The Cape Fear Memorial Bridge, Media in 1898, and a Kelly Kenoyer retrospective

You're listening to The Newsroom. I'm Kelly Kinoyer. Thanks for joining us. Later this hour, we'll dig into 1898. And my history is a reporter for this station before I leave for other pastures. But first, let's talk bridges. The Cape Fear Memorial Bridge replacement has remained a controversial project over the past few years. I've been following the story since 2021, and more recently, my colleague Sophia Dinka, has done a bit of reporting on the bridge. Hi, Sophia. Hi, Kelly. So you've been interning here for a few months. Tell me what you've noticed about our famous bridge and all of the struggles surrounding it. Yeah, since I got to town, it's mainly those no toll bridge signs all over the place. I don't know the full history, but it seems like people are really mad about the whole bridge situation. What's up with the bridge and why does it even need replacing? Well, it was built almost 60 years ago. It's a lift bridge. It's got a clearance of 69 feet when it's in the down position and 135 feet when it's in the up position. So it was built in 1967. It had an expected 60-year lifespan, which if you do the math, we're coming up on that. It's just outdated, and it needs replacement. So just repairing the bridge isn't much of an option anymore? Yeah, we're kind of limping it along instead of replacing it right now because there's not funding in place. So back in 2024, there were some repairs put in place to extend its lifespan a little bit. It cost more than $7 million, and it took five months of construction, and it did extend the bridge's lifespan for a while. But I got to say, everybody who was here at the time remembers what a catastrophe it was trying to navigate the Cape Fear region when that bridge was down. Everybody was going across the Isabel Holmes Bridge, first one direction and then the other. I live on that end of town, and the streets both third and fifth were backed all the way up to the Isabel Holmes Bridge. It was very chaotic, and... I think it just gave us a really good sense of how badly needed, how much of a lifeline that bridge is for this community. And I will say that extension of the bridge is life. It's going to get more expensive to do that kind of thing as we go on. So it's possible to keep extending it, but it becomes more expensive and it's diminishing returns as we go on. So tell me a little bit more about how the bridge is sort of outdated. Yeah, so right now it's only four lanes. It's two lanes traveling in each direction, and it's only passable by commuter vehicles and trucks. NCDOT expects that with population trends that we have in this region, we need more like six travel lanes, and they expect to put in a multi-use path, which would finally, finally, give a bike and pedestrian connection between New Hanover and Brunswick counties. And I'll tell you, when I first moved here back in 2021, I was thinking about living in Leland, and I wanted to bike to work because I said, oh, it's really just across the river. No, you cannot bike across the river. I would have to go all the way up to Jacksonville to be able to pass the Cape Fear River.

And so I decided not to live in Leland. That definitely sounds like I wouldn't want to go over that bridge on a bike. But I've heard replacing the bridge is incredibly expensive. So the current estimate I've seen is that it'll cost over $1.1 billion. Why does it cost so much besides just inflation? Well, that was definitely part of it. You know, there were originally estimates putting it in the range of $200 to $300,000 back in 2020. The main reason that it's so expensive is that we are required to have a 135-foot vertical clearance for the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge replacement, which matches the height of the existing lift span. Much of the design and the cost of the bridge has been driven by requirements from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Coast Guard. They've... basically killed any less expensive proposals that would replace this bridge with a fixed lower height. It's really tough for local officials, I have to say, because they're facing against these federal agencies that don't really care about the needs and desires of people in the Cape Fear region. So we are stuck with having a 135 foot clearance, which would mean we either have to replace the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge with a lift bridge, the same that we have currently, or a fixed span bridge, which has a lot of other concerns surrounding it. And how are officials planning to try and fund it? I hear the project has a federal grant of about $242 million, but I also hear that that barely covers. about a quarter of the project. Yeah, I mean, when we originally got that grant, it was supposed to cover half of the cost of the bridge. And then when we realized that we had to have this 135 foot span, that increased, nearly doubled the cost of this bridge. So we went from having a 500-something million-dollar bridge to a more than billion-dollar bridge. Historically, I will say... We were pretty low on the state transportation improvement plans prioritization because of a lack of funding. That is the way that NCDOT determines which projects get built and in what order. And we're competing for extremely limited dollars from NCDOT against much larger metro areas with bigger populations. That's something that they weigh really heavily. Right now, DOT has allocated $85 million, but that's not nearly enough. Even though we're high on the priority list, we can't quite cover it. The idea of a toll bridge first came up in 2021, but lots of local officials opposed it, as did the WMPO board. As the years have gone on with the prices rising and no substantial funding just showing up, the WMPO has acquiesced, and now they have voted to say they are more willing to consider a toll. And you did a story on how Atoll Bridge would impact the surrounding area economically. What were the sort of things that you found while doing that? Yeah, I mean, it's going to have a lot of impacts on consumer behavior, on residence behavior. According to regional economist Musin Gatabi, what we're likely to see is an increase in land value in the Wilmington area and a decrease in land value relatively in the Leland area. Leland is likely to try and...

