Home sweet homeless: The Gospel According to Jerry

BY JERRY STERNBERG

These days, it’s hard to walk or drive around town without seeing homeless people sleeping in doorways, camping in parks and on private property, and panhandling downtown and at many traffic intersections. Meanwhile, the media are filled with horror stories about retail robberies and people — including employees going to and from their jobs — being threatened by aggressive behavior. Fox News has repeatedly singled out Asheville as a dangerous city, and in June, a panhandler was accused of stabbing a tourist with a hypodermic needle.

All this might lead one to conclude that Asheville’s homeless population must number in the high hundreds, if not a thousand or more. Yet the 2024 Point-in-Time Count conducted by the City of Asheville back in January concluded that there were just 219 unsheltered people in our area.

Buncombe County’s population is approximately 275,000, and the city’s is about 95,000. In other words, it’s only a tiny fraction of the population — less than half of 1% — that’s wreaking havoc in our community, endangering the lives of our citizens and causing serious economic losses due to reduced tourism revenue and negative impacts on local businesses.

Clearly, we should never criminalize poverty or addiction, which are complex issues with many overlapping factors. At the same time, there must be guardrails to protect ordinary working people, business owners and visitors to our area from the problems associated with homelessness — including, in some cases, criminal activity.

Taking care of veterans

One of those factors is the plight of our homeless veterans. This one really hits home to me, as I’ve seen firsthand how the military culture can lead to serious addiction problems that, in turn, can result in homelessness.

When I went to college, many of my fellow students were World War II veterans who were getting an education compliments of the GI Bill. These men were almost all in their early 20s, and in a matter of months, the military had transformed them from boys into men. For many of them, consuming copious amounts of alcohol was a rite of passage that eventually caused them to succumb to alcohol addiction.

When I was in the Navy during the Korean War, the cheapest form of entertainment was the low-cost drinks available in the officers’ and enlisted men’s clubs. And when my ship visited foreign ports, I particularly remember seeing both officers and enlisted men returning from liberty after having just destroyed themselves with even cheaper and less regulated booze in the native bars. The Vietnam and Afghanistan wars seriously escalated the problem by adding drugs to the mix, and many veterans are still dealing with those compulsions.

Yet another sad byproduct of military service is the rarely mentioned problem of female veterans who have post-traumatic stress disorder after having been sexually abused while serving in our armed forces. In recent years, the percentage of these women who become homeless has risen sharply. A 2004 study published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine found that women veterans with a history of military sexual assault were nine times as likely to have PTSD as their counterparts without such a history.

Add in the many civilians who are struggling with addiction to drugs such as cocaine, opioids or alcohol, and the lack of suitable available housing, and you have alarming numbers of people wandering our streets who are in crisis themselves and, in some cases, are putting others at risk.

Safe and sound

Many worthwhile programs have been created and multimillions spent on efforts to address these issues. We have outstanding local charities as well as government and private counseling facilities that are producing very positive results with people who seek assistance and make a serious commitment to recovery. Yet the problems persist.

Some members of the public seem to think it’s fine for homeless people to pitch their tents on public property or sleep in doorways and behind shopping centers. But most public parks were not designed as campgrounds and therefore have no restrooms or other sanitary facilities. Besides, if we tolerate this practice, what’s to prevent tourists from pitching their tents in Pack Square Park, along the river or even in Grove Park to avoid paying the big bucks the local hotels charge?

When squatters camp on private property, they are not merely violating the law against trespassing. If you factor in the cumulative effects associated with these issues, we’re talking millions of dollars of unnecessary expense for property owners. I’ve seen this firsthand and in talking with other local business owners I know.

And meanwhile, our woefully understaffed Police Department suffers great frustration trying to balance compassion and protection. I recently watched an excruciating video of the Asheville Police Department carrying out orders to vacate a tent camp in Aston Park. The police were attempting to be as gentle and caring as possible while helping these people gather their belongings, yet bystanders were shrieking obscenities at officers who were just doing their job.

As I watched, I asked myself why the hell anyone would want to be a police officer.

Compassionate confinement

I recently sat down with Sheriff Quentin Miller, one of our outstanding public servants and community leaders, who’s proposed a very promising solution to this problem — and it’s sitting right under our noses.

Right next to the downtown county jail sits a building called the annex. It is ready to go and could house and feed up to 40 women and 40 men in separate sections. This secured compound includes several offices that would be perfect for health professionals, trainers and job facilitators to help get these patients back on their feet and, when they’re released, find homes to keep them off the street.

I don’t know what sort of legal structure this system would operate under, but basically, when street offenders are arrested and sentenced, they could be given the option of either serving time in the county jail or entering this proposed facility. I like to think of this as compassionate confinement that would recognize the difference between treatment and punishment. Accordingly, small amenities could be added to make the facility more comfortable, and as long as the inmates minded their behavior, they’d be treated more as patients than as prisoners.

Since this facility is already in place, the cost/risk factor is very low. Even finding first-class professionals to staff it would almost certainly be cheaper than the revolving door costs of continually arresting these people and the hit this community is taking due to crime and economic losses.

I have also spoken with Micheal Woods, executive director of the Western Carolina Rescue Ministries, about the project. This is a man who has extensive experience dealing with matters of homelessness and substance abuse treatment, and he is totally on board with the concept. Let’s listen to the folks who are working in the trenches and encourage our lawmakers to give it a try.

Asheville native Jerry Sternberg, a longtime observer of the local scene, can be reached at jvsternberg@gmail.com. An anthology of his columns is available from Pisgah Legal Services for a donation of $25 or more. To order your copy, visit pisgahlegal.org/jerry, or send a check labeled “Jerry’s book” to: PLS, P.O. Box 2276, Asheville, NC 28802. All proceeds support the nonprofit’s work.