Color of Mecklenburg County’s unhoused community 

PETER SAFIR

Volunteers with the Mecklenburg County Point in Time homeless census check on a person at a Charlotte overpass in 2023. Black people made up 73% of the county's homeless in 2025, a 3% drop compared to 2022.

Homelessness still discriminates in Mecklenburg County.

Racial disparities remain a reality in the county’s unhoused community. According to the Crisis Assistance Ministry, 73% of Charlotte’s homeless population is Black, 3% lower than in 2022, when county data counted more than 2,800 homeless people. 

Karen Pelletier, division director of Community Support Services as well as Housing Innovation & Stabilization Services, said that based on the latest data, the number of homeless people in the county is around 2,000. While the number of individuals in the homeless system has fallen, there is still a need to be met.

“The county does continue to invest in street outreach,” she said. “We know that we’re finding more people that are living unsheltered in our community, and we know that we’ve got people from Davidson to Pineville to Mint Hill to Steele Creek who are experiencing homelessness throughout Charlotte. So, we know that investing in street outreach is helpful and helps to get people connected.”

Getting homeless people connected to resources that can help them transition to stable housing is a focal point. Jessica Lefkowitz, executive director of Hearts for the Invisible Charlotte Coalition, has made it a mission to do just that.

“Our agency’s primary focus is homelessness street outreach,” she said. “Our staff goes into the community and works with people and families that sleep in places not meant for human habitation. That could mean an abandoned building or under bridges or encampments, even benches downtown. We try to begin formulating that engagement process and get people comfortable with us.”

Lefkowitz adds the agency tries to help clients navigate substance abuse and connect them with proper healthcare to get them get back on their feet and off the streets, since homelessness is often caused by a life catastrophe. It could be the loss of a loved one, a job or anything that affects income levels and mental health. Pelletier adds that homelessness is often the result of societal failures. 

“When the school systems fail, when the criminal justice system fails, mental health systems, all the systems fail, the result is homelessness,” she said. “And so, when we know that people of color are already disproportionately represented in other systems that have failed, this is what happens. We know that we need to be responsive to that, and we know that we need to make sure that particularly people of color are gaining access to our homeless system, that they’re gaining access to the resources that are needed to help them resolve their homelessness.”

Another underlying issue is the cost of housing rising at a rate that exceeds the increase of average salaries. According to statistics from the North Carolina General Assembly, the median cost of a single-family home in 2000 was just over $110,000 and the average salary was around $35,000. In 2025, the average annual salary is just under $53,000, while the average home price is approximately $320,000. The average cost of a single-family home has nearly tripled while the average salary has not even doubled in the last 25 years. 

“They’re raising rents far faster than what people that may either be on a fixed income or maybe already not making a livable wage,” Pelletier said, “but when wages aren’t increasing at the same rate, we are going to have more people that are living what we would call housing cost burden, meaning that they’re contributing more than 30% of their income to their housing and we know that when your car breaks down, or if someone gets sick, or you miss a day of work for something that you are literally become that one paycheck away from entering our homeless system.”

Pelletier said Mecklenburg has taken steps to help mitigate the most glaring issues.

“What I’m most proud of is the funding that the county has invested in youth that have aged out of foster care,” she said, “because we knew that we had youth that would have emancipated from Mecklenburg County, meaning they were 18 in our foster care system, and oftentimes they would then leave the child welfare system only to enter the homeless system.”

Pelletier said those young adults, who have already dealt with trauma, access programs that help them make the transition from foster care into adulthood, so they don’t become homelessness when they age out. 

“I’m also proud about the other investments that the county has made in providing either subsidies or those support services for people,” she said. “The fact that we’re able to really focus on individuals and families that are the most vulnerable and help them with housing resources and then in that case, management support that wraps around them in order to help them really create stability.”
Homelessness is not easily resolved, Pelleitier said. Many organizations are doing what they can, but it takes collaboration. 

“We need our General Assembly, and we need our federal government to also support these sorts of policies to help people earn a living wage,” she said, “because people want to work and are working. It is also very expensive to live. This is beyond Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s control in a lot of ways.”

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