create a little bit more in terms of amenities on that side of the river to try and make sure people don't have to cross the river to get what they need. But it's not going to compete truly with Wilmington. Wilmington just has the weight of being the cultural center of this region. So Wilmington will kind of separate a little bit from Leland in that way, and we'll see that land values really are shifting in that regard. It's going to more strongly impact working class people who can't work remotely and who often can't afford to live right next to where they work. It's possible that we will see rents drop a little bit in Brunswick County to account for the cost of the toll that residents there will need to pay. We're talking about a toll that could be $2 or $275, which could be $1,000, maybe even $2,000 a year. And so you might see that renters are going to get a little bit of a discount on their rent on that side of the river because they're going to have to pay this additional cost. And I think there will be a lot more competition for housing. on the east side of the river because people have a lot more reason to want to live in Wilmington if it helps them avoid a toll. And like you said before, this toll is looking pretty inevitable right now, right? Yeah, even the unsolicited proposal you covered recently would have included tolling. Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, for sure. Earlier this year, delivering Bridges LLC submitted an unsolicited proposal to the Metropolitan Planning Organization in Wilmington and the Department of Transportation. And basically, WMPO cleared it to send it to the Department of Transportation to review. What happened from there was the Department of Transportation rejected the proposal. And I will say that if it were to go forward, if the toll bridge were to become a P3, which is a public-private partnership, There are benefits potentially to doing it that way, according to Mr. Gutabi. Basically, if you have a P3, you can give discounts to certain populations on the toll. So you could say low-income residents or residents of Brunswick County and New Hanover County would get a discount or seniors would get a discount. You're not really allowed to give those kinds of discounts if it's just a government project. So there are benefits for the local population if it's done through a public-private partnership. and it could potentially make the funding a little bit easier. I will say that that federal grant that we talked about a bit earlier has a clock on it, and so there's a little bit of a timeline on when it needs to be used. NCDOT says that it's eager to move forward, and they plan to have picked a preferred alternative by late summer or fall of this year. So one thing that we've talked about a little bit is that there's still two different options when it comes to this bridge. There's the 135 foot span, which is a much bigger, longer bridge, or there's the replacement that would also raise and lower the way the current bridge does. I know we've heard from the Historic Wilmington Foundation and residents of Old Wilmington that they would prefer the 65-foot lift bridge because it does less harm to the historic district. And we've heard similar concerns about the environment on the other side of the bridge. Just this week, the city of Wilmington signed on to an agreement related to protecting historic properties that could be affected by the bridge replacement. So why don't you tell me a little bit about what happened with that? Yeah, so what they signed is called a programmatic agreement. It satisfies a federal law related to historical preservation, which requires big projects to analyze and mitigate impacts to historic properties.

So right now, it's impossible for them to do an impact analysis on the project, and that's just because officials still haven't decided what kind of bridge they're actually going to build. It's either the lift bridge or the fixed bridge. That's where the programmatic agreement comes in. It basically means as soon as an analysis is possible, they'll do one. When it comes to the city's role in the PA, the PA was going, to go forward whether or not the city signed. The city doesn't have any authority to change or void the agreement. The city signing only means it'll be able to give input and suggestions on historical impact plans in an official capacity. If it didn't sign it, any input from the city would have the same weight as any other public comments. City staff already has planned some suggestions they want to share through the PA. For one, they think the area where impact will be steadied should be expanded. Right now they think the scope is a little too narrow, and two, the staff thinks the fixed bridge option will have a worse impact on the historic district. That's because the fixed bridge option has to be taller than the lift bridge option, and to make it taller, you have to make it longer. And when you make it longer, you destroy more wetlands, more historic properties, and cause more traffic disruption, especially in downtown along Fifth Avenue, which is where the longer bridge would spit out traffic. What the fixed option has going for it is that it's cheaper, but we don't even know how much cheaper that option is. There's no official estimate on price. And this programmatic agreement is also being considered by some other organizations. Specifically, the Wilmington Metropolitan Planning Organization is considering whether or not to sign it, but they haven't made an official vote on it yet. What the fixed option does have going for it is that it's cheaper, but we don't really know how much cheaper. Current estimates for the bridge replacement are somewhere between 1.1 billion and 1.3 billion, but we don't really know where the fixed bridge would fall on that. One thing that I know people have also complained about is that it would actually hover over 3rd Street. And so you would have the shadow kind of cast over 3rd by this bridge if it were the fixed span. And at the last WMPO meeting I went to, one of the Wilmington residents who went there, he said in his public comment that if this bridge was built, he would become a, he doesn't want to be a troll under the bridge, basically. That's pretty good. Yeah. So the future is still pretty uncertain, right? Officials haven't signed off on that fixed bridge or that left bridge option yet. Yeah, I mean, I think that we'll probably get an answer relatively soon on which option they're going with. But it's kind of hard to tell exactly. Public officials seem like they're still trying to keep their options open. For now, we're going to just have to wait and see. But Sophia, thank you so much for your coverage of this story. And also, thank you for being one of the greatest interns of all time for WHQR. It's been a pleasure having you this summer. Thank you. I'm flattered. And it was great to be here.

