Whiteville Police Chief Paul Rockenbach has noticed an increase in homelessness since he began his job in March 2025.
Sometimes officers respond to multiple calls a day about people rummaging through dumpsters or using outdoor spigots to wash themselves, Rockenbach said. Officers want to do more to help homeless residents, he said, but often don’t have the time.
So Rockenbach is working to establish a Community Care Program, which would embed a social worker in the police department to develop an alternative response model to calls about homeless residents. Western Carolina University started the program in 2021 to help rural communities address societal issues such as poverty, mental illness, substance misuse, domestic violence, and homelessness.
“This is my way of saying, ‘Hey, look, I’m trying my best to solve a problem,’” Rockenbach said.
The number of people who are homeless increased by 33% in North Carolina between 2024 and 2025, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s annual Homelessness Assessment Report to Congress last month. It was the largest increase in the country.
While much of the increase is attributed to Hurricane Helene, Liz Carbone, N.C. Coalition to End Homelessness consultant, said first-time homelessness has been on the rise across the state for the last decade. The organization operates the Balance of the State Continuum of Care, which represents 79 of the state’s primarily rural counties to HUD.
In the Border Belt region of Bladen, Columbus, Robeson, and Scotland counties, the number of homeless residents increased by 18% to 145 people between 2024 and 2025, according to HUD’s annual Point-in-Time count. Experts say the actual numbers are likely higher than data show, however, because the counts are conducted during a 24-hour span.
Rockenbach estimates there are between 24 and 45 homeless residents in Whiteville, which has a population of about 4,700.
Homelessness in North Carolina’s rural communities is less visible despite often being as high per capita as larger cities, Carbone said. She said people are tripled and quadrupled up in one and two bedroom trailers instead of in outdoor encampments. With fewer people visibly on the street, she said it can be harder for organizations to get funding.
“People who live in rural communities deserve to have access to services that are near them, by them, and for them, that come from people who also live within their community and understand the local context and are their neighbors,” Carbone said.
Rural Barriers
Tackling rural homelessness comes with additional barriers, said Dia Collins Thomas, the southeast regional lead with the N.C. Balance of the State Continuum of Care.
Many rural counties, including Columbus, don’t have a permanent homeless shelter. A lack of public transportation makes it tough for people to get to shelters in counties that do have them. And some shelters are regularly full.
Lumberton Christian Care Center is the only permanent homeless shelter in neighboring Robeson County. It has 20 beds—12 for men and eight for women and children. Once the beds are filled, Levi Hooker, the center’s director, said he can add up to 15 cots in the center’s boardroom and dining hall. But he still has to turn people away, especially large families.
“If I could put 200 people in here, 300 people in here, I would do it in a heartbeat,” Hooker said.
Fifty families are waiting for a room to open at Family Promise of Scotland County in Laurinburg, said the nonprofit’s executive director, Kristy Ruscoe. She said the shelter can house up to six families, including men. Each family receives a private furnished bedroom and bathroom, and access to communal living with a dining room, kitchen, playroom, and library.
Family Promise of Scotland County has helped 29 families from across the region and South Carolina since it launched in January 2025, providing counseling, financial education, and other services in addition to housing. Six families have graduated from the program, Ruscoe said. The group follows up with graduates for 18 months to ensure they have everything they need to stay housed.
But Ruscoe said several families have stayed in the shelter beyond the initial expectation of 90 days. That’s in part because of limited transportation to resources that can get them out of homelessness.
Almost 15% of adults in Scotland County lack transportation, according to its 2025 community health needs assessment survey. The only public transportation is a county-provided bus system for people with disabilities and seniors.
“They don’t have vehicles, and they can’t afford vehicles,” Ruscoe said. “Getting them where they need to go, even to job interviews, even to their everyday job, even to pick their sick child up from school, is such a production because we don’t have any city buses in Scotland County. Ubers and Lyfts are super expensive for them.”
Rural towns and counties typically have less money and fewer resources to address factors contributing to homelessness. Columbus County and Whiteville both reduced their budgets for the fiscal year that begins July 1.
“As a city, there’s not a whole lot we can do about it right now, with the funding situation like it is,” Whiteville Mayor Terry Mann told the Border Belt Independent.
