By 11 a.m., dozens of folks have gathered outside the Urban Ministry Center, just a block or so from the downtown loop. They’re here to get a meal, maybe see a nurse or wrangle a bus pass. Mostly male, mostly black and largely living on the street – or in a shelter like the one a quarter-mile away – they form a ragged line that wraps around the Center’s 18-month-old building.
“This is my home,” mutters a 68-year-old man, hunched on a bench. He declines to give his name. “Been all over the world. I hate the day I came back.”
His voice trails off: “Ain’t nothing here …”
Lots of folks in Charlotte, rich and poor, might harbor similar distaste for the city. Many of us know people who feel the same way: recent transplants, unaccustomed to the city; old-timers, fed up with growth and looking for a way out. We may even feel that way ourselves.
But this man isn’t dreaming of moving on to bigger and better.
Having worked since age 13, he says, he’s tired and most likely settled here, quietly collecting Social Security and hoping someone at the Center can help him find housing.
Hate it or not, Charlotte is his home — whether that home is in the street or not.
But people won’t be boarding buses to march for individuals like him the way they have for the individuals christened the Jena 6 or the war in Iraq. Outrage, it seems, has an expiration date. And the sell-by date for homelessness has long since passed.
As city reputations go, one of the worst insults thrown Charlotte’s way is that it’s sterile. Comfortable, but boring. Economically depressed, however, isn’t a descriptor you often hear. We have what is ostensibly a booming downtown, an economy buttressed by two of the biggest banks in the United States, and condos that have spread — often in what formerly were low-income blocks — across the city like kudzu. Worries to the contrary aside, the real estate market remains relatively solid, so that Charlotte has largely escaped the softening real estate market that’s freaking out much of the United States.
This prosperity has brought businesses that just a decade ago probably wouldn’t have thought of moving near Uptown. Target opened a store this month off Kings Drive. A Trader Joe’s, that purveyor of specialty foods and Two Buck Chuck, also opened locally. But not everybody enjoys this progress.
Between 1970 and 1980, Uptown Charlotte’s population shrank substantially, from 9,104 people to 5,808 people, according to an analysis of U.S. Census data by The Brookings Institution, a public policy think tank in Washington, D.C. For years, Uptown was the province of mostly poor, mostly black folks, says Tom Hanchett, historian at the Levine Museum of the New South. Middle-class whites and blacks sought the suburbs. That trend since has reversed, and today Uptown is one of the hottest places to live in Charlotte.
With that allure has come higher rents, property tax bills and inevitable complaints. Bitterness remains among some people about the gentrification of areas surrounding Uptown: Wilmore, Belmont and Piedmont Courts. The latter — a public housing complex razed last year — was infamous for its problems, from crime to the decrepit conditions of many units.
And some homeless folks feel they’re being pushed out of Uptown. The overwhelming bulk of services for homeless folks was already outside the I-277 loop in 2005, when the emergency winter shelter on West Fourth Street shut down and a new one opened three miles north on Statesville Avenue.
But business owners and Uptown residents welcome the changes. “It’s a little classier now,” says Fran Simmons, whose mother, Dorothy, owns Simmons Fourth Ward Restaurant, a neighborhood mainstay for nearly two decades.
The folks at Simmons have had a front-row seat to Uptown’s changes. They’ve seen the area integrate. One of the first tenants in their building on Graham Street, they needed their share of police protection. Spaces next to the restaurant remained unfilled.
Now, former Mayor Harvey Gantt and congressman Mel Watt live in comfortable homes just blocks away. The neighborhood has a Harris Teeter and CVS. And vacancies aren’t a problem. “As soon as one of the spaces gets open, it’s filled,” says Dorothy Simmons.
Simmons and her son are happy with the area’s changes, and they don’t hear much complaint from others. “We used to hear a lot about the homeless coming around,” says Fran Simmons. “But even that has become scarce.”
So if the homeless aren’t coming around, does that mean their numbers are diminishing? Not at all. A 2006 survey of shelters, hospitals, jails and other spots indicated the number of homeless people in Mecklenburg County exceeded 3,000 — an under count that doesn’t reveal the extent of the problems. Shelters are full or near capacity, says Chris Wolf, executive director of the advocacy group A Way Home.
And homeless folks sense acutely that many people don’t see the problem.
