In This Season of Giving, A Critical Need to Sustain a Safety Net for Neighbors in Crisis 

By Katrina Knight, MSW, Executive Director, Good Shepherd Center 

The lights are going up across the Cape Fear region. Families are unpacking holiday decorations and neighbors are planning gatherings that bring warmth into cold evenings. For many of us, this season is a time of comfort and ritual—always with the assurance, though, that at the end of the day, we will return to a safe place we call home. 

But this winter, that simple certainty is slipping out of reach for more of our neighbors than ever before. 

At Good Shepherd Center, the calls for help begin early in the morning and continue long after dark. A grandmother caring for two grandchildren after their parents lost their apartment. A line cook sleeping in a friend’s spare room until the arrangement ended abruptly. A young mother and her child parked overnight behind a grocery store, exhausted and afraid. 

These stories used to stand out. Now, they are daily. 

And as need rises, the ground beneath us is shifting. More than $100,000 in expected local funding to Good Shepherd has been cut, and once reliable federal support — including critical Veterans Affairs and HUD operational funds—remains uncertain. The loss is significant. 

Threats to an Essential Safety Net for the Cape Fear Community 

For decades, Good Shepherd Center has served as a critical safety net for the Cape Fear region— a place where those in crisis can find a meal, a bed, compassion, and a path back to stability. We serve more than 130 people each day through our Day Shelter and Night Shelter for homeless adults and families with children. We provide more than 130,000 hot meals through our Soup Kitchen each year and distribute over 75,000 meals through our weekly Grocery Giveaway. Once chronically homeless, 48 individuals with significant disabilities now live with dignity and stability in Good Shepherd’s housing communities. What’s more, we are returning homeless families, seniors, persons with disabilities and Veterans to housing at a pace unmatched in our region—nearly 250 in the last fiscal year. 

But safety nets only work if they are kept strong enough to hold. 

This year, the fabric of public funding we’ve relied on—federal, state, and local—has begun to fray. 

Local Cuts Are Already Here 

The budget passed by New Hanover County for the current fiscal year eliminated funding to Good Shepherd for:
• the Soup Kitchen (lifeline food support for the hungry)
• the Day Shelter (emergency services for unhoused individuals, including the chronically homeless) and
• the Night Shelter (emergency beds and services, including intensive rehousing supports, for 100 homeless adults and children every night of the year) 

— programs that feed and shelter thousands of people each year. (It should be noted that these funds, amounting to more than $65,000 in annual support, were not included in the list of nonprofit awards that the Endowment was asked to make whole.) 

Add to this cuts by the City of Wilmington ($10,000 toward emergency shelter) and the United Way ($27,000 toward shelter and clinic services), and the total loss reaches over $100,000 in essential support that must be replaced through other means. 

The Potential for State and Federal Cuts Looms Even Larger 

Nearly $440,000 in federal operational support remains at risk — funding that sustains our Sgt. Eugene Ashley Center, providing critical services for homeless Veterans, and supports our Day Shelter, Night Shelter, and supportive housing for the chronically homeless. 

The most stable, high functioning and effective homeless services organizations rely on a healthy mix of public and private support to achieve their missions. In this season of challenges to needed support from the public sector, we must rely more heavily on gifts from private foundations, businesses, and individuals. 

Because support for Good Shepherd is not merely charity. 

Support for Good Shepherd is community protection—and an investment in a shared, community-wide quality of life: 

• It keeps emergency rooms from becoming shelters of last resort.
  • It reduces the numbers of unsheltered homeless persons.
  • It keeps families safe and supported during their most vulnerable moments.
  • It ensures low-barrier access to emergency shelter so people are not turned away when they need help most.
  • It ensures seniors on fixed incomes have access to food they cannot otherwise afford.
  • It helps homeless Veterans who once served us reclaim dignity, independence, and stability.
  • It fuels proven solutions that reconnect men, women, and children in crisis to safe, permanent housing, central to their health, mental health, education and work productivity. 

