After period of uncertainty, Greensboro’s Interactive Resource Center secures funding from the city for the next six months

Featured photo: On Aug. 5, Greensboro’s mayor and city council granted funding the the Interactive Resource Center, a resource center for the city’s unhoused. (Photo by Gale Melcher)

On Aug. 5, after a tumultuous few weeks, the Interactive Resource Center in Greensboro finally received the funding it needed to continue offering services to people experiencing homelessness. City council voted 9-0 to grant the organization $463,000, which will help fund services for the next six months.

In an interview with TCB after the Aug. 5 city council meeting, Housing and Neighborhood Development Director Michelle Kennedy explained that the funding will “essentially pay for 200 days, in combination with the county funding that’s already in place.”

According to Kennedy, the city has set aside $2.1 million for homelessness prevention for the 2024-25 fiscal year. Most of the total anticipated funding — $821,000 — that the IRC will receive from the city for this fiscal year, which began on July 1, comes from that pot of money, Kennedy explained, while $155,300 comes from a federal Housing and Urban Development grant.

However, in order to receive the full amount, the center must meet certain conditions — including addressing trash issues and meeting with community leaders — that were outlined in a 30, 60 and 90 day plan.

The center will also be looking for funding from the county, which is crucial, according to the IRC’s executive director, Kristina Singleton. According to her, if they don’t get the funding, the IRC will need to make adjustments to the schedule and services they can provide.

During the July 25 work session, County Commissioner Skip Alston reminded others that the county committed $300,000 last year to help the IRC go 24/7. The IRC has yet to make a formal request for funding to the county as of this year. 

“We have not committed anything for this year…I was hoping that we wouldn’t have to do that, and that was a temporary thing,” Alston said, adding that he hoped they could fund other programs to help the unhoused so that the IRC wouldn’t need to operate 24/7.

It’s not in the county’s budget “as far as a promise or commitment,” he said. 

The road to securing this funding has been a long one for the center’s leaders.

Previously a day center, the IRC became a 24/7 operation after receiving more than $600,000 last year from the city and county to do so. The move aimed to help serve the growing unhoused population. But the increased hours led to more calls for service and subsequent complaints from locals which resulted in the council delaying funding during a July 16 council meeting.

Advocates of the IRC spoke in favor of the center during the Aug. 5 council meeting, stating the important gap that the organization fills in providing vital services to the unhoused community.

Greensboro NAACP President and IRC board member Kay Brown urged city leaders to think about the harsh realities of cutting funding to the center.

“I used to hear about how people would freeze to death outside because there weren’t enough warming centers, and police having nowhere to take people outside of jail,” Brown said. “We made the decisions on Tanger…We made decisions on the Coliseum…So I’m sure that we can find the continued support and resources for our most vulnerable folks.”

Record numbers of clients results in scaled back services

According to data from the IRC, four-fifths of the people they serve are homeless. The other one-fifth are at risk of becoming homeless. Seventy-one percent are Black and 64 percent are adult males, and 100 percent live below the federal poverty line.

In a May 10 email to city leaders, Singleton noted that the IRC has seen “record numbers” of unduplicated guests this year. In April they served 979 individuals — 208 more people than they did in March and 444 more people than they did the same time last year.

According to Singleton, the IRC adheres to a low-barrier approach to giving people services, as well as the belief that people’s “primary need is housing.”

Singleton also said that they advocate for a “whole person” model by trying to have as many services as possible under one roof so that people facing homelessness don’t have to repeatedly relay traumatic experiences to different service providers.

Tax records show that the IRC — previously a day center that was open 35 hours per week —  operated on a $1.76 million budget during the 2022-23 fiscal year. Now it’s open 24/7 — except between 3-6:30 p.m. for deep cleaning — which amounts to more than 140 open hours per week.

That led to increased calls for service which concerned local business owners situated around the center.

Between Jan. 1, 2023 and Jan. 16 this year, there were 590 events that required emergency services or police presence at the IRC. But between Jan. 17 — the day the IRC went 24/7 — and May 22 of this year, 642 events occurred.

It’s natural to “expect” that there will be some “issues,” Councilmember Marikay Abuzuaiter said during the July 25 meeting. Any kind of business that grows that fast is “not prepared,” she added. 

“I’m not trying to audit your company, that’s not my job here. But I’m trying to see…how can we help? Because the criminal activity has taken over,” Abuzuaiter stated.

The IRC’s drop-in center has showers, laundry services, mail services, phone and electronic charging, medical clinic, mental health clinic, case management, benefits enrollment navigation, transportation assistance and document recovery.

Although the center is not a shelter, they do run a rapid re-housing program, funded by $155,300 from the city and serving 10-12 clients per year. Between 75 and 91 percent of participants remained housed after program enrollment, and 50 percent of participants were likely to become employed during the first year, according to the IRC.

They also run the Doorway Project, an annual program that houses people in Pallet shelters during the coldest months of the year. They housed 81 people this past winter season with the 56 beds available. While the first season of the project was met with criticism for lack of resources and a shortened timeline, Singleton said that the project led to higher rates of clients being put in stable housing compared to traditional shelters. 

But the variety of services the center provides combined with the increased hours they are open have posed problems and a reduction of services.

In May, IRC leadership announced that they would no longer be able to accept families or serve families during day services. And after the Aug. 5 council meeting, Kennedy told TCB that the center would no longer be offering Safe Parking, a program that offered people living in their vehicles a security-monitored place to sleep at night. It was funded by the city, and officially stopped on July 31. Instead, that funding has been reallocated to increase funding for the drop-in center, according to city documents.

Numbers show that the IRC was seeing between seven and 15 individuals using the Safe Parking program per night. Additionally, because the IRC is no longer serving families, any time a family showed up to Safe Parking, they were moved to a hotel-stay program. 

“If there’s going to be 24/7 operations, there’s not really a need for Safe Parking because those folks can come inside 24 hours a day,” Kennedy said.

Kennedy said that the Safe Parking program “could certainly be run by another organization,” however, she’s “not sure at this point if it will be revived, or what location and who will be administering” the program.

For now, the center’s leadership is concerned with keeping the services they have in operation and securing funding after the initial six months allocated by the city.

“The past few weeks have highlighted the opportunity for increased partnerships to address the magnitude of need, but the journey isn’t over,” Singleton said in a press release. “Resources like bathrooms, showers, and laundry are the center of everything we do at the IRC, and we will continue to do all we can to offer the most fundamental services to our community.”

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