KANNAPOLIS — During the Feb. 12 Kannapolis City Council meeting, Mayor Pro Tem Doug Wilson made a speech regarding the current state of the unsheltered population within the city. Wilson said he has witnessed individuals living in the woods in what he described as “dire straits.”

“I felt like it was something from a moral standpoint that we needed to take a long, hard look at,” Wilson said. “I do have a passion for this.”

Wilson said that he and the rest of the city council have discussed what to do about the unsheltered population in the past, but he is convinced the subject has not been rectified. 

“People came to our council meeting one night and wanted to report that they’ve seen people living in tents out there with newborn babies. A terrible situation,” Wilson said. “We haven’t done anything to help those people. Not a thing.”

At the March 25 city council meeting, many people spoke out on the unsheltered encampments near their properties and how they are all over Kannapolis. 

When asked what the city is doing to address these concerns, Kannapolis said they work “collaboratively with other community groups to prevent homelessness. We work with nonprofits such as Rowan Helping Ministries, Cooperative Christian Ministry, AYA House, and Prosperity Unlimited to provide transitional housing, crisis assistance and housing counseling services.”

They also said members of their staff serve on the Cabarrus County Homelessness Task Force and the Cabarrus County Housing Collaborative in addition to offering funding for “critical home repairs to owner-occupied houses” and “whole house rehabilitation to owner-occupied houses.”

However, Wilson wants more action to be taken. Though the city made a deal with Cooperative Christian Ministry in December to allow them to advance their transitional housing program in Kannapolis, Wilson believes “that does not solve the problem” and that there is a difference between the people living in their cars and in the woods and the people at CCM. 

At the March 25 meeting, Kannapolis resident Curtis Ballard shared his personal experiences with the unsheltered population. 

“I’ve seen these people and these kids sleeping out in the woods,” Ballard said. “There’s hundreds of people, kids, with nowhere to lay their heads. I talked to a homeless man the other week, I put him in a hotel. You know what he told me? He said, ‘I woke up this morning in the woods and it was raining and I was wet, I was soaked.’ I asked him, ‘Do you have nowhere to go?’ He said, ‘I have nowhere to go.’”

Ballard said he is supportive of what the city has been doing to better the lives of the unsheltered population and he thinks the CCM deal is a step in the right direction. What he hopes to see in the near future is a “plan for rehabilitation” for anyone who is unsheltered and seeking employment.

“Get them cleaned up, some clothes to wear, a haircut, a place to lay down at night to sleep in a warm bed, and have a hot meal so they can get up and go out into the workforce,” Ballard said. 

Wilson is unsure what the next steps are on devising a solution. He has contemplated going to local churches and schools to discover what they are encountering on their ends. To him, implementation is the key to this all.  

“Knowing the data is one thing, doing something about what the data indicates is another,” Wilson said.