Up next on this show, we'll dig into the history of 1898 and how the media framed the coup and massacre at the time. That's ahead on the newsroom. Stay with us. Welcome back to the newsroom. I'm Kelly Kanoir here with my colleague, Rachel Keith. Thanks for being here. Thank you. So, Rachel, at the end of July, you were invited to attend some professional development called Harbors of Democracy for educators across the state. This conference in Wilmington was hosted by UNC Chapel Hill's Carolina K-12 program. So I was able to attend two of the sessions, and the first session was on day one that was outlining what they were going to learn throughout the four days. And one of the main reasons they came to Wilmington is to learn more about the Wilmington 1898 coup. And they actually invited Leray Umbfleet, who was the main researcher and author of the Comprehensive State Report on what happened during the massacre leading up to. and thereafter. So she was telling the educators in the room, what they needed to know about the history. And then the second session I went to was the teachers actually walked through a lesson that dealt with a primary source from that time from 1898. It was the White Declaration of Independence written by Alfred Moore Waddell, who was one of the big coup perpetrators. And I did do some reporting on that earlier this week. So I got to be a part of that and listen to their discussions. And then I also listened to about an hour of a brief overview from the local historian, Jan Davidson, who works for the Cape Fear Museum. So she was telling the audience what they needed to know about the history. I mean, yeah, your reporting earlier this week was really interesting, compelling stuff, that practice lesson that the teachers were digging into. But for this segment on today's show, I really want to dig into the role of the media during 1898. So what can you tell us that you learned? Yes, so. Luray-unfleet's presentation, she had a running outline about the coup. And basically she said it was perpetrated by men who could speak, men who could ride, and men who could write. And we're going to focus on the men who could write. But the men who could ride, she's actually researching right now. The red shirts were the vigilantes that came to Wilmington to basically. So discord and violence in the months leading up to the November 1898 election. So she's actually working on that research, and I thought that was really interesting. Yeah, but in terms of the media, she was focusing on Alfred Moore Waddell, again, who was one of the main perpetrators. We've heard his name before. So he was demonizing the black community and saying that they were violent, that they were rapists.

So you can hear Leray Umfleet using some of our current political jargon in talking about her research on what Alfred Moore Waddell was doing, how he was writing during this time. Waddell played a role in not only Wilmington but the rest of the state by saying, look how bad it is in Wilmington. Our crime is higher. Our rates are off the charts. Our jails are full and it's all black men. Well, I studied that. Fake news. No. We could not find any higher incidences of crime in Wilmington before 1898 compared to other years in previous. Looked at court records, looked at arrest records, those that existed. No, fake news. So you can hear Luray Unfleet. She's talking about how they were building this false narrative about what the black community was doing. And while the present is not an exact textbook of the past, I mean, media outlets, you and I, you know, we currently have to go over what some politicians say about crime statistics. For example, the national media outlets. over and over again have to say there is no data to support that immigrants commit more crimes than natural-born citizens of the U.S. So it's about fact-checking. And, you know, a lot of times political leaders do get nervous when you say the past. basically can translate into the present. And yes, that is a black and white statement. But a person can see patterns and they can see tools and they can see a playbook emerge and what power will do to achieve its goals. And in this case, in 1898, they were using fear and threats at that time, definitely violent threats. But. Those threats can be in our current times legal threats or job threats. So it was an interesting thing to hear that vernacular, the fake news in a historian's mouth. So along this same thread on day three of the conference, the educators got to hear from Jan Davidson, who's the lead historian at the Cape Fear Museum, right? Yes. And I want to first tell the public it was really neat that the teachers, they got to see. Alexander Manley's family's scrapbook. So they donated it to the county for the museum to have. And Alexander Manley, for people who don't know, he was the owner of the Black-owned newspaper, the Daily Record that they burned down during the coup. And he had to flee for his life. He escaped before they could come for him. But the Manley family gave, and I got to see it. And in it is three of the hard copies of the Daily. record. And Jan Davidson said there are seven in existence and they have three of those copies. And I asked, can the public just come and look at these? I asked one of the people that worked at the museum, but you do have to have an appointment. You can't just roll up to the museum and have a look, but you can see them by appointment. Man, that would be amazing to see some living history in that way. Yes. And yeah, the teachers could see the living history, which was really neat. So yes, Davidson.

