Barry Webb is sitting in a soft chair in his second-story apartment between Central and Commonwealth avenues. It’s a neat, plant-filled two-bedroom that gives the impression of a tenant who takes care of what little he has. It’s the sort of natural, imperfect clean that gives suggests it wasn’t cleaned just for company.
Webb, 43, has lived here since June 2004, the first month he’d paid for rent in two years. It was the first time in two years he’d been able to plop his feet on his recliner, watch his TV and do as he pleased. It’s a nice feeling, he says, the sort of emotion he didn’t really appreciate when he was smoking crack.
Two decades ago, Webb was partying hard in Lexington. He’d work hard during the week, but the weekends were for drinking and smoking pot — never mind the DWIs that would mar his driving record. But he drew the line somewhere. Somewhere before crack. When he watched anti-drug spots on TV, Webb would shake his head in dismay: People were crazy to mess with that stuff. He never thought he’d be that kind of crazy.
But that’s what he became. And when crack entered his life, all hell broke loose. “It’s definitely of the devil,” he says in a soft voice. “There’s something in the Bible. . . wickedness in dark corners. That drug will take you there. That’s why people flip out, hear stuff. When you’re on that drug, that opens you up to that spiritual world of wickedness.”
He sold nearly everything he owned to get crack. Finally, he was arrested on a weapons charge. He served 17 months at Pasquotank Correctional Institution in Elizabeth City, NC. His son had to move in with relatives. It was a wake-up call.
“Prison — that was my treatment,” Webb says. “My treatment was, ‘Look how much damage I did to my life. Look how much stress I did to my son’. . . That was enough right there. ‘Cause I was tired.”
Seventeen months later, Webb knew he didn’t want to go back to Lexington, where he’d be tempted to get in trouble. And he was tempted. Right out of prison. He got a job at a carnival. A little money in his hand and he was itching to get high. “I didn’t do it, though. Thank God. If you start getting high right out of prison, you can hang it up,” he says.
Instead, Webb boarded a Greyhound bus for Charlotte. But with no money and no job, he wound up at the Uptown Men’s Shelter. He was thankful. But from the chow line to the cot he slept on, the shelter didn’t seem so much different from prison, except he could leave during the day. So Webb jumped at the chance to move to Charlotte Emergency Housing, a shelter for families to stay temporarily while they save money for housing. There, he shared his room with his son. “I was like, ‘Oooh Lord, thank you, Jesus. Now I have my own room.'”
Last year, the Charlotte Emergency Housing shelter housed 47 families, typically single moms with two children, though men with children also are eligible. Adults living at the shelter have to work at least 30 hours a week, and they must save money so they can move out and be on their own. Social workers help residents with their problems, and a day-care facility is just down the hall.
After about five months, Webb was able to move into an apartment. Some residents leave the shelter for transitional housing, where they receive longer-term assistance with job training, health problems or basic life skills. But as the average stay at Charlotte Emergency Housing has increased from fewer than 60 days to more than 120 days, the shelter has actually taken on the role of transitional housing for some residents, says executive director Karen Montaperto.
That’s because finding affordable housing eludes many residents who, according to shelter documents, leave the facility earning paychecks averaging $16,800 a year. Webb, however, was able to find his apartment on his modest income as a temp worker in a distribution warehouse. He’d spent months scouring yard sales for apartment items.
Move-in day brought a little anxiety for Webb, but not for his son. After two years of bouncing among out-of-town relatives and five months in a shelter, the teenager now had a place where he didn’t mind bringing friends.
“He was running up and down the stairs,” Webb says, laughing. “Shoot, he moved about everything. And I let him go right ahead, too.”
In the year since the two have lived here, money’s been tight. Now, Webb fears he’ll be laid off. And with that comes the fear common to many ex-offenders, even ones like Webb who now have ample character recommendations: The job search. “That’s my biggest struggle now,” he says. “My criminal background, it hurts. I’m not that person that’s on that paper.” If he loses his job, Webb fears he won’t make the rent.
Finding another apartment wouldn’t be easy. Fair market rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Mecklenburg County this year is $719 a month. For a three-bedroom, it is $913 a month. Those figures aren’t the same as median rent; fair market is a US Department of Housing and Urban Development estimate of how much money is needed to cover rent and some utilities on 40 percent of housing units in a particular area. (The median Charlotte rent in 2000 was $596, according to US Census data.)
When you take into account affordable housing guidelines, which dictate a household spends no more than 30 percent of its income on rent, you can see how difficult renting those apartments is for the working poor. At fair market rates, a person would need to earn $13.83 an hour to afford a two-bedroom or $17.56 an hour to afford a three-bedroom.
It’s common gospel among advocates for the homeless that a shortage of cheaper housing is the single biggest reason people wind up on the streets. And with more than half of Charlotte’s homeless estimated to have substance abuse problems, drugs and alcohol play a big role. Just ask Webb.
“I don’t want to be homeless again. . .,” he says. “That’s the fear, and I hope it doesn’t turn into reality.”
This article appears in Oct 12-18, 2005.
