- Hi everybody, I'm here in Charlotte,
and I'm with Mayor Lyles, and today we're gonna talk
about homelessness and affordable housing.
Can you tell me a little bit
about homelessness here in Charlotte?
- I expect that in Charlotte you see
what you see in other urban communities.
As the world begins to change and people don't find jobs
in the rural areas or they come to the urban areas,
and I think most people come with
a really great, positive intent.
I'm going to get a job, I'm going to be able to live here,
but in some cases that doesn't happen.
What I like to think about is homelessness is
really kind of a spiral.
When you start out with I've got everything,
and then the next thing you know you're in the car,
and the next thing there's no car,
and then you're just in a situation
where you're in a shelter.
We see that in our city.
We're a growing, southeastern city, sunbelt,
and we are seeing people come here,
and homelessness is a result and part of our natural growth.
I've worked on housing and homelessness since 1975
when we had a court order to deal with urban renewal,
and for me to sit here many years later
and still be talking about this means that this problem is
very, very difficult for urban areas to solve.
And even with solving it,
it often just means that there is a spotlight
where people are still looking for the ability to live
and sometimes they can't achieve that.
- From my understanding, Charlotte's growing.
You have a lot of people coming here,
and it's the same problem in many cities
where you're seeing this economic growth,
but it's also driving up housing costs.
And the lack of affordable housing is
right now the leading cause in homelessness.
- I do think the lack of affordable housing is
the leading cause of homelessness,
but I like to also think it's because of the wage and equity
that we have in this country.
And many times, you can be the hardest worker in the world,
you can be one of the smartest people in the world,
but if you can't get a job that helps
with covering the cost of housing and healthcare,
you can often end up homeless.
I've seen examples.
This past year, we had an example of
a young man going to work every night in a restaurant
and going home to a tent outside,
and it wasn't because he wasn't industrious and didn't want.
It was because there was not enough money
in the eight dollar an hour jobs in a city that's like ours
where we're a high tech, financial center,
and we're building great apartments
for the millennials that are coming with skills.
A lot of the technology skills, the financing skills,
or they're coming with the ability to get that job.
If you're coming here and you didn't graduate
from high school or you work in
the hospitality industry often, in healthcare often,
that will make it very hard for you.
We've got rents that start at studio at $1100
when we know that families should be paying $600, $700.
- And, it's also affecting the growing senior population.
I'm 58; I lost everything in the '08 recession.
And if I wasn't doing this,
it would be extremely hard for me to get a job,
and the Boomers are hitting 65 at 10,000 people a day,
and that's also putting a tax on the safety net.
- Well you liked another history,
the idea that there would be social security,
but the idea with that was that you would be able to work
and own your home by the time you got to that point,
and that social security wasn't to cover the housing costs.
It was to cover the cost of daily living.
Well, right now that's not the case.
We know that many seniors have worked for a very long time,
and with the inflation and the cost of living,
there's nothing compared that's gonna rescue social security
and make it possible for people to live in Charlotte.
- And everywhere, as you said,
and I hate this term, working homeless.
There's more and more people that are living in tents
or living in shelters that are holding down full-time jobs
but just cannot afford a place to live.
- In Charlotte, one of the travesties that we have is
that we can people working one or two jobs
and be paying more to weekly hotels
than they would if they had a place
that was affordable to live, and that's a consequence.
Every action you take has a consequence,
so we have children that the buses for our school district,
they have to go to all the hotels to pick up kids.
How do you create that stability in a child's life?
So I think that when you get to really know the homeless
and the working poor population,
it is because of our economy and the way we're structured
that many of them are homeless.
Now we're trying to do something about it here in Charlotte.
I'm most proud of our city's commitment.
We had a bond referendum for $50 million to create houses
that people could live in affordably,
and we had a 69% approval rating.
That means people understand that's a problem in our city,
and I'm really grateful that
they are supportive of our initiatives.