I picked up on the thread of Luray Umfleet, how the media played a role, the white democratically, and this is Big D at the time, Democratic Party owned newspapers, how they function during this time. Here is Jan Davidson. There's a piece of it that is about Wellington and the white democratic newspapers. I love the idea that it's the first draft of history, gives you that sense that these folks really shape the story and that we need to be cognizant of that and then say, well, What does that mean? You know, these stories are not neutral. These guys are not simply reporting things. They are creating the white supremacy agenda and normalizing what is happening, and they are doing it deliberately because that is part of their agenda. And so you can't just read a headline and say that's accurate. You have to kind of look up over the one source. We have some of the really gross misrepresentation of history in our collection. So this collier's weekly article. That, our cover, is such a misrepresentation of what happened in the Massacre and Coup of 1898, but this is an international newspaper. And in his article, he claims nothing illegal happened. There was no intimidation used and the African Americans were happy about the end result. If you read this article and this article alone, you would not know that anybody died. And the author of that Collier's Weekly was Alfred Moore Waddell. And basically this took over the narrative nationally that not much happened. We took back control. Everybody was fine with it. And so she is showing how in the newspapers, in the narratives, that they distorted what happened during 1898. So you can understand again why there needs to be a free and independent press and ideally multiple different outlets that are covering the same topics because those in power will push you to write the story that they want you to write. And oftentimes they will get people to write these things or get outlets to write it in the way that they want. Or they'll write their own op-eds, whatever they'd like to do within the context of those outlets. And so I think it is really important and I think we should all really take note of the importance of a free and... strong and independent press at every level, especially at the local level. Yes, and here's another article that she talked about from the AP, from Buffalo, New York. It said that the government was handed over to a new one and law and order was followed and established and the alderman resigned in response to, quote, public sentiment. But we know that. That was not true. They did not resign because of public sentiment. They resigned because they had guns pointed to their head. But I have seen and Jan Davidson did bring up an accurate account of what was going to happen during 1898.

And we've seen accurate accounts contemporaries. In the past, they were saying that this is wrong or this is the truth. Throughout time and throughout history, you can make these threads that you can discount the claim that nobody knew what was happening. And so this is what Jan Davidson was showing us because we have an account from the Philadelphia press, which essentially says that what was going to happen in 1898, what was coming was bloodshed and they saw it come. Oh, wow. Basically says on November 8th, we wouldn't be surprised if there was violence on Election Day in Wilmington because the Democrats have set it up so that would happen. Wow. Yeah, so you can see that this is still a contentious part of history. Present day, I have been in the room during school board meetings. And in the past, it was a couple years ago, Republican board member Pete Wildebor was saying, I'm hearing odd things about the way that 1898 is being taught, basically that there is some contextual analysis. And Leray Humphleet gave this on day one of the conference that. Yes, the Democrats at that time were the white supremacists. They were the ones where the wealthy elite lived in, where the conservatives lived in. So that was the party of 1898 Democrats. But the Republicans were considered more of the multiracial government. They were considered the progressives at the time. And so I think there was some contention about explaining that context to students in the classroom. But you have Leray Umpfleet still talking about. how the parties operated. But yes, it's undeniable that the Democrats were the orchestrator of 1898 and the bloodshed. But there is context around those parties. So moving on from talking about the media component of 1898 and the lessons that has for our current times, there was another angle that Umpfleet really dug into. And that connects us to modern issues, modern reporting on gentrification in Wilmington. I think it is undeniable that Wilmington is growing. and Luray Umfleet is a historian, and she's seeing a loss is what she was telling this audience of teachers. Wilmington is growing, and that's great for their economy, bad for the preservation of their history. The whole part of the black community, they're being taxed out of their property, or the value of that land is very attractive for them to sell grandma's house. So we're losing the cultural landscape in Wilmington to progress.