The People Behind the Need 

Homelessness is not abstract here. It is not a distant statistic. 

It is the teacher’s aide and her seven-year-old, eating dinner in their car until a bed opened at Good Shepherd.
It is the grandfather who worked 40 years in Wilmington — now priced out after a rent spike.
It is the home health aide who cared for others until she could no longer afford a rental of her own.
It is the Veteran who served overseas and came home to fight a different kind of battle — one he could not win alone. 

It is also the moment when a young mother, so recently a shelter guest with her toddler, texts us a photo: 

A thrift-store lamp glowing softly.
A paper snowflake taped to a window.
A blanket folded on a couch in their new apartment. 

“We’re home.” 

Those two words tell a whole story—one made possible when Good Shepherd stands ready to receive the most vulnerable, care for them during their time in crisis, and return them home again. 

The Path Forward 

Good Shepherd is weathering this season with the same determination that has carried us through more than four decades of service to the greater Wilmington community. We continue to shelter and feed record numbers of adults and children in need and to rehouse significant numbers of homeless households, even in the tightest rental market our region has ever seen. 

We are pushing forward — because the need demands it, and because this community has always shown up when it matters most. 

The Cape Fear has always been a place that takes care of its own. 

When a neighbor says, “I don’t know where to go tonight,” the answer must stay the same: 

Good Shepherd will walk with you until you are home. 

We cannot do that without you. 

But with you — with your partnership, your advocacy, your generosity — we will not only weather this season. We will meet it with strength, compassion, and resolve. 

This December, we invite you to give boldly. 

Not simply because there is a need, but because the strength of Good Shepherd reflects the strength of the community we all call home. 

Why December Matters 

Year-end giving has always been vital, but this year, it is mission-critical. The loss of public funding cannot be absorbed without increased community support. We will redouble our efforts to fill funding gaps. We will ensure that services continue uninterrupted. We will not reduce meals. We will not turn families away. 

Now, more than ever, we look to the community to help us make good on this commitment. 

Your gift this December… 

• keeps the Soup Kitchen serving hot meals every day;
  • keeps the Night Shelter open for neighbors with nowhere else to go;
  • keeps case managers working one-on-one to help families become housed;
  • keeps homeless Veterans connected to the services, stability, and housing they deserve;
  • keeps seniors and disabled adults from losing the hard-won homes they’ve fought for;
  • keeps a critical Cape Fear safety net strong and ready to receive the most vulnerable of our neighbors in crisis. 

In a year marked by uncertainty and rising need, your generosity is the one constant that transforms crisis into possibility — and possibility into home. 

How You Can Make a Difference 

Ending homelessness requires collective action. By becoming more involved with Good Shepherd this year, you become part of the solution. 

Donate
Financial contributions support our shelters, emergency food programs, supportive housing for homeless Veterans and the chronically homeless; 

Advocate
Support efforts to expand the supply of housing affordable to residents at all income levels and policies that expand resources for evidence-based homelessness interventions like Permanent Supportive Housing; 

Visit or Volunteer
Join us for a tour to see firsthand all that you make possible with your support. Sign up to serve meals, assist with grocery giveaways, or support behind-the-scenes efforts. Even a few hours make a difference in creating a community where homelessness is rare, brief, and nonrecurring. 

We remain deeply grateful to the thousands of friends, new and old, from throughout the Cape Fear community invested in our success. Good Shepherd Center has weathered many headwinds in its more than 40 years of service, and we will surely weather this season of challenge, too. We’re as committed as ever to being that vital safety net to our neighbors in their time of crisis, while not wavering from the effort to strive to achieve even more. 

Thank you for your encouragement, your advocacy, your gifts of time and treasure—all the many ways that you have buoyed us and inspired us to work harder and more thoughtfully toward a Cape Fear community where no neighbor goes hungry or homeless.