The Dive: The Faces of Homelessness

This week, WHQR published an expansive audio-visual reporting project that profiles the lives of people dealing with homelessness in downtown Wilmington.

Ben Schachtman spoke with WHQR reporter Kelly Kenoyer, who led the project along with freelance photographer Madeline Gray. 

Schachtman: So, this project has some obvious resonance in the wake of a Supreme Court decision this summer, that upheld an Oregon city’s ban on sleeping outdoors on public property. Your reporting goes back months. Can you talk a bit about your process?

Kenoyer: I’ve been covering homelessness for years, in Wilmington and in my home state of Oregon, and I’ve had an idea in the back of my mind to conduct personal interviews and create profiles on individuals experiencing homelessness. We often get caught up in policy, numbers, and stereotypes when reporting on homelessness, so I wanted to do the opposite.

Covering housing and homelessness helped get my foot in the door with a lot of our subjects: service providers and trusted faith leaders vouched for us, and that made the folks we interviewed trust us. But showing up repeatedly to become familiar faces also helped.

Schachtman: You worked closely with photojournalist Gray, and I know you both wanted to ensure this project didn’t veer off into exploitation. How did you approach that?

Kenoyer: We made it clear what our intentions were from the beginning, and let our subjects know that we would only use what they wanted us to. I was genuinely surprised by how open and honest these conversations were; people told us about some of the hardest things in their lives. While I’m often one to ask tough follow-up questions, I didn’t do that for traumatic memories. That kind of sensationalism wasn’t necessary for this project.

Maddy, of course, is an incredibly empathetic and professional photographer. She lets her subjects drive the photo sessions and lets them share what they consider important in their lives. Some of the objects they shared with us drove our questions and helped show who they are as people. Both of us, I think, wanted to give our audience the chance to actually relate to someone they might walk by without a second thought. 

Schachtman: You’ve been covering homelessness for a long time as a journalist, but was there anything you learned or saw in a fresh way during this reporting?

Kenoyer: Many of these experiences were not new to me: I’ve been in large homeless encampments, interviewed social workers and pastors, and volunteered at the warming shelter. And that’s just for my reporting in Wilmington. But what stood out to me here were the personal causes of homelessness, outside the problem of our crushingly tight housing market.

Most homeless people, nearly 90 percent of them, have had adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). These painful experiences during formative years are a precursor to many challenges in life, and homelessness is no different. My colleague Rachel Keith has done some fantastic reporting on how ACEs can impact a person’s adult life, and I was able to see that for myself here. Our society hasn’t come up with a way to prevent that cycle from continuing into subsequent generations, and that reality is part of the reason we see many of these people suffering in the streets today.

Check out the project here.

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Decorum Dance

The N.C. Court of Appeals earlier this month reversed two decisions made by district court Judge Clinton D. Rowe concerning cases in New Hanover and Onslow counties.

One of the reversals throws out Rowe’s November 2022 order that held a defendant in criminal contempt of court for submitting false written income information. 

At a hearing about a probation violation for a gun-related conviction, Khalil Hardy filled out an indigency form—used so judges can evaluate whether defendants are eligible for court-appointed counsel—and reported he made no money. 

Hardy had flown from where he was living in Georgia to North Carolina to attend the hearing and told Judge Rowe his family paid for the plane ticket. Rowe asked Hardy why he didn’t work, but Hardy told him he was employed by a temp service and that he paid bills. 

“Well, you put on here you have no bills and you have no income,” Rowe said, referencing the form. 

“Yes, sir,” Hardy replied. 

“So explain to me why I shouldn’t hold you in contempt for not being truthful on this,” Rowe said. 

“I don’t know, sir.”

Rowe then ordered Hardy in contempt of court and told him he would spend 30 days in jail for perjury. 

In North Carolina, judges have some latitude to deem court participants in contempt to uphold basic decorum, safety, and integrity of the legal process. State law requires a “willful” disobedience of court authority to be found in criminal contempt, which can mean jail time.

But judges’ discernment has differed on what exactly “willful” means. In 2008, the state court of appeals reversed a judge’s decision in Lee County that found a defense attorney in criminal contempt when her cell phone rang while the state questioned its witness.

While the attorney admitted she should have known to silence it after years of practicing law, the appeals court concluded in 2008 she “merely made a mistake” and that “her actions were not willful.”

Judges’ attempts to criminalize tardiness have also fallen short of the “willfulness” guidepost.

People who are found in criminal contempt generally disrupt court proceedings by actively impeding in some way, according to the appeals court’s decision earlier this month. This spring, Wilmington Councilman Kevin Spears spent a night in the Columbus County jail after he was disruptive, “voiced continued irrelevant banter,” and refused to answer “basic questions about his own exhibits” while on the witness stand during a child support hearing.

Criminal contempt doesn’t have to be noisy: In 2018, the state appeals court upheld a 2017 Robeson County contempt ruling for a defendant who pointed a finger gun at his head while staring at a witness during their testimony.

In the case of Hardy—the New Hanover defendant who on paper claimed no income but verbally admitted differently—the appeals court ruled Rowe overstepped the court’s authority. Hardy was readily answering questions honestly, despite the written discrepancy, the court concluded.

“This behavior does not amount to a ‘bad faith disregard’ for the trial court’s authority,” the ruling states, “nor does it implicate any sort of ‘stubborn resistance.’”

In other words, the judge could have kept asking clarifying questions about the defendant’s income instead of ordering him to jail. 

–Johanna F. Still

Read this newsletter online or contact The Dive team with tips and feedback at wilmington@theassemblync.com.

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Around the Region

Empty Seats: Students were blocked from attending a Cape Fear Community College Board of Trustees meeting to air concerns about the college’s recent reorganization of the marine tech program, WHQR reports.

Reason Over Rhetoric: In an op-ed for Greater Wilmington Business Journal, Gov. Roy Cooper’s transportation appointee Landon Zimmer argues that bipartisan cooperation should be prioritized in an increasingly divisive environment.

‘No Hesitation’: An off-duty New Hanover County firefighter saved a man from drowning in the Cape Fear River over the weekend, WECT reports.

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Around the State

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