And I mean, I've covered this several years ago, and it's an ongoing issue. But Wilmington's black population has been on the decline basically since 1898. There are certain census tracts in Wilmington that when they were counted back in 2000, they were 80 or 90 percent black, especially on the north side. And now the black population is a minority in these previously strong majority black districts. And it's not just that people are sort of reintegrating after a lot of segregation. in the south during Jim Crow, the black population is actually leaving the city of Wilmington. We've seen that every other racial demographic is increasing in population in this city, and the black population is on the decline. So this gentrification that we're talking about, this shift of the black population not staying in Wilmington, not feeling safe or welcome here, that has continued 100 plus years later today. Yes, and Unfleet was saying she's a visitor to Wilmington. She is a North Carolinian, but she could already see the change and telling this to this room of educators while I'm starting to see that we might lose some of our historical knowledge. Man, you really do feel on the north side there's sort of these marks of that time period. It feels like there's ghosts over there. I know that there's an empty, vacant lot across from Bumballadis. And when I did the Wilmington and Color tour a few years ago, there was discussion about how that lot is right where a lot of the shootings took place. And so you really can feel that weight of history when you're on the north side if you know about it. Yeah, and a quick little note that she made that the Brooklyn neighborhood was not necessarily just a black neighborhood at that time. It was a multiracial neighborhood. And she thinks that's why a lot of the violence circulated there because the white neighbors were telling potentially the red shirts, they're here. I mean, it was like neighbor to neighbor sadly telling on each other. You know, they lived together. And so that was what was sad when I heard her retell this. That, yes, it was a lot of black people lived in that neighborhood, but it was both whites and blacks that lived in that neighborhood. And maybe that's why there was this explosion of tensions when the elections were basically stolen. And we've seen violence like that over and over again across the entire globe. Well, Rachel, thank you so much for digging into this history. It's so important that kids in this community. get to learn about this important and very tragic history in Wilmington. Thank you. I'm Kelly Kinoyer. You're listening to The Newsroom. Stay with us.

Welcome back to the newsroom. I'm Kelly Kanoir. You may have heard that I'm leaving WHQR. My last day is Monday, and later this month, I'll be starting a new job as the Morning Edition host at WHRO in Norfolk, Virginia. It's hard to leave a community that I've come to love, and it's the kind of thing that makes you a little bit sentimental. So let's take a look back together at the highlights from my time here at the station. To dig into my tenure at WHQR, I'm bringing in my colleague Rachel Keith. Hi, Rachel. Hey, Kelly. And I wanted to start with one of your first big investigations in 2021. And that was on the Wilmington Housing Authority. Yeah, so basically six months after I started working at WHQR, Ben and I collaborated on a long investigation into the mold crisis at the Wilmington Housing Authority. So at the time, there were 80 families living in hotels. Many of them had been there for more than a year because of mold contamination inside their homes. That number eventually rose to 150 families. So we dug into this story with public records, with personal accounts. We went into hotel rooms. the moldy apartments. And there was one family that really stuck with me because Erica Lamberth is her name. She was killed by a car on Market Street while living at a motel there with her family. She was trying to get across the street just to go to work and got hit by a car. So here's my reporting on it with quotes from Erica's sister, Kimberly. Erica's four kids are all living in Johnson County now with their fathers. Kimberly says they lost not only their mother, but their home and nearly all their possessions. That's the nightmare. When Erica had to leave her apartment, WAJ paid contractors to pack up all her things into a pod or a temporary outdoor storage container. They moved it after it was packed, and it sat in the summer heat for months. When the family finally got to open it up, after Erica's funeral, it was in complete disarray. TVs were broken and worse. As soon as you opened it up, you could see that there was mold on everything. So it was obviously really heartbreaking to talk to family members about what they were going through with WHA. But at the time, it was sort of this invisible crisis, you know. Nobody was really talking about it publicly. It was just this suffering and silence that was going on. And I mean, a lot of the families were glad to be getting some supplemental assistance from WHA during that time. But there was not a lot of effort being made to fix the problem by WHA. And so they just were languishing. So how do you? did it become a crisis? Basically, it went back to Hurricane Florence in 2018. And by the way, this is all under the tenure of Katrina Redmond. She was the person in charge of WHA at the time. So 2018, Hurricane Florence floods Wilmington. It just wreaked havoc, tons of rain on all of these very old buildings. You know, the properties from WHA have been around since the 1940s. They were where workers were put for shipbuilding during World War II here in the Port City. So these are really old buildings anyway. Hurricane Florence ravaged them and then COVID hit.

