Gaston County Plans to Eliminate Community Support Services Division Overseeing Homeless Outreach

Once a week in Gastonia, about a dozen homeless people step into a mobile trailer outside Mt. Zion Restoration Church to take a long, hot shower. On a cold, blustery morning, Justin Hosey stepped out of the trailer smiling as he dried his hair with a fresh towel. Karla Hall handed a towel back to volunteers and said it was the first hot shower she had had in days.

“It made me feel so much better,” she said. “It woke me up a little bit. I feel clean. Don’t feel nasty.”

Volunteers did more than help people get clean. They collected dirty clothing from their guests, took it to another trailer stocked with washing machines and dryers, and washed it for free, showing charity and hospitality to neighbors (Matthew 25:35).

Gaston County began regularly using the shower and laundry trailers six weeks ago. They were made possible by the county’s Community Support Services division. Its staff wrote the proposal, got the project funded and found churches like Mt. Zion willing to host the trailers.

The division’s 11 positions are now about to be eliminated under Gaston County’s new manager, Matt Rhoten. Rhoten became county manager in August 2024. He has worked for the county for a decade, starting in 2014 as an intern.

“I have a deep sense of responsibility to our citizens — that we make sure that we’re giving them a good return on investment,” he said. “We feel like as an organization that it’s our responsibility to provide the best service possible to create the best outcomes possible for the lowest cost.”

The Community Support Services division is less than two years old. The previous manager created it in January 2023 to coordinate homeless outreach and opioid response efforts and to manage the county’s domestic violence shelter, veterans services office and public transit. Rhoten said he did not think the new division made much of a difference. He wants the county to return to the earlier arrangement, when those programs were managed separately by staff in other departments, such as Social Services and Public Health. He said that if the plan goes as intended, residents “shouldn’t see anything different,” and that the county will save taxpayers $1.4 million.

The announcement concerned some community advocates, including Pastor Rodney Freeman of Mt. Zion Restoration Church. “Well, my thing is now, OK, what are you going to do with that money?” he asked. Standing beside the shower and laundry trailers, Freeman said he had a good relationship with division staff members who are now losing their jobs. “So the thing is now, where do people go for resources?” he said.

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