“Six Pack”
♦ Homelessness is not a crime. For many men and women gathered in Salisbury’s “Tarp City” along Grant’s Creek its where they’d rather be. ”Amongst their brothers and sisters,” said one of the travelers.
In years gone past “Tarp City” would be called a hobo jungle. A place where transients made brief squats on their way to someplace else. Sometimes by rail, often by highway. Even though the freedom of being a traveler, the homeless in “Tarp City” face challenges squatting in encampments in Salisbury, particularly along waterways whose fecal coliform content makes Grants Creek and Town Creek “impaired”. The environmental issues surrounding homeless encampments are surpassed only by the concern of crime and heroin abuse.
Salisbury, NC will soon become the home to perhaps the largest square-foot homeless shelter for a town its size in all of North Carolina. “Build it, and they will come,” goes the adage. But Rowan Helping Ministries, charged with running the homeless shelter, holds certain expectations for those who live in the shelter, such as a plan for upward mobility and to move out. The shelter has a strict no substance abuse policy, personal hygiene requirements, and no weapons on the premises. Not everyone residentially challenged elects to abide by such expectations
The largest homeless encampment is one about fifty yards downstream from the Comfort Suites on Town Creek. Comfort Suites is behind the China Buffet off Arlington Street in Salisbury—site of a recent armed robbery suspect who met an untimely death with an empty shotgun. The encampment has both grown and declined over the years, but ordinarily anywhere from 6 to 10 tarps providing protection for as many transients passing through who dislike the lack of freedom Rowan Helping Ministries provides.
“Charles” is 20 years old “run off from home” at age 16. Adapting to the outdoors Charles carries a ‘boning knife” in his boot, and trundles most of his belongings in a backpack around Salisbury like many of the sports lounging on city benches. While he grubs at Rowan Helping Ministries most days, Charles panhandles near Lowes and Walmart parking lots, a short hike from the tent under a black tarp along Grants Creek. Charles brags on his “waterfront” home proudly, as if it were a higher end squat.
Last fall, Charles befriended an 18 year-old homeless traveler Greg from Gastonia whose mother dumped him on Salisbury to stay at Rowan Helping Ministries. Greg did well for about 5 months, then got run aground by the law and received probation. Supervised as a Rowan County resident living at the shelter, Greg was booted out of the shelter for a positive drug test. Knowing he violated his probation, Greg moved into Charles’ tent for three weeks in the fall. When cold weather showed, Greg turned himself in to his probation officer, to have a warm place to stay, and three squares a day. He also feared Charles because of the scraps Charley got into with others back in the woods. Charles whines that Greg spends too much acting high and mighty and being down on no account bums in Tarp City. He just didn’t fit in, says Charles. Jail was a better flop.
Charles explained his style was more suited to the lack of rules making “Tarp City” the kind of freedom he felt comfortable with. The woods along Grants Creek was his home for over three years now.
Charles was kind enough to show us his roost basically, a soiled mattress in a tent. Balled up brown paper bags, beer cans, and Burger King wrappers were strewn around. If a breeze was blowing through the tent it smelled like urine.
Charles appeared high when we saw him. At times he nodded off in mid sentence and slurred is words. He told us he likes reading and would do so whenever he ventured over to the Rowan County Library on Fisher Street. He has a library card and checks out books at the library. He uses the computers on the second floor. Charles views himself an anarchist of sorts because of its freedom.
“If I wanted to live by the kind of rules the shelter has,” he laughed, “I’d join the Army.” Charles claimed that despite the rules, he knew of many come-and-go “room-mates” he joined after they were beaten by other bums at the homeless shelter. Even going there for lunch, Charles saw the cliques and the drama some engage in. “If I’m going to live among the check chasers,” he said. ”I’d stay somewhere I can be armed. Those guys at the homeless shelter are crazy. And the staff can’t stop what they don’t see.”
When asked about Salisbury’s police force and whether he wasn afraid the ‘Tarp City’ might be raided by police, Charles laughed. He said they’ve come around a few times in the past three years, but they don’t hassle him much. He changed to a roost under a railroad bridge on a creek near the VA Hospital for a while. Less convenient, he lived there for several months in 2012 after being run off from Tarp City. He knew a couple from West Virginia who slept in their car because they didn’t want to be separated at the homeless shelter. They both had part-time jobs and were saving money for a deposit on an apartment. Just about the time they saved up $700, the police found them parked in a private parking lot. He said they were awakened; their car searched; and after finding an old joint in the ashtray, the man was arrested for trespass and drug possession. The woman drove back to West Virginia. After two months, the man pleaded guilty and hitch-hiked back to West Virginia to live in a camper. It was the life they left to come to Salisbury. Charles said he is convinced life was better in Salisbury’s largest ‘Tarp City’, where he could pick up and move.