And so it was really hard for WHA to send in maintenance workers. A lot of tenants, they weren't getting the normal inspections. And so the mold proliferated because it had been sitting there for such a long time. There's also some discussion about there may be having been shoddy work done on some of these properties years before. And so it was sort of this perfect storm that led to tons of mold in a lot of different buildings all at the same time. And then WHA kind of swept it under the rug. They just put people. in hotels put them up and said, we're going to repair these apartments, and then they didn't. They couldn't get contractors lined up, and they were hemorrhaging money. It's terrifying what could have happened if it didn't get fixed when it did. Yeah, and so what has happened since all of this reporting? Well, we did get a new CEO who joined WHA. Katrina Redman left in the midst of this crisis. And then they hired Tyrone Garrett, who's the current CEO, and he spent years trying to fix it. So he hired contractors to come in and remediate the mold. They tried to make it a lot less expensive. And now they're in the process of trying to rehab and retrofit and actually tear down and then replace a lot of these properties with new. construction. And so WHA looking forward, I'm hopeful that they're going to have a lot more units than they do currently. So they'll be able to house more low income people and that they'll be nicer, newer units. Some of them might even be mixed income properties. So we're looking at a lot of change coming to WHA in the coming years. And I'm excited to see what it all looks like. I'll come back and visit Wilmington in five years and go, wow, that's Houston more now. That's something. Yeah. Yeah. And the following year in 2020, you studied housing trends. We can see a thread in your beat, housing. But you were looking at housing trends in Wilmington's north side. Yeah, we got into this a little bit in the last segment, but I did a story about gentrification on the north side. And we've really been seeing that the black population in Wilmington has been declining. So at the time in 2022, housing prices were rapidly rising, especially in the north side, but all across the city. But it was. really, really noticeable in some of these historically black neighborhoods that have been sort of flipping racially because they were undervalued for such a long time. And then they rose in value so rapidly that it was absolutely shocking to a lot of the current residents. And I will say that rapid pace of change that we were seeing, it's actually pushed out a lot of longtime residents, either because they had heirs property, you know, grandma passes away without a will. It goes to her four kids. Maybe one of them has passed away. And so it goes to that. person's three daughters. And so you just end up with ownership across this entire range of family. And then it becomes this derelict building where nobody's taking care of it. Maybe they don't even know they own part of it. And so there's a lot of issues with that on the north side as well. And we've seen a lot of people kind of lose access to this community that they grew up in because of these dramatic economic shifts that are happening. And in 2026, this is holding steady from what you've gathered? In the past couple of revaluations, Things moved very rapidly. And then in the most recent one, it was a little bit less rapid. I can look to my house, because I live on the north side for that as an example. My house jumped from $60,000 in value to $170,000 or $160,000. And now it's slowed down a little bit, so it more than doubled, but now it's valued around $200. So it more than doubled, and then it slowed down a bit, but it's still substantial these increases in...

supposed value. And so that also has an impact on low-income residents, especially if somebody is on a fixed income, if they're older and retired. That's going to be a dramatic increase to what they pay in taxes each year. And it happens so suddenly in these neighborhoods because of that historic undervaluing because of racism. And you've done a lot of economic coverage over the years, including, yes, what you're talking about, stories on housing and cost of living. coverage, but you've also dug into the unhoused. That's right. So in 2023 and 2024, I spent a lot of time on homelessness. First, there was a newsroom episode about how the homeless interact with the criminal justice system. And then I did a series of profiles aimed at humanizing this really misunderstood population. And why did you want to focus in on that criminal justice piece? Well... At the end of 2023, we saw that New Hanover County started clearing a lot of homeless encampments from public land around the city. So... I knew from various stories that I had covered in court that unhoused people often spend a couple nights in jail for really petty crimes, only to be let out really quickly because, you know, even those nights in jail are a harsher punishment than what it actually should be for stealing a $2 protein bar or whatever. And that was often the case. It would be this person stole a granola bar or they were loitering or they were, you know. trespassing because they were in this alleyway, things like that. And so I really wanted to see how that criminalization of the homeless impacted people who were going through the system. And it's interesting because that criminalization of homelessness is becoming the law of the land in North Carolina thanks to recent moves in the legislature. Yeah, and what did you find? So they were getting caught up over and over again when maybe they needed something else. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting because sometimes being wrapped up in the criminal justice system does actually help the homeless. And there were judges who truly believed that that was helpful. But much of the time, it doesn't. And it was a weird case where sometimes the worse, the crime, the more likely they were to get the help they needed. And if they do much smaller things, much more minor things, they're less likely to get put into the systems that are truly helpful. So you're saying that it does help in some, or it was some judge's point of view that it could. help them get into services, sadly. Yeah, I mean, that's actually true. There are programs like Empowerment Court and Recovery Court, both of which we have here in New Hanover County. And so these are sometimes called compassionate systems. They help defendants transform their lives for the better. The judges in these systems will work really closely with defendants to help them achieve their life goals. They're aimed at people with mental illness and people with addiction respectively. So, for example, there were cases with addiction court where I would see a defendant come in and

