Wake Co. reports 20 homeless camps during yearly count of unsheltered population

The nonprofit’s helpline is where county office organizations direct people who need housing of for those on the brink of losing their home.

“The entire system is just overtaxed,” said Robin Saenz, Access Hub Manager. “Right now, our shelters are on a waitlist. Street outreach is on a waitlist. Almost every single agency that we refer to has some type of waitlist.”

The Raleigh/Wake Partnership, which leads the county’s homelessness response, reports 20 active homeless encampments. Hundreds of others are living on the streets, in cars and hotels.

Stephanie Jarrett, 32, has been living outdoors in an encampment near Interstate 40 and S. Saunders Street since September. She said the home she was living in was sold and she had no place to go long-term.

“I just want a normal life that everybody else has. I just want that back,” said Jarrett, a mother of two children.

“We are just trying to make it like everyone else,” she said of the people living in the encampment. “We just landed a little lower.”

On Wednesday and Thursday, more than 100 volunteers spread out across Wake County to pinpoint the number of people experiencing homelessness.

The annual Point-In-Time count is crucial to the federal funding that flows into local Continuum of Care (CoC) from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The CoC is comprised of more than 50 public, private, and nonprofit members.

Last year, 1,534 people were counted as homeless in Wake County. That represented a 67 percent increase from 2021.

“It just gives us a framework for what homelessness looks like in Wake County,” Saenz said. “We give the data to policy makers [and] program administrators and they use that data to track over the years what homelessness has been looking like.”

Darlene McClain, a social services outreach specialist with the Downtown Raleigh Alliance, has been engaging with the unhoused population for two years.

McClain said many unhoused people downtown are traveling from outside of Wake County seeking services.

“There’s an increased presence of people who need assistance,” McClain said. “They will come from other counties [and] other states because people believe there is more resources here than the county they are in.

“Most of the people I encounter are not from Raleigh and they are not from Wake County,” said McClain.

The Raleigh Police Department is currently hiring a social work supervisor and three additional social workers to complete its 12-member ACORNS unit.

ACORNS — Addressing Crises Through Outreach, Referrals, Networking and Services — started in June 2021. RPD said the unit received 1,035 calls for service and connected with 546 people in its first 18 months.

“It’s not a sprint. It’s more of a marathon,” said Lt. Renae Lockhart. “So we are going to make sure we are doing the best we can.”