James, 46, feels the invisibility, which he attributes to greed. The way he sees it, the presence of many people gathered outside a homeless center is an enduring by-product of slavery that left generations of scars. “When you get generational abuse stemming from back generations … abused children grow up,” he says, sitting inside the Urban Ministry Center amid cafeteria-style tables. “And they usually abuse other children — their children. And I speak from experience.”
Growing up in North Carolina — he doesn’t want to say which town — his mother was abusive … physically and emotionally. He bears a scar on his arm from her switch. And when, as a 7-year-old, he confided that someone had molested him, she didn’t want to hear it.
“There’s just people that don’t have no business with children,” James says.
After high school, he went to college but didn’t go back after his girlfriend got pregnant. Later, at community college, he trained as an electrician. He achieved, but then lost footing.
It’s been a life pattern, he says: Move forward, fall back. Untreated depression left him on and off the street. He’s tried medication, but he didn’t like the way the pills made him feel.
His three sons have it better. One’s a business type. The other two graduated from North Carolina State University and North Carolina Central University. “My kids didn’t go through what I did,” he states. “So they were able to excel.”
James has been on the streets about two weeks now. “Temporarily.” By the time this story comes out, he’s supposed to be in Kentucky, working on a job that provides room and board, a per diem, and pays $6.50 an hour.
Assuming he gets paid, he should be able to take the cash and get a room on his own. He recently worked as a warehouseman in Portland, Maine, but his employers didn’t transfer his money down here. “I think they done rip me off.”
Even if the issue of homelessness doesn’t draw the type of local fervor stirred up by a tangible, high-profile case, some Charlotteans are trying to attract attention to Mecklenburg County’s housing needs. Wolf is pushing for affordable housing schemes behind the scenes. He’s also planning a walk on Nov. 17, similar to the ones scheduled in cities such as Atlanta, Washington, D.C., and elsewhere, to raise awareness about the problems of homelessness.
Wolf asks, “How do we take the same moral indignation that got thousands of people down to Jena … and get people excited here?”
Disclosure: This writer volunteers occasionally at the Urban Ministry Center.
This article appears in Oct 24-30, 2007.
Can we collectively stop pretending to give a shit about the homeless? The only people that really care about the homeless are people that are close to being homeless themselves. The majority of us don’t even see them because to acknowledge them would acknowledge our own humanity and vulnerability to life’s misfortunes. Americans are a hypocritical bunch, easily swayed by polls and opinions. Frankly the homeless get on my nerves when they beg me for change, not because they are begging but they choose who they are going to ask very carefully. What about me looks like I would give away money to a perfect stranger? There should be no homeless people but there are. They exist because the huge wealth disparities caused by wealth condensation of families like the Waltons and the Rothschilds. If we want to say homelessness is terrible just a feelgood then we should just skip the rhetoric. If we want to fix the problem, which we don’t, then we should get down to it. Why don’t we want to fix it? Because the average American is a selfish, self-consumed, egotistical bastard that thinks personal responsibility means blaming yourself when the textile mill closes and you can no longer support your family. Democrats are in league with Republicans on this nonsense. Bad things happen to good people. So do good things and into every life a little rain must fall. All over the world in less advanced countries we see social safety nets that keep people from hitting rock bottom. Why not here? Because Americans like to see people on the bottom because it makes them feel like they are really on top. We are a caste society that doesn’t give a damn about anything except our next gadget, car, vacation or trip to the mall. We are sick and mother nature has the cure, as our society continues its downward spiral ever plummeting toward complete and utter chaos because we put our faith in worthless paper money. Good night. Sweet dreams.