At the time, they would be, you know, homeless when they first had this interaction with the justice system. And then through this court system, they would get connected with a social worker. They would get put into rehab. And then they would be housed in a halfway house. It wasn't like all of the solutions were handed to them, but they were put back on track in a way that helped them succeed in life. And that's not something that's actually available to all homeless people who end up in the court system. But I will say that kind of help is really only for people who have a more serious crime. So typically you have to have at least a six-month sentence that you're facing. So for addiction court, it would often be that they were caught with a DUI or something like that. If you don't have a more serious crime, then you're not given the opportunity for these systems because, you know, it's a little bit carrot, a little bit stick. And so they end up in this kind of cycle. And let me play something from my previous newsroom episode about it. Sam Bacto at the Urban Institute studies this stuff, and she calls it... The homelessness jail cycle, and it's exactly what you just described. It is people who are picked up for offenses that are generally related to their state of being unhoused as opposed to aggressive behavior from them or other types of crimes that are more willful. It's like a trespassing, loitering, public intoxication, or other public offenses that are mostly related to the person's being outside as opposed to. their behavior meaning that if they did those things inside they wouldn't be arrested So these kinds of things, charging people for sleeping outside, it's really costly to the city and to the county to run people through the justice system for these crimes. And it doesn't really help them get out of this cycle. So I was really proud of that reporting. I think it still holds up, especially looking at the legislature, which is looking to pass a law that fully bans and criminalizes public camping. That was vetoed by the governor earlier in July, but it still might become law this session. Yeah. I think the people who do not like to see people out on the streets, they just see, get them out of here. But they don't really think about what it would take to help these people once you move them. Yeah, it's complicated. Yeah. And then one of your stories from 2024, it featured a series of profiles on the unhoused. So you went deeper into the story to tell their stories. Yeah. I mean, when I did that justice system story, I knew at the time that I reported it that it didn't have a lot of voices of people who were homeless. You know, I talked to people who were going through the system, but a lot of people when they're in the middle of court don't really want to talk about it. And they didn't necessarily trust me. So.

I decided I really wanted to do right by this community. And so I went to all of my sources in homeless services and I said, who would talk to me, who would tell me their stories? And I got to work together with photographer Maddie Gray to put together these humanizing portraits of the unhoused. And I mean, she did an amazing job, beautiful photography. And then I got to share their voices with the community. So some of the folks that we interviewed have since gotten into housing. And others have gotten apartments and then lost them again for a variety of reasons. Others have totally fallen off my radar. I have no idea where they are anymore. But... I want to play a clip from Leroy Lions from back when I did this interview in 2024. He's a stalwart volunteer at the day center and the warming shelter. He's always ready to grab a spatula and help cook up some food for others. I volunteered at the warming shelter last year and he was like the head chef. He was telling me what to do. I was in the way trying to do the dishes and he was like, get out of here. And listen to Leroy. Listen to Leroy. He knows what he's doing in the kitchen. So he's super even keeled. And given what he's going through during this interview, living on the streets, it's kind of wild to hear how casual he is about it. I mean, it's been hard, but hey, it ain't nothing. I ain't done before, so. So I was getting it before. I was here. I spent on the street two years one time. And I maintained eight every day. You know, it's just how you do, how you go about it. Some people just don't care. And some people do. So the ones that care is the ones that need to be progressed. And where is Leroy now? Do we know? Yeah, actually, he... I can break this news today. He was able to get into a new apartment and he moved in a few months ago. I think he didn't have a ton of furniture at the time, but some of the folks I know in services helped him find some furniture. And he's thriving. He looks really healthy. He looks really well. And I think it's a permanent supportive housing apartment. So he's pretty well set for the rest of his life. I'm really happy to see him. where he is now. And he still goes to the day center all the time to see his old friends and help as much as he can. Well, thank you for sharing that with us. I know. I'm so happy for him. The other folks that I interviewed, some of them ended up homeless again, even after they did get into places to stay. It's unfortunately super common. You know, life is precarious when you're living in poverty and housing isn't always permanent or secure. I'm really going to miss covering this population in Wilmington. And the amazing service providers like Meg McBride and Jamie Thompson, they're a couple pastors in town. They've dedicated their lives to supporting these folks who are in need. Tony and Christine Perez from the Day Center, we're still looking for support as the Day Center is facing closure. And the amazing folks at Good Shepherd Center like Katrina Knight, they've put more permanent supportive housing into this community than any other organization I know of in recent years.

