Mecklenburg County leaders leave behind many on public assistance
The Catherine M. Wilson Center on Billingsley Road in Charlotte has been open for decades. It is where many have come to receive public assistance, such as food stamps and Medicaid. On December 31, 2025, the county closed the lobby to prevent the public from getting assistance there anymore. The Deputy Commissioner of the building said that residents were notified through means such as signs at the building and press releases. The problem is that not everyone got the message because nothing was sent in the mail to notify residents on assistance and ensure that all were aware of the closure.
As of late March, 2026, an average of more than 45 people per day were showing up to receive public assistance. Many did not know about the closure. For instance, at the time, to receive Family and Children’s Medicaid, a person only needed to be recertified once a year, with any documentation needed for recertification often being conducted over the phone, by mail, and/or email.
The issue is that for someone struggling to make ends meet, often spending 20 minutes waiting and paying for a bus and time spent waiting after having to transfer buses, it is economically costly to make a trip to the WIlson Center, only to be rejected, in some cases by security, and told to go to another location.
Charlotics founder made the county aware of the issue at the April 7, 2026 Board of County Commissioners meeting. At the entire meeting, not one commissioner spoke out to directly support notification through mail to those on public assistance. The county has a policy, which unfortunately refuses public dialogue with speakers (but that’s another issue); yet this should not prevent dialogue among the Board themselves from discussing how to ensure people struggling the most in the community are not left behind. The Board has a duty to look out for those who don’t know where their next meal would come from or where they might sleep that night.
The Deputy Director of the Wilson Center stated it would cost the county $40,000 to notify everyone, who needed to know, that the building was closed. The county refused to do this despite the county commissioner stating in the prior budget meeting that the county was scheduled to have an excess of roughly $60 million at the end of 2026 if the decision was not made to pay off debt more aggressively.
As of June, 2025, it was reported that residents are continuing to show up to the Wilson Center and being turned away.
There are a great number of workers at the Wilson Center, who work extremely hard to process cases (at least one class of new employees went through meditation training to deal with the stress of the job). In this case of the lack of notification to residents about the closure, it is the leadership of Mecklenburg County that is in the wrong, severely.
