WILMINGTON, NC (WWAY) — The Wilmington City Council and New Hanover County Commissioners held a joint meeting Wednesday to discuss the growing homeless population in the city and county.
The meeting included presentations given by Wilmington Downtown Incorporated and the Getting Home Street Outreach program about what each organization does and what needs to be done about the homeless population in the area.
One proposal was creating a new 29-person committee, where 3 people would be recommended by each of the 5 commissioners and 2 people by each of the 7 city council members.
The committee would then look into how to handle the homeless in the region.
But some of the commissioners, like Vice Chair Lee Ann Pierce felt a new committee wouldn’t fix the issue quickly.
“And there are a lot of things we need to do to understand what that community needs and I think having a new group of people who are not experts in that field, we’d have to retrain them as well,” Pierce said. “So I think bringing in the people who are already doing the work and finding out what are the best solutions that they are recommending is the right answer for us.”
Those people and organizations will be invited to another meeting where the city and county will hear from them about their efforts in working with the homeless.
A date for that meeting has not been given yet.