Katrina R. Knight, executive director of Wilmington, NC’s Good Shepherd Ministries, entered the homeless services arena in 1999, when most still thought emergency shelters were the best they could do by our homeless neighbors. Since the early 1980s they had developed homeless service systems nationwide where they brought homeless folks in and kept them for months or even years as — in the most well-intentioned way — they worked to address their often multiple challenges before deeming them “housing ready.”
The thinking went: “He won’t be able 
to hold onto an apartment with his health issues” or “She’ll have to complete our life skills program before she can live independently.” For shelter guests with the most serious physical and mental health challenges, there was often no vision of a return to housing that seemed remotely realistic. All the while, the homeless populations increased, shelters were added, and emergency stays grew longer and longer.
Knight recalls:
Like many homeless service providers, my thinking has changed radically since that time, largely due to the National Alliance to End Homelessness’ continual spotlight on Best Practices, and by the growing body of research pointing to more effective strategies for achieving transitions to housing. In the last 15 years we’ve learned a great deal about what works in terms of moving people from crisis to stability, and doing so in more expedited ways.
In a nutshell: we can keep adding shelters and shelter beds and allowing the ranks of homeless individuals and families to swell, or we can invest in housing strategies that shorten the length of people’s crises and return them more quickly to housing and stability in the community. It’s been a tough sell, even to the homeless services community itself. We’ve been challenged to rethink our entire approach to homelessness, to look at evidence-based strategies, and to reconsider our own role in addressing the issue — are we working to end the problem or simply managing it?
Here in the Cape Fear region, homelessness is first and foremost a symptom of poverty, an economic crisis brought on by the mismatch between our neighbors’ incomes and what they need to earn to afford housing in our wonderful but expensive community. Slowly, we’ve moved away from an almost exclusively shelter-based focus in favor of this housing + services direction. At first we were successful with the easier cases to re-house, like the two-parent family whose dad had been laid off but who could be moved to a new apartment when he located work again in short order.
She remembers that housing for the tougher situations, with folks who first needed help with the long and intimidating process of applying for disability assistance, took longer to figure out. Over time, however, Knight and her team have been able to drive down the overall size of our homeless population through this new emphasis on housing. The chronically homeless, disabled individuals who were outside her door every morning a decade ago are in homes of their own today. Still disabled, still low income, sometimes in need of a little handholding to navigate their medical and other appointments, but housed and living with dignity in the community rather than in the local shelter.
Knight continues:
As many as 50 new faces arrive at Good Shepherd every month, but they’re no longer 50 new guests in addition to a significant sub-population of chronically homeless individuals. In the process, our nightly census has decreased, from more than 100 men, women, and children when the Night Shelter opened in 2005 to closer to 60 every night now. It’s a testament to the regional effort around rehousing, and when the State asks whether we don’t now have too many shelter beds, at Good Shepherd and in the community, they’re right to ask the question, and to keep the pressure on us to redouble our rehousing efforts.
Moving homeless individuals and families to housing before first solving all of their problems seems counter-intuitive, even for folks who work in it every day. We have a surplus of available shelter beds — for men, for women, for families with children. What we do not have is a ready inventory of modest, affordable apartments for their transition out of homelessness (or to prevent their entering housing crisis in the first place).
Good Shepherd shelters the spectrum of neighbors who find themselves in housing crisis: parents with their children, veterans, single men and women, persons with disabilities, and individuals from varied religious, ethnic and racial backgrounds. Some have a mental health issue, but most do not. Some are struggling with drug or alcohol addiction, but most are not. In fact, sometimes it seems that the only thing they all have in common is their inability to access affordable housing.
After many years, the regional Cape Fear Housing Coalition seems to be gaining traction in its efforts to rally widespread support for increasing the affordable housing stock in its community. A Task Force on Affordable Housing currently in formation promises to bring key stakeholders from the business and building arenas to the table. The NC Housing Finance Agency continues to make important investments—through tax credits and construction loans—in private and public efforts to develop rental housing for the very low income.
Good Shepherd is working to develop SECU Lakeside Reserve, a modest housing development marrying affordable apartments with on-site services for homeless persons with disabilities.
Knight concludes:
The momentum is there if only we commit to spurring it further. The time has come to gather our collective will to embrace these solutions and bring them to scale, so all of our Cape Fear neighbors have access to a decent and affordable place to call home. If ever there were a community with the heart and wherewithal to achieve such a thing, it is ours.