Whoa. More liberal propaganda. Long on throwing around blame and flak, but short on solutions. Boy, the featured bum in the story certainly is a piece of work. He blames everyone and everything for his situation; the cops, Vietnam, slavery (which was abolished 142 years ago), his parents molested him, etc and on and on. The one thing he doesn’t blame it on is the person who’s most responsible for his homelessness and thats himself. If he was even half as zealous about finding gainful employment as he is about whining and placing blame on the world for HIS problems , he’d most likely wouldn’t be in this situation. He states he has 3 educated, successful sons. If this is even true, it’s pretty telling that he’s obviously estranged from them. Nobody is looking out for me, but I’m not sitting under some overpass shivering and crying about it to some bleeding-heart moron like Shugart who’s pretending to be a journalist, who no doubt spends sleepless nights in her condominium fretting about where the homeless will bed down when it’s cold and rainy. I have no sympathy for these homeless men, who used to be called “Bums” which is exactly what they are. We need to stop pretending if these people are homeless, then it’s probably their own fault and lack of work ethnic that’s really to blame. Stop blubbering about it, and thinking the whole world owes you a living because you were born black and poor. He’s already thrown in the towel, though. He gets just enough sympathy from liberal assrags like CL and handouts from Ministries (who are just fostering problems and creating more dependancy). Reserve the homeless shelters for women, children, unbroken families, and the mentally and physically handicapped. I can’t walk 2 freakin blocks in uptown without some menacing slobbering stinky drunk demanding change, or a cigarette, or telling me some made-up lie of a sob story about his car being broke down. My car breaks down sometimes, but I don’t immediately start panhandling and making it someone else’s problem. Shugart neglects to mention that most of these people are drunks and drug addicts. Plenty of money for mind altering substances, but no money for finding shelter, clothing, nothing.. Pfft. I say we round them all up, and give them each a 100 bucks and a one way Greyhound ticket to Fayetteville or some sh!t.
Whoa. More liberal propaganda. Long on throwing around blame and flak, but short on solutions. Boy, the featured bum in the story certainly is a piece of work. He blames everyone and
Why not?! I mean really – why not care?! The world is full of people that do not give a shit for anything but themselves; so why not care about social issues that others endure? From genocide in Darfur to poverty and homelessness around the globe, these problems DO ultimately affect each and everyone of us. The real problem is when one is too ignorant to understand this.
On another note, thanks to Shugart for writing this article. I teach Service Learning to 7th graders. They actually visited U.M last week and will be reading this article for this week’s lesson!
Bernard F. Stoycon called CL an Assrag. Assrag .. ha ha .. that’s a funny word.
The problem here is that conservatives have a genetic mindset to only care about themselves. It’s also a problem that NC is a red state which means mostly people that only care about themselves controlling the bulk of public policy. Capitalism and corporatism create poverty and homeless and run in direct contradiction to the teachings of the Bible, the supposed handbook of Christianity. You cannot fix social issues like homelessness until we all agree that some things happen to people that are not your fault. Getting cancer and having your insurance canceled is not someone’s fault either but it is the corporation’s fault for dropping someone amidst mounting medical bills. There are more important things in life than money, power and competition but conservatives disagree. They stack the system in their favor and then they say everyone else is a slacker because they didn’t get lucky or come from a wealthy family. Some do persevere from hard work and are rewarded but the American dream is a lie. George Carlin said they call it that because you have to be asleep to believe it.
There is also a hopelessness factor that goes into homelessness. Some people just have more willpower than others. Why should all humans be equally resilient toward hardship? Should we cast them aside proclaiming survival of the fittest as our dictum? Where is the compassion? Most Americans are a paycheck away from being broke themselves so how has selfishness so quickly displaced empathy? How do so-called Christian conservatives reconcile this ruthless belief with the life and works of Jesus (not that I believe any of it anyway)? Republicans suffer from severe cognitive dissonance on this and many other important issues. If you’re not familiar with the term it’s when someone has opposing views on an issue and creates a falsehood that supports them both. Studies have been done that confirm this. It is a mental illness that hurts society and the world because fire cannot be cold and hot at the same time. Hopefully this defect will evolve out of the human species before they kill all of us with their compassionate conservatism.
Of course it’s not just Republicans. Americans are just over-individualistic in general. I am too. I have almost no tolerance for people of other viewpoints but I always at least support doing the right thing, which is defined as the greatest good for the greatest number. Republicans hate that philosophy. Their belief system flies in the face of the very instinct of survival and beneficent community. Hitchens is exactly right when he says religion poisons everything. It even allowed Bush to get away with murdering 3000 American citizens on 9/11 and then starting two phony wars with a third quickly approaching.
Some people cannot be changed for the better. We just have to wait on them to die and hope they didn’t reproduce.
I enjoyed this article. It makes no sense why people are still homeless and there is so much wealth here in Charlotte,NC. It’s true tht some homeless people are that way because of some bad judgment, but no one has the right to judge anyone. Anyone can fall onto hard times.