What Burke can learn from Greenville

With the emergence of delightful springtime weather, our residents and guests are likely to encounter more homeless people on streets, parks and sidewalks. While Burke’s collective programs are compassionate, are they coordinated enough? Is there a way to remove the visual distraction without sacrificing the human element?

Homelessness is not only a test of charity. It is a test of civic competence. It asks whether a community can respond to human need with seriousness, order, and purpose rather than with a patchwork of admirable but disconnected efforts.

The issue of those living daily without a real roof over their heads has been written about extensively. Three years ago this month, The Paper published a three-week series focusing on homelessness, available assistance resources, and where gaps in support existed.

Since then, the basic truth has not changed: Burke County has compassionate people, committed organizations, and a community that has never turned entirely away from those living without stable shelter.

But compassion, by itself, is not a system.

In the spirit of learning from best practices for delicate problems, consider Greenville, SC’s strategy to address the sensitive social issue of homelessness.

Greenville has a significantly larger homeless population than Burke County. Yet to a visitor, downtown Greenville does not appear to carry the same visible street-level distraction.

The reason is not that homelessness has disappeared there. It has not. The reason appears to be that Greenville has built a more coordinated, more disciplined, and more effective system for responding to it.

The data offers a clear answer. The latest federally required Point-in-Time count makes clear that Greenville’s challenge is dramatically larger than Burke County’s. The Upstate South Carolina region, which includes Greenville, reported more than 1,600 people experiencing homelessness. Burke County reported just over 60.

And yet Greenville has managed the issue in a way that makes it less visible, less chaotic, and apparently less prolonged on the street while preserving care.

That is not an argument for hiding people. It is an argument for helping them more effectively.

Over the last decade, Greenville made a shift.

Federal housing policies began tying funding to coordination, requiring shared data, centralized intake, and prioritization of the most vulnerable. At the same time, local pressures such as the growth of Greenville’s downtown core, strain on public systems, and rising housing costs spurred leaders to see that the old approach was not enough.

Agencies aligned. Entry points became more coordinated. Data began to guide decisions. And critically, Greenville invested in a true daytime hub: a place where services are not only offered, but connected.

The Place of Hope Day Shelter, operated by Greenville’s United Ministries, provides more than meals. It offers showers, laundry, mail services, device charging, and on-site case management. It functions as a front door into the system where individuals are assessed, connected, and moved toward housing.

That distinction matters.

Because when services are coordinated and centralized, fewer people fall through the gaps. When case management is embedded, movement toward housing becomes more consistent.

Visibility changes because it is managed differently, not because homelessness disappears.

Greenville’s model is more centralized, coordinated, and rule-bound. It has an exclusive website, GreenvilleTogether.org to address homelessness and housing instability.

Burke’s is more fragmented and operational, with nonprofits and county health carrying more of the service load while the cities lean on cleanup and trespass tools.

Other communities across the country have established similar systemic efforts. Rockford, Ill.; Abilene, Texas; Columbia, Mo.; Walla Walla, Wash.; Bergen County, N.J. are among those who have made similar shifts over the past decade or more. Different places and cultures, but a shared realization: Fragmented efforts, no matter how well-intentioned, have limits.

Burke is not without strong services. In fact, it has more in place than is often recognized.

Burke United Christian Ministries serves as a central point of support, offering daily meals, a food pantry, clothing, and crisis financial assistance that helps prevent homelessness before it begins. Its HOPE Center provides something even more significant: showers, laundry, mail access, computer use, and peer-based support. For many, it is a place to go during the day — a place to connect, stabilize, and begin navigating next steps.

The Meeting Place offers transitional housing for women and families. The House of Refuge provides shelter for men. Options of Burke County supports those fleeing domestic violence. The Western Piedmont Council of Governments has launched a regional homelessness response team focused on outreach and coordination.

These are not small things. They reflect a community that is engaged, responsive, and deeply rooted in care. But they do not yet function as a system.

There is no single front door where individuals are consistently assessed and prioritized for housing. No unified pipeline that moves someone from a meal to a case plan, to shelter or housing placement within a shared system. The pieces exist, but they are not fully connected.

That distinction may sound technical. It is not.

In a smaller community like Burke County, even a few dozen people without stable shelter can feel highly visible. When there are limited shelter beds, more people remain unsheltered. When there is no fully integrated system guiding people toward housing, they remain in place longer. When services operate independently, even strong ones, gaps inevitably appear.

Communities that have made progress did not do so by abandoning the organizations they had. They did so by organizing them. They created coordinated entry systems. They established central hubs that function as true access points into housing pathways. They built systems.

Importantly, homelessness wasn’t seen as a problem for nonprofits and churches to tackle alone. Public agencies must be an integral part of the structure to support and coordinate efforts. All three legs of that stool must align around a shared strategy.

Burke County is not behind because it lacks compassion or commitment. In many ways, it already has the most difficult pieces in place: trusted organizations, community engagement, and a foundation of services.

The question now is whether those pieces can be connected.

What would it look like to build a coordinated entry point? To align existing providers around a shared intake and prioritization process? To strengthen the role of a place like Burke United Christian Ministries so that it functions not only as a provider of services, but as a gateway into a broader system?

Because the difference between what we see in Burke County and what we see in Greenville is not simply a matter of scale. It is a matter of structure.

Burke County should move from a fragmented homelessness response to a coordinated one, and Greenville offers a promising example of how to do that without losing compassion.