What I've learned as mayor is you have to get
the work done, no matter who caused it,
no matter how much history's behind it.
You have to look at that problem today
and focus and concentrate on it.
So with that $50 million of public bond funding
for new housing, we went to the private sector
and said this our problem.
This isn't government's problem.
It is a community problem, and we have been able
with the private sector, the philanthropic community,
our faith communities to have an additional
$50 million to supplement the money that we have.
Every effort, all of us need to be putting forth
that effort, because if we can do something
about putting someone into a home,
they have the ability to apply for a job,
they have stability for their families,
and we want that for everyone in our city.
Charlotte can be that city.
- And by housing people at risk of being homeless
or people that are out on the streets chronic homeless,
you actually save money,
because there's a reduction of emergency services,
hospital visits, police, EMT, and as you said,
by preventing homelessness in the first place,
getting kids some stability in this crazy world of ours,
it's something we should be doing anyway,
but it's also fiscally smart.
- It is.
It's been proven in every study
that's been ever done about people that are on the street
costing more for your police officers,
costing more for your healthcare services.
That's just a basic premise.
What I think we have to think about is
when we are going to look further down the road,
are we doing something that creates a community
that's inclusive and welcoming of everyone?
Or are we just saying well, we're gonna fix this
little problem, but we aren't the kind of community
that really changes lives?
So getting the house is just the small part.
We're trying to change people's lives.
- You get it.
- Well, I hope so.
- You do, and you said something
I think that is really important,
and where I've been seeing communities have the
most success is when they get the business,
philanthropic, faith-based organizations and government.
I mean, not everybody's gonna always agree,
but if we pool our resources and start working
as a community and developing community-wide solutions,
that's when we have impact in ending homelessness.
- It makes a real difference.
We have a crisis assistance program
that we've had for over 50 years in this community.
We help people with their utility bills.
We help them when perhaps they've been laid off
or their hours have been reduced
to pay their rents or pay their mortgages.
And we've been doing that for a long time,
but when we looked at our 10 year housing plan
to address homelessness, we saw that we were working
with people that were just always a little bit short
because of the wages that they made,
and then we had to really begin to think
how are we gonna care for the homeless?
And Charlotte's faith community has been tremendous.
They provide shelters in the winter.
Well, you can't build shelters
for the space and need, especially in the winters,
and they open their community centers,
they open their gymnasiums, and they bring people in,
and they feed and they have a place to sleep.
Charlotte wants to be a place where
when you come here and you're homeless,
that you're not just getting a roof over your head,
but you're also getting services that would help,
and that's why we have coordinated effort
with Urban Ministries, our ministries program,
as well as our Salvation Army.
As I said, it's about services,
but you have to have a place to be, a bed to sleep in,
before you can start talking about what's next.
- I've taken up enough of your time,
and it sure is hot.
- It is very hot in here. - Oh my gosh!
- It is a very hot time.
- I occasionally go to Winston-Salem from time to time,
but I've never been here during the summer,
so this has been an experience for me.
- Well, I grew up in Columbia, South Carolina.
It's always 10 degrees hotter than Charlotte,
so I think I'm okay, but you know,
we think about weather, and we think about a lot of things.
When I come into the office as mayor,
I think about how do we make sure
people have a place to live?
How do we make sure that they can have a place to work?
And how do we move them around this city
so that they can do that well?
- I was gonna ask you if you had anything else
that you would like to add, and that was a perfect closing.
- Thank you for having me. - Oh my gosh.
- You talked about something that
I'm proud of this community.
I'm proud of my city, Charlotte, and what we're doing.
- Well thank you for taking time out of your busy day,
and thanks all of you for watching.
Down below there's a link for you to click on
where you can contact your state and federal legislators
to tell them that ending homelessness
and more affordable housing is
a priority to you. - Please.
- Go to invisiblepeople.tv/getinvolved.
There's a link down below.
Please click on it; your voice matters.
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