And they work so hard to help people who are in their shelter and not in their shelter find permanent and secure homes. Oh, and shout out to Liz Carbone also, who I've talked with about housing policy dozens of times over the years. She's always down for my policy wonkery. Yes. And yes, you, along with your housing. Wonkery. You're also in with transit wankery. And you got to experience last year taking a form of transit and then writing about it. Yes, I got to do a story about the future of trains in Wilmington. And I got to ride a train to do it. And I did a whole newsroom about it. And it was a blast. I wrote a feature for the assembly about that story as well. And I did a ton of freelancing last year for NPR also. Let's move to L. the stories that you've been covering this year? Yeah, I mean, I've been pretty busy. Earlier this spring, I did a big investigation into the statewide Back at Home program. It's aimed at reducing homelessness in rural areas of the state. And essentially, that program went completely broke without expecting to. And then they dropped rental assistance for previously homeless people with very little notice. And that kind of left them to suddenly cover rent. alone in apartments and houses that they couldn't afford on their own. So I dug through thousands of pages of emails and documents to understand what was happening there. And then as I was reporting on it, the governor's office stepped in with some bridge funding, but it was really sketchy for a minute there. And you recently got an email from the state auditor's office that they were looking into this? Yeah, actually, someone from his office reached out to me. And I'm very curious to see what any audit says about it because I'm not... really sure where all of that money went. It was a lot of money that was not spent so wisely from what we can tell. And that's one of the biggest investigations that we all undertake in this newsroom. Where did this money go? Can you prove it? Yeah. Let's unpack a little bit more of what you've been doing in 2026. Yeah, I mean, I've reported on homelessness, on foster care, on the laptop debacle in Leland. That was interesting. And of course, housing. I also covered the city of Wilmington's budget and the living wage increases for staff under the new city manager, plus the city's efforts to develop a new homeless shelter, which y'all definitely need to keep an eye on after I'm gone. And then there was this recent investigation you did on staff morale at the city. Yeah, that was a lot of work. And since we ran it earlier this summer, I will just suggest that people go back and listen to it and listen to the coverage and read my article. I'll tell you that I'm still getting trickles of information. from within City Hall and outside of City Hall. We essentially uncovered a lot of chaos and uncertainty in the wake of the city's restructuring, and a lot of people left or got pushed out after the new management came in. I don't think that reporting is completely done yet, even if I'm leaving and I'll be leaving it behind. So it's going to fall on Ben's shoulders, I think. If you're listening to this right now and you are a member of the city staff and you want to share anything, good or bad or ugly, whatever. Reach out to him. He won't publish anything without your permission, but we do want to know what's going on all of it. So be shockman at whhqr.org. Yes, that's right. And, you know, we're always ready for an investigative story. I mean, the public deserves to know how their governments are functioning and their school system is functioning. And that's what we try to do is tell a fuller picture of that.

And Kelly, I just want to say thank you so much. You've been such a brave and bold colleague. It is really, I mean, being a woman in journalism can be a little more difficult, I would say. But you and I come at it, I think, with we want to know what's going on. We want to talk to people who are involved. We care about the story. And you've just shown, I mean, if somebody comes to me and says, I have something about this development or something about the unhoused and something about wave transit, I'm like, my colleague Kelly Kanoir knows so much. She's the one who can point you in the right direction because you've built so many sources. You've built so much content knowledge. And I'm so happy for you that you're moving on to like a larger newsroom. But it's, it. Having veteran people that know what they're doing in our Cape Fear region was so important. And you just grew and just you were that expert. Yeah, I'm going to miss it a lot. Wilmington's come to mean a lot to me. It can be a really frustrating place to work as a reporter. It's pretty different from back home in Oregon, I got to say. But I love this community and I'm going to miss it, you know. I'm going to miss this newsroom a lot too. WHQR has been good to me. I'm moving on to a bigger place. I'm excited about it, but I'm always going to have a big place in my heart for WHR. Well, we'll always remember you, and we're going to keep in touch, and just thank you. All right, that's about all the time we have for today's show. So, for the last time, let me read these credits. Our editor on this show was Rachel Keith. Our WHQR technical team is Ken Campbell. Our benevolent leader in the newsroom is Ben Shockman, though this week he's out on vacation in Canada. If you missed a part of this program, you can find it at whhqr.org or you can find it as a podcast pretty much anywhere you can get podcasts. If you have thoughts or comments about today's programs or ideas for a future show, email us at newsroom at whhqr.org. It's been an amazing five years. I've grown so much as a reporter, as an audio geek, and as an editor in my time working for this station. I love this town, and I want nothing but the best for it and all its residents. You can still catch me on air up in Norfolk, where I'll be the morning edition host for WHRO Public Media starting later this month. I may be leaving WHQR, but I can't kick this public media habit. Thank you to everyone who's helped me along the way. My colleagues, my sources, my critics, and our many wonderful listeners who keep this station on the air. We couldn't do it without you. So for the last time, I'm Kelly Knoir for WHQR. Thanks for listening, and I hope you'll join us for the next edition of The Newsroom.