Low Housing Stock
Rockenbach, 35, said the Community Care Program could be a hard sell in Columbus County, where many residents believe that people should work hard and pull themselves out of difficult circumstances.
But, he said, his Christian faith and law enforcement—from the Air Force Office of Special Investigations in South Dakota to the Columbus County Sheriff’s Office—helped him understand that increased policing won’t solve homelessness.
“I believe people make bad decisions, and sometimes find themselves in situations that they don’t know how to get out of,” he said. “I think a lot of our homeless find themselves in situations they don’t know how to get out of, or they don’t have the education, or the capabilities, or the family network to help them get out of.”
“People who live in rural communities deserve to have access to services that are near them, by them, and for them.”
Liz Carbone, N. C. Coalition to End Homelessness consultant
With the Community Care Program, Whiteville police officers could call the department’s in-house social worker when they encounter someone in need of services and resources–everything from affordable housing to Medicaid.
The program benefitted the Sylva Police Department in Western North Carolina, the town’s then-Police Chief Chris Hatton said in a presentation last year. The program helped the department win the 2023 Law Enforcement Agency of the Year Award from the N.C. Police Executives Association.
While advocates of social reforms say homelessness isn’t a policing issue, some residents call the police when they see people who are homeless. Rockenbach said he doesn’t want to put homeless people in jail, partly because it is costly for taxpayers.
“It’s important that we look at the situation not as, ‘How do we get rid of them?’” Rockenbach said. “It’s, ‘How do we come together as a community partnership and figure out the best ways to help them?’”
A lack of affordable housing is a major barrier in the Border Belt. About half of the region’s renters struggle to afford their monthly payments, according to the North Carolina Housing Coalition. Fair market rent for a two-bedroom home, calculated by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, is $925 per month across the four-county area. But Thomas said N.C. Balance of the State Continuum of Care member organizations are finding landlords charging $1,000 or more per month.
“If there’s not an affordable housing opportunity on the other side of that shelter for them, then we don’t ever exit them out of their crisis,” Carbone said.
Gov. Josh Stein called on state agencies to develop an affordable housing strategy in an executive order he signed last month.
“North Carolina communities need more options that meet people’s needs and budgets; approximately half of renter households are housing cost burdened, paying more than 30% of their incomes for shelter,” the order says.
Community Support
Lumberton Christian Care Center, which also offers lunch five days a week, needs thousands more dollars a year in donations and grants if demand continues to increase, said Rennie Mills, treasurer of the center’s board of directors. Hooker said the center served 30,000 meals last year and is on track to serve 40,000 this year.
“This is real,” he said. “This is serious.”
It takes between $30,000 and $40,000 a year to run Family Promise of Scotland County’s shelter, Ruscoe said. The building needs upgrades, including a new roof.
Ruscoe said she’d also like to hire a third employee so she can focus more on administrative tasks like applying for grant money. Currently, Ruscoe is the only full-time employee; the other is a part-time case worker.
Mann, the Whiteville mayor, said small municipalities and counties are “at the bottom of the totem pole” and face “a long uphill battle to try and get to the funding sources.”
Carbone said the federal government is placing more of the burden to fund homelessness efforts on state and local governments. On June 5, the U.S. House appropriations committee advanced a bill that could cut overall HUD funding by 8%, including $232 million for continuums of care like the N.C. Balance of the State.
The cuts would especially hurt rural communities, which rely most heavily on federal funds to address homelessness, Carbone said. While the state’s larger cities like Durham can issue millions in bonds to build affordable housing, Carbone said rural communities do not have the same flexible funding sources. She said there is no coordinated state funding for communities to address homelessness.
“The really rural counties and rural communities get hit the hardest,” Carbone said. “They get hurt the most. That is where providers will close their doors because they don’t have these diverse funding streams.”
Rockenbach said the Community Care Program is a long-term solution to homelessness, and it won’t require additional funding from the city. He’s still in the process of developing the program with Western Carolina University, and said he is in conversation with Fayetteville State University and University of North Carolina at Wilmington to see if their social worker students could intern at the department.
“It takes money to solve problems,” Rockenbach said. “But I’m certainly looking at the most economical way to do it.”
Editor’s note: This article has been updated to reflect the correct title for Liz Carbone.