For over a year, every emergency shelter in Charlotte-Mecklenburg has been full. Of course, every day, people leave our shelters to move into housing options, which we celebrate, but there are always more people than beds waiting at the front door.  The heart feels this the heaviest when the temperatures drop.  We know people are sleeping in the cars and outside in dangerously cold temperatures, because our shelters do not have room.

We have an affordable housing crisis in Charlotte that disproportionately impacts families of color. When we reckon with the history of housing policy in America, this disproportionate impact isn’t a surprise. The roots of this crisis are from policies based on race. Yet, to counteract the policy impact decades later, we are relying on programs and services that disregard race. Can the decades long impact of discriminatory policies be counteracted by nonprofits and improved service provision? The current state of our housing crisis would say no, our approach is insufficient.