Homeless

Teams of volunteers braved freezing temperatures early Thursday to survey people in Mecklenburg County experiencing homelessness. In uptown Charlotte, volunteers encountered a man on a sidewalk who had died.

Homeless shelters in Mecklenburg County will make room for additional beds and people ahead of extremely cold temperatures Sunday night through Wednesday.

The annual federal count finds more than 770,000 people living in shelters or outside. It cites rising rents and the recent surge in migrants as key factors behind the increase.

Three months into the job, Gaston County Manager Matt Rhoten is eliminating a department that coordinated homeless outreach and opioid response efforts. He says the cuts will save $1.4 million, and residents "shouldn't see anything different."

Mecklenburg County Commissioners received an update Tuesday on its collaboration with a local nonprofit to combat homelessness in the county — and heard there's more work to be done.

Summers away from school are especially challenging times for families trying to build a life in a shelter or motel room. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools has about 4,800 students who don’t have stable homes. A Charlotte group offers a few of these kids a safe place to go to play and learn during the summer months.

City councilman Malcolm Graham was one of five Democrats who voted Monday night to recriminalize public urination, sleeping on park benches and panhandling from the median of a road. He says his vote was rooted in concern for his constituents' safety in uptown.

A Los Angeles program aggressively scouts vacant units and lobbies landlords in one of the country's tightest real estate markets. Some landlords offer up units even before putting them on the market.

Mecklenburg County, Charlotte and partner agencies are preparing to open additional space in homeless shelters this week because of extremely cold temperatures that are likely to drop into the teens and stay below freezing Christmas weekend.

The Southern Comfort Inn housed around 150 to 200 people, according to city officials, who otherwise were at risk of homelessness. The city says that they have offered monetary assistance to help keep its residents housed and helped connect them to other services within the community.