As the General Assembly advanced a bill to criminalize homelessness and the White House proposed devastating budget cuts, 500 homelessness service providers, advocates, and allies gathered in Raleigh and online to address this critical moment for housing and homelessness in North Carolina. Bringing It Home: Ending Homelessness in NC took place on May 15-16, days after HB 781: An Act Banning Unauthorized Public Camping or Sleeping passed in the state House and advanced to the Senate. Throughout the conference, state and national leaders addressed the multiple threats toward homelessness services and galvanized attendees to take action.
NC Department of Health and Human Services (NCDHHS) Secretary Dr. Dev Sangvai and Governor Josh Stein opened the conference with welcoming remarks. Secretary Sangvai spoke from his experience as a practicing physician and hospital president who would see unhoused patients come to the emergency room with nowhere else to go, and from his experience so far as the head of NCDHHS:
“The other thing I’ve learned in this job in four months is everything is connected. Behavioral health is connected to housing. Housing is connected to childcare. Childcare is connected to the economy…And so we really need to understand that if we don’t address the homelessness issue and the housing crisis, it poses a direct threat to the stability and the economic wellbeing of North Carolina.” –NCDHHS Secretary Sangvai
With this in mind, Secretary Sangvai shared his commitment to policies that support the whole person by strengthening access to healthcare and housing across the state.
Governor Josh Stein began his remarks by highlighting the alarming rise in homelessness throughout North Carolina. The 2024 Point in Time (PIT) Count documented 11,000 people in North Carolina experiencing homelessness in 2024, a 19% increase from 2023 and a 39% increase in families experiencing homelessness. In order to effectively address this crisis, Governor Stein said that a shift in mindset is necessary:
“[T]oo often people think about the issue of homelessness as an either/or mindset. You either have a home, or you don’t. You’re vulnerable to homelessness or you’re not. You’re to blame for being homeless, or you’re virtuous if you are not. That type of mindset is harmful to our ability to see people’s humanity just as it’s harmful to our ability to effectively diagnose the problem that we need to fix in our country. Nearly half of Americans report living paycheck to paycheck, meaning that the simple act of losing a job could lead to homelessness…We have to shift our thinking, to recognize how many people are vulnerable to homelessness, to see that it could happen to our friends, our neighbors, people we work with, people we worship with. We need to let go of seeing anybody as less than. And then we allow ourselves to choose policy solutions that benefit all of us.” –NC Governor Josh Stein
Governor Stein identified a lack of affordable housing as a key factor in rising homelessness and emphasized that as the third fastest growing state in the country, North Carolina needs a variety of housing types–including multifamily housing, special needs housing, and permanent supportive housing–to support the needs of different communities. He highlighted that his proposed 2025-2027 state budget includes $60 Million to leverage public and private funds for affordable housing development as well as incentives for local governments to update their zoning restrictions to allow for more housing types. He also expressed concern about HB 781 and the potential Federal cuts to Section 8 housing, SNAP benefits, and Medicaid. He called for attendees to contact their state and federal legislators to advocate against legislation that would put tens of thousands of North Carolinians at risk of housing instability.
The Governor concluded his remarks by addressing the loss of 73,000 housing units in Western North Carolina due to Hurricane Helene and highlighting his administration’s actions to coordinate state and Federal funding toward recovery. “It’s pretty basic: if people don’t have a place to live out West, they will not stay there,” he said. “Housing is foundational to the recovery of the western region of North Carolina.”
Donald Whitehead Jr., Executive Director of the National Coalition for the Homeless, provided the keynote address. He shared state and national data about the rising rates of homelessness and addressed the grim outlook for homelessness services under the current Federal administration. President Trump’s skinny budget proposes to “in effect eliminate permanent supportive housing” by reducing and combining existing homelessness services dollars into one block grant program, and to reduce HUD staff by 50%. If enacted, these new policies, in addition to the reduction in Medicaid and SNAP benefits, could result in 220,000 North Carolinians becoming at risk of homelessness, according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness.
“We deserve a country that values housing. At the very beginning of our country, we were promised life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in the preamble to the Constitution. And I have to say today you can’t pursue happiness sleeping under a bridge. There is no liberty when you are fined, jailed, or ticketed because you can’t afford a place to live. You cannot pursue happiness if you lay your head in the back of an automobile.” –Donald Whitehead Jr.
Mr. Whitehead concluded his remarks by encouraging attendees to “be somebody” whenever somebody needs to do something about housing and homelessness. “Criminalization is not the solution, but those are local decisions,” he said. “And the only way we can have an impact on those local solutions, those local issues, is that we have to be advocates in our community beyond the service.” He challenged attendees to not leave the conference without calling their Federal, state, or local officials to advocate for compassionate and effective policies.
Many attendees took up the call to action. Key NC Senate committee leadership reported an influx of calls during and after the conference that elevated constituent concerns about HB 781 that they had not previously heard.
Throughout Bringing It Home, attendees also heard from members of several Lived Expertise Advisory Councils across the state about incorporating leaders with lived expertise into organization and program leadership. Breakout session topics included integrating trauma-informed practices, reentry, advocacy and community organizing, and innovative solutions to homelessness and housing. Attendees of the 2025 conference shared that the networking, learning, and peer support opportunities at Bringing It Home are “invaluable” to their work as service providers, advocates, faith leaders, and leaders with lived expertise.
Bringing It Home: Ending Homelessness in NC is hosted by the North Carolina Housing Coalition, the North Carolina Coalition to End Homelessness, and the NCDHHS Emergency Solutions Grant Office. The conference is funded in part by a direct appropriation in the state budget. The current 2025-2027 budget draft does not include funding for the next two years of Bringing It Home. The NC Housing Coalition encourages conference attendees and advocates to include Bringing It Home funding in their housing and homelessness services advocacy with their state representatives.
