Walking through downtown Greensboro, it is nearly impossible to miss the dozens of homeless individuals who line the streets outside shops and restaurants.
Greensboro—and particularly downtown Greensboro—has developed a reputation for its disproportionately large homeless population compared with larger cities such as Raleigh and Charlotte. This is partly due to the city’s poor handling of the homeless crisis.
The city has taken some steps in the right direction by providing short-term housing solutions for its homeless population, though these only address the issue temporarily.
According to Triad City Beat, Greensboro’s newly built pallet home community is designed to provide temporary housing for those seeking to leave the streets at night.
Pallet home resident Kelly Smith said that before moving in, her typical day involved “Waking up in a freezing car, looking for food… looking for a bathroom to wash… your most basic needs.”
Smith said she was grateful for a “somewhat cushy place to lay her head” and for having a roof over her head at night.
Greensboro’s pallet homes undoubtedly have helped those like Smith looking to escape the harsh realities of living on the streets.
However, the Pallet Home Initiative fails to offer residents long-term solutions to homelessness.
It will take much more than laying out beds to remedy Greensboro’s homeless dilemma. Steps must be taken to provide resources to homeless individuals looking to get off the streets for good.
Initiatives should provide ongoing medical assistance, especially substance abuse counseling, to those who can’t afford it. Expanded job programs are also needed to provide financial stability, since economic hardship is a leading cause of homelessness in the United States.
However, creating strong medical and work assistance initiatives is no small feat—potentially costing the city millions if done properly.
Given the city’s lack of financial resources, it will likely take nonprofits or private donors to fund these much-needed initiatives.
There is one Greensboro nonprofit organization that is setting a leading example through its efforts in combating homelessness in the long term.
Tiny House Community Development (THCD) builds tiny house communities to help alleviate homelessness and encourages residents to participate in their construction, according to the THCD website.
While the organization aims to create spaces for homeless individuals to find relief from the streets, it also aims to give them work experience and pay necessary to stay off the streets in the long term.
THCD offers an eight- to 10-week course to train homeless individuals in construction, earning them an official skills certification. This certification can provide students with the “opportunity to be hired by local contractors at $15-18 an hour and lift themselves out of a poverty-level situation,” according to the website.
Programs to provide homeless people with job training and work, along with a place to sleep, are exactly what will be necessary to remedy the homeless crisis in both Greensboro and its surrounding communities.
However, given the city’s hesitancy to fund homeless initiatives, it will likely take the public’s help to donate to start and sustain these programs.
The HOPE Center, which is powered by THCD, will have to close its weekday operations (which include providing job search services and regular meals to the homeless) due to the city’s inability to grant the organization its $400,000 needs, according to a WFMY News 2 article.
HOPE Center leader Scott Jones said, “If we abandon nonprofits like [the] government has abandoned our nonprofits, we’re gonna be in trouble.”
While initiatives such as the HOPE Center and THCD offer valuable services that– on an even larger scale– could overwhelmingly aid in Greensboro’s homelessness crisis, they are ultimately helpless without funding.
The City of Greensboro must divert more funding to properly handle the homeless crisis with long-term solutions in mind if any real change is to occur.
