue Ridge Chief Executive Officer Richard Hudspeth, a physician, offered to provide details about changes in services in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, he pointed to information on the organization’s website, which said the organization offers several programs for adults at its Brevard location, including five hours of substance abuse counseling “available via telehealth” on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
Lowery said that, along with a case manager who advises guests on matters such as finances and housing, the Haven employs a mental health counselor.
And when guests’ behavior is threatening to other residents or themselves, they can be referred to RHA Health Services in Asheville.
RHA “has been able to get people over to treatment and detox when they were suicidal,” she said. “They’re not always able to help, but when they do it’s so incredibly helpful.”
The Daytime Refuge
All Haven guests are on waiting lists at affordable or public housing complexes, she said, and most of them work. Many others spend their days at the Library, and unhoused people interviewed there last week generally praised the services available in Brevard.
The workers at the Library are friendly and helpful, said people resting on benches near its entrance. Several of them said they receive food stamps, which they supplement with groceries from the nearby Sharing House nonprofit and lunches from the Bread of Life food charity.
The Haven is a “great program,” Brock said, and has put her on a path toward finding employment and housing. “I got into the Haven and I was very proud of that.”
Raymond Connor, 42, said he has slept in tents and at the Cove, which he said, “provides you with a very good meal, like at grandma’s house.”
He recently moved into the Haven, where he had set up an appointment with a mental health counselor and received help applying for housing and jobs, he said.
But he also described the setbacks that can lead to homelessness and the obstacles to overcoming them.
He said he has been homeless on and off for about year, after moving out of a house he shared with a former girlfriend.
A native of Balsam Grove, he has worked in construction for most of his adult life, but is struggling to find a job partly because his options are limited by the long-ago suspension of his drivers license for failure to pay child support.
“I haven’t had a drivers license in 17 years,” he said.
Though he is opposed to charging people for camping on city property, he understands that the people of Brevard don’t want to see homelessness.
“I don’t think anyone does,” he said, and that includes unhoused people themselves.
“We don’t choose to be homeless,” he said. “If we could be in a house, we would be there.”
Email: brevardnewsbeat@gmail.com
Why do two women feel they can't stay together in a shelter? Is it something other than the fact that one of them felt the need to get high? If you explained that, I missed it. Thanks.
Thank you for making the unhoused in Brevard better understood.