My Turn: What's going on with leadership vacuums?

What’s going on with local leadership and our homeless epidemic?

First, some context is in order. C. Grier Beam served over a quarter of the 20th century as chair of the Gaston County Commission, truly a phenomenal feat. Reflecting on his decades of service, Mr. Beam made a telling statement that was relayed to me by my friend and colleague, Rick Smyre. In spite of the many wonderful things that Mr. Beam accomplished, he looked at Rick and said, “Young man, we made a big mistake on the commission of keeping taxes low without helping to develop a vision for Gaston County."

Let’s consider some local leadership realities that illustrate how Mr. Beam’s observation remains entrenched even now in 2023. Buckle up, these are not pretty stories.

Earlier this year, thanks to the generosity of a Gateway Gaston partner church, $127,000 in seed money was made available to fund a daytime shelter for the unhoused.

When a Westside ministry announced plans to construct a daytime shelter like this on their property, extending their work beyond the 10,000 families that they currently serve with food each month, they approached local officials.

The ministry asked if the Gateway Gaston gift could be matched by the county or city. This would double the donation to $254,000 and launch their capital campaign. Since ground was already broken, this seemed both logical and likely.

Unfortunately, once the tentative commitment moved from staff and into the hands of elected officials, the visionless cycle once again overtook logic. Innumerable expectations and timelines emerged, essentially swallowing the opportunity into the bureaucracy.

In July, a Gateway Gaston board member participated in a local business leaders’ discussion about affordable housing. This group’s perception of affordable housing started at $300,000. Obviously, there is a disconnected vision of what is affordable and what is not.

A bit over a year ago, Gastonia elected officials approached The Gateway Gaston about a property that is well-positioned to provide model economic mobility programming.

The Gateway Gaston connected the city to the property owners who loved the idea and were willing to make it work for everyone involved so that a private/public partnership could position our community to provide interim housing, a staging warehouse for food, office space for service providers to offer wrap-around services on-site, and perhaps even a mobile supermarket. After several productive sessions, the visionless wall of silence descended. The excited private partners were left standing in the dark while the city and county kicked the can back and forth yet again.

After years of innumerable community meetings with few concrete outcomes, a different approach emerged. In desperation for something substantive to occur, we approached the Gaston County Commission. After eight months of persistent requests, a study on homelessness was reluctantly initiated. The decision seemed more about stopping our relentless requests for county-level engagement with citizens on the lower socioeconomic strata. We were told this initiative wasn’t really necessary because “Gaston County doesn’t really have a homeless problem.”

In August, a local Eagle Scout constructed a secure locker system for unhoused individuals to safely store their belongings. The Eagle Scout's desire was to gift the finished product to Faith, Hope, and Love. However, as news of the 32 monthly first responder calls, multiple overdoses, deaths, and violence emerged from Faith, Hope, and Love that option had to be abandoned in order to avoid health and safety risks.

Going back to the drawing board, he approached multiple agencies, offering this completed, self-contained unit. The interest level was zero. The response included every reason not to accept, from being too busy and too understaffed, to being unwilling to do anything they had never done before. The Salvation Army’s top local leadership will not even respond to the scout or their own board members who asked them to consider accepting this gift.

Luckily, when Doug Lance and his team at Cornerstone were approached, they immediately moved into action to accept the scout’s generous gift.

This young scout received a bittersweet lesson in why we continue to battle homelessness. When calls, emails, and sincere offers to help are ignored, one can only imagine what chance a person on the edge of losing their home has of getting meaningful services from these same organizations.

The absence of vision is affecting all components of our community. Despite the numerous efforts being made by nonprofits, churches, and the community, there is no clear, comprehensible pathway out of homelessness and, ultimately, poverty for Gaston County residents.

Creating this pathway is unquestionably a Herculean task. According to the New York Times, if a child is born into an impoverished Gaston County family, there is one single thing that can occur for that child to escape the clutches of poverty. This single action is not to reach out to the Gateway Gaston, to call the United Way, or to seek help from one of the churches located literally every 7/10 of a mile across the 356 square miles of our county, or even to visit DSS. The best thing this child can do to move toward economic mobility is to leave Gaston County entirely. (Times, 2015)

The reality is disheartening. Even if the child were to leave Gaston County for Charlotte, they would encounter even worse circumstances. Our neighbor to the east ranks dead last, 50 out of 50, for economic mobility.

This is not only heartbreaking but perplexing. We have hundreds of churches, an award-winning Department of Health and Human Services, exceptional educators, two excellent institutions of higher learning, a robust hospital system, a Continuum of Care, a well-funded United Way, and, according to their own admission, a plethora of Christian elected officials whose divine command is to love one's neighbor as oneself. Yet, addressing the needs of the homeless has turned into a political hot potato. It is time for our leaders to accept responsibility, and collaborate to fill the current vacuums with vision.

Dwayne Burks directs the Gateway Gaston.

This article originally appeared on The Gaston Gazette: My Turn: What's going on with leadership vacuums?