The discussion you two have been having is a case in point: I’ve been enjoying this exchange quite a lot, as I think many readers have, and finding compelling assertions on both sides. I really value what Susan contributes here (though, as I said, that may be because I’ve become inured to something that really is, to use one of Susan’s own terms, “overreaching”), and I’m also really pleased to see you joining in, interpreting the site and its use in exactly the way I’d hoped.

Susan is not the Grove Project any more than you (now) are. Or than I am. Looking forward to hearing more from you in the future.

In case you didn’t deduce it from the absoluteness of my pronouncements, I am one of the “port workers” who are not yet homeless, and so am qualified to rebut your misconception that container ships are the source of any residents of our area, much less homeless ones.

I’ve been in Wilmington on and off since 1972 and lived here almost half that time. I wasn’t born here, but I’m the next thing to a true local. I happen to have lived and traveled to a lot of other places as well.

Your technique in the areas of civil and friendly could use a little work.

How do you know if any individual off a container ship ended up homeless or not? Good lord, have an ounce of humility. Yes, I know you lived in California, but you don’t know everything.

I articulated a loose group of half-ass suggestions based on my personal experience, and you’re sitting here insulting me, and coming up with theoretical reasons about why my personal experiences didn’t happen, and why my “conclusions” (which were merely suggestions) are “wrong”.

I came here to have a civil, friendly discussion, but apparently I’ve run into the archetype of the asshole Yankee. Folks like you come a dime per dozen on the streets of Wilmington, and if this website if full of folks like you, then I don’t want any part of it.
Matt

The port of LA and Long Beach are indeed the largest port complex in the U.S., but it’s a lot more than a hop skip and jump, more like 45 minutes on the freeway on a really good day. And there are lots of other places (and millions of people) in between, like say Long Beach itself, that are easier to get to if the port bore any relationship to the state of homelessness.

A USMC tattoo does not a Marine make - but assuming its owner is indeed a former Marine, that still doesn’t mean he’s homeless in Wilmington directly from Lejeune. He may have been from the area, he may have gone home to Michigan before his life went into a tailspin and realized that there is no fatal weather in Wilmington, or he may have settled in Pender County with his family before the demon rum drug him into the gutter, and the closest gutter was here. Each of them has an individual tragedy behind their situation, many of them related to military service. My point was that the military installations have little impact on them being in Wilmington.

The pattern is not that there are ports in the cities, the pattern is that the weather and general atmosphere is almost universally better in coastal cities, and the reason many cities exist on the coast is that they are historic ports. Homelessness is pretty uncomfortable in small towns, especially if you’re not from there - and tourist-oriented beach towns on the east coast aren’t about to tolerate any of that in their world. On the east coast, the coastal cities of any size are all historic ports, so the places in the desirable location that have enough people to blend in with, to panhandle from, and to get some social services, are those places. That is what brings them to Wilmington, Savannah, Charleston, Mobile - I have no idea if there are really more in those cities than their inland counterparts, but I would expect it.

Think of it this way - if you don’t live anywhere, you can live anywhere. Why wouldn’t you pick a place that people choose to visit, rather than the places they escape from when they visit?

But I’ve met quite a few of these folks we’re talking about - a lot of them claim to be marines; one fella showed me his USMC tattoo. Some were in the merchant marine, which is port-related. Others worked on a tugboat. So I can’t pinpoint which particular port-related operation that they are a part of, but suffice to say that some of them wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for the port. It’s not not clear why you “laughed out loud” at my comment - that seems to be an extremely smug response to me, considering that I’ve held conversations with many of these individuals.

As far as mental health goes, I know very little about that, other than North Carolina’s state system is more or less non-existent.

It’s not port cities that attract vagrants, or homeless people, however you describe those particular neighbors of ours. It’s places with good weather and some possibility of social services, homeless shelters, soup kitchens, or generous people of whatever sort. Many of them are veterans, but they rarely transition directly from service to homeless - the proximity to the military installations is a coincidence, has no more to do with it than perhaps the availability of some veterans’ services, if clearly not enough. There is no port in Santa Monica, and it is the homeless national capital, as far as I can tell from stepping over or around a couple of dozen on any given morning walking the dogs.

The main source of all these homeless people is the broken mental health system, which if it were functional would help those with organic mental illnesses and those with substance abuse problems - and lots of those folks have both. Just as anyone with these issues, most of the homeless ones are dangerous mainly to themselves. But there certainly is some danger, especially as I mentioned earlier, in being confronted on a dark sidewalk without others around. Some of the mentally ill, or someone jonesing seriously for their poison of choice, can be desperate enough to be dangerous, too.

despite this, it hasn’t bothered me. they don’t seem like dangerous people. I’ve met quite a few homeless people in bars down here. Port cities just tend to have a lot of vagrants; Charleston, Mobile, Savannah and New Orleans all have plenty. I’ve heard that lots of them are veterans, from Lejeune or Bragg. I also wouldn’t be surprised if lots of them are old port workers or come off the container ships.

I’m not sure if it’s because of the proximity to a rail line, or because there’s an unlimited supply of shopping carts streaming out of nearby Target, but Sigmon, south of Market on New Centre (map), has all these bushes where people are squatting, collecting things, arguing, collecting things.

NC’s Mental Health Care System