CJ Deering sat at her desk inside the Haywood County Detention Center when she got a surprise phone call from a woman who had been sentenced to prison nine months ago. 

A wide-ranging forum held last week at Frog Level Brewing to discuss Haywood’s homeless population revealed deep divisions about how to treat a vulnerable and visible segment of the population.

When she showed up at Haywood Pathways Center, the woman and her young daughter had been homeless for three years. After three months’ residence in the new women and children’s dorm, the pair recently became the first family to leave it for a home of their own. 

As homelessness continues to rise in Western North Carolina, Haywood County’s innovative and effective adult shelter is about to cut the ribbon on a brand new dorm designed to be a place of refuge for a critically underserved population. 

It was a journey I thought would last three days but has already lasted a year, with no signs of stopping.

It was 50 miles in 60 hours, all on foot. It was two sleeps outside, and one in the shelter where I ate my Thanksgiving dinner. 

Being incarcerated and not knowing what your future may hold is a terrifying experience, but being released from jail and having no resources to get back on your feet can be even scarier.

Haywood County’s only homeless shelter — and one of the very few in North Carolina west of Asheville — continues to advance its mission of transforming the most vulnerable among us by filling in some of the potholes on their road to recovery. 

I don’t really want to go into the domestic circumstances that led up to it, but even though I had no car, no money, no work and now, nowhere to live, I walked down our darkened driveway in the middle of the cold starry night with little more than the clothes on my back.

Worse than the dearth of resources, I had no social support structure, and with no real knowledge of the resources available to someone in a short-term housing crisis, there I was, standing in a Maggie Valley gas station mere moments into Thanksgiving Day, in a short-term housing crisis.

The causes of homelessness — and homelessness in Haywood County — are varied and numerous, but according to the Haywood Pathways Center more must be done locally to address the problem regardless of source.

Calvin Mann can’t make it far across the campus of Haywood Pathways Center without bumping into a friend.