Enlarge Keith McNeil talks affordable housing with County Commission Chair Jennifer Roberts.

Posted: July 21st, 2010 Greg Lacour

The morning was hot, blistering hot, as Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx, Mecklenburg County Commission Chair Jennifer Roberts, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools Superintendent Peter Gorman and other public officials trudged up North Tryon Street toward the Urban Ministry Center.

Dozens of Charlotte’s homeless make the same walk every day, rain or shine, warm or cold, to get lunch at the center’s soup kitchen. That’s what Mecklenburg Ministries wanted the elected officials to experience.

The interfaith nonprofit hosted “In Their Shoes,” the latest in a continuing series of programs designed to give the privileged in town a chance to see up close what the homeless endure every day. Mecklenburg Ministries hosted one for corporate executives on a chilly, rainy day in November, and afterward the executives said they thought elected officials should go through the same experience, said Maria Hanlin, MeckMin’s executive director.

So a handful took Hanlin up on it; those taking the walk besides Foxx, Roberts and Gorman were Charlotte City Councilwoman Nancy Carter; County Commissioner Harold Cogdell Jr.; and school board Vice Chair Tom Tate.

The officials started the day before dawn by walking from their homes to the nearest bus stop, where they rode to Crisis Assistance Ministry before 8 a.m. There, they served breakfast to people in danger of eviction or utility shutoff. Then they walked on a homeless person’s tour of uptown, stopping in wooded areas where people sleep in tents and makeshift shelters.

Next, they walked to Urban Ministry to eat lunch with the homeless in the soup kitchen and hear from a few of the folks Urban Ministry serves.

“I’ve eaten at Urban Ministry before, and I know most of the folks here are working part-time or at minimum-wage jobs … and this just reinforces it,” Roberts said. “What it did point out to me is how many more people are desperate, where people are looking for jobs, and all these leads turn up empty. It’s just so hard.”

The day wasn’t meant to lead directly to government action, just lend decision-makers some perspective. But Roberts talked about the importance of an upcoming bond referendum on adding $15 million to the Housing Trust Fund and the potential adoption of a city policy on affordable housing. Foxx said he’d consider adding an In Their Shoes tour to the City Council’s next retreat agenda early next year.

Urban Ministry’s director, Dale Mullennix, told the group how much the organization had grown in its 16 years, from an organization merely steering the homeless to other service agencies to one providing an art program, sports, a garden, a choir. And, coming soon, housing: Moore Place, an 85-unit supportive housing complex for the chronically homeless that Urban Ministry expects to open by April.

Moore Place will help people like Cora Bowen, or who Bowen used to be. She’s a 45-year-old mother from Cheraw, S.C., who struggled through years of an abusive marriage and drug addiction until she found Urban Ministry. Now she’s clean and working with the organization. She told her story to the group after lunch.

“Even Cora here, multiple times, could’ve given up, but she’s forging ahead in her life,” Foxx said. “Because they’re not giving up, we can’t give up.”

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