By Benjamin Horton

NC Newsline

As a U.S. Navy veteran, I am honored to manage a team that serves other veterans who find themselves without a home in North Carolina. In my role as director of outreach for Veterans Services of The Carolinas (VSC), our team collaborates daily with the faith-based community, mental health and substance use providers, LME/MCOs, law enforcement, housing providers, and others across all 100 counties of North Carolina.

That experience has provided us with deep insight into what works and what doesn’t. Two pending bills in the North Carolina General Assembly will have a direct impact on our communities, service providers, law enforcement and those we serve. Both are promoted — as they were in other targeted states — by an interest group out of Austin, Texas, called Cicero Action. Joe Lonsdale, its founder, is a venture capitalist with ties to those in private prison contracting, including technology for the newer field of e-carceration.

One bill – House Bill 437 – would criminalize nonprofits like ours by threatening felony charges if drug activity occurs within 100 feet of our facilities — an extreme and unworkable standard that punishes service providers for circumstances beyond their control. The other — House Bill 781 — establishes new requirements on cities and counties to set up state-sanctioned homeless encampments for up to a year without additional funding.

Going after nonprofits and supporting unfunded mandates is not on-brand for the state of North Carolina, but neither is disrespecting our faith-based and veteran leaders who the Cicero lobbyists characterize as unserious activists. Representatives for four bishops overseeing 1,200 North Carolina Episcopal and United Methodist churches joined VSC and other veterans in sharing concerns about these bills and the impacts they will have at multiple House committee podiums. And yet, the bill passed out of the House and now awaits a round of committee hearings in the Senate.

Under the guise of a self-described think tank, the Cicero Institute — in the absence of data — blames the Housing First model for the increase of homelessness. From Texas, it declares there is no lack of affordable housing in North Carolina and glosses over how two out of three of its residents experiencing homelessness in recent years are experiencing it for the first time.

Prioritizing housing with wrap-around services — the housing first model — has been the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs approach since 2012. More than 133,000 veterans were housed and provided with supportive services to help them retain housing over the last three years. The practice was first introduced by the George W. Bush Administration and has enjoyed subsequent bipartisan support because of data showing its effectiveness.

The average number of returns to homelessness across the state utilizing Housing First is less than 13 percent. The City of Raleigh estimates it costs $96,000 a year in emergency services, law enforcement and health care for a homeless person living outside.

As Raleigh’s News & Observer reported recently, putting someone in a home and making services available costs $20,000 — saving taxpayers’ $76,000 per person.

In contrast, another local government projected the cost of installing just one Greenflow unit to provide the bill’s requirement of running water and restrooms at up to $200,000 alone. Will local governments have to add this cost and others in their capital improvement or their regular budgets to meet the state’s approval? Will property tax increases be required to move the state-sanctioned encampments around each year? Additionally, legal counsels from local governments have raised concerns about increased liability and incarceration along with decreased local control — as reported by their colleagues in states where the Cicero bills have passed into law.

Cicero offers no data to indicate its proposal will do anything to end homelessness — just make it less visible. A month after the Florida encampment law went into effect last year, the first lawsuit was filed, resulting in a hasty sweep of an encampment without a plan for where people would go. Ongoing treatment for substance use and medications for mental illness are interrupted or lost when caseworkers and peer support specialists cannot find those they serve.

State-sanctioned, compulsive homeless encampments will drive unsheltered veterans further from the resources needed and further away from sustainable recovery, while putting the onus on our local law enforcement.

Especially in the context of yesterday’s annual observance of Memorial Day, it makes no sense for our leaders to pass laws that criminalize those who have given up so much for the freedoms we enjoy. Our General Assembly members would serve their communities more effectively by investing in solutions that have been proven to work and are cost effective.

Benjamin Horton is currently serving as the Assistant Director of Outreach for Veterans Services of the Carolinas in the coastal area of eastern N.C.