Jason Daniels secures a rope to the thickest branch he can find halfway up one of the decades-old trees nestled in the woods behind Berkeley Mall.
He knows a powerful storm is approaching Goldsboro — that he will likely be alone not just in the coming moments, but perhaps, for days.
The only home he has known for the last several years is only a few hundred yards away, but going back to his campsite in an area known to local residents as Tent City is not an option.
His place was their place — the scene of hundreds and hundreds of love-filled moments that unfolded since the day he and his girlfriend got off a bus in Wayne County and were told by his cousin that they no longer had somewhere to lay their heads.
And now, she was gone.
So, Jason takes a deep breath and places the noose at the other end of that rope around his neck.
“I figured nobody would ever find me because I’d be taken away by that storm,” he said.
But when he jumps, the rope snaps.
“I’ve told everybody that rope broke for a reason. That’s God. That’s Jesus. That’s the work of the Lord.”
If you ask members of the homeless population who currently live in Tent City to name the first person to make a home beyond the tree line behind the railroad tracks that line Royall Avenue, every single one of them would say, “Jason.”
Up until a few weeks ago, he had lived in the woods for more than seven years, enduring everything from hurricanes and snowstorms to grueling summer heat.
But after a “dirty shot” sent him to the hospital with a severe leg infection that nearly cost him his life, the 35-year-old asked God to ensure he would never go back.
He has been clean ever since.
“I just said, ‘Lord, I’m done. I don’t want to go back. If there’s anything you can do in your power, please help me,’” Jason said. “I said, ‘I’m the son of a sinner, and I know it. And I don’t know how most people do this with you, but I know who you are, and I know your power. Show me where I’ve got to go when I leave here. Tell me where I’ve got to go, and I swear I’ll take you with me.’”
The where remains to be determined, but it will be a rehabilitation facility as far away from Tent City as he can get — in all likelihood, New Bern.
But the how is a young woman Jason believes God put into his life to save it.
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To the self-described “O.G.” of Goldsboro’s infamous homeless encampment, Kellie Floars is so much more than a person who founded a non-profit, feeds the homeless every Tuesday evening, and places single mothers and their children into hotel rooms while she helps them secure jobs, an education, and housing.
She is a guiding light who, without judgment, wraps her arms around the hopeless and the forgotten.
So, when Jason found out that Kellie, on behalf of Tommy’s Foundation, had applied for a piece of the $500,000 windfall North Carolina House Majority Leader John Bell secured for the United Way to combat the community’s homelessness crisis, he agreed to talk about why he finally decided, after nearly a decade, to leave the woods behind.
“She’s available and she’s there,” Jason said, his voice breaking. “Without the funding that she gets and the people that give to her, without those people, there would be no chance for me. I would be dead in those woods.”
Tears form in his eyes.
“She walks with the Lord, and she saved my life,” he said, taking a moment to collect himself. “If you come to me and the Lord’s with you and I know it, I’ll accept you and trust you as a friend.”
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Tent City is not the same place it was when Jason and his girlfriend set up camp more than seven years ago.
And while some scoff at the Goldsboro Police Department’s narrative about the dangers posed by some of those who reside there, the man who lived in the encampment longer than any of them said he has seen a dramatic increase in crime inside Tent City.
“A dude has gotten shot in the leg. I’ve been told to get down on the ground with a gun to my face and it not be an officer (who said it),” Jason said. “Everybody is ready to take from you with a smile on their face. What they’re doing is they’re taking stuff from other people … the tools and instruments y’all are giving them out there to clean it up, all they’re doing is hoarding it up and taking it somewhere else. That’s the truth. The more and more and more that (non-profits and churches) give, it’s gonna keep them holding on to where they’re at.”
And by staying beyond the tree line behind the railroad tracks that line Royall Avenue, each is playing a deadly game, he added.
“I just don’t want to be around the life. To see their faces and stuff and to see where they are still at, it’s hard,” Jason said. “You know, only the names are gonna change. The faces are gonna stay the same. They are all gonna look like they’re sick and dying — just holding on for a little bit until it’s over.”
But perhaps, Jason said, knowing that he — the one person who has been there every time a new person came into the encampment — made it out will give them hope.
“One day, I pray they will eventually see they need to find another way and seek the help that hopefully will still be there. I hope and pray that the help doesn’t go away,” he said. “Be stronger than that drug. Be stronger than what you’re putting into your body. It is a mindset, and it all boils down to whether you want to be out there or not. Nine times out of 10, the people out there are out there by choice.”
It’s just before noon Wednesday — several hours before Kellie and volunteers from other non-profits will take to the most well-known homeless encampments around the city with Goldsboro police officers to participate in a “count” that will lead to funding to fight homelessness in Wayne County — and Jason only has one question remaining on his application for the rehabilitation center in New Bern he expects to be living in soon.
What does he hope to gain from his rehab experience?
The answers might seem simple, but to Jason, they are larger than life.
“To stay clean. To get away from the lifestyle that I’m living because it’s not healthy for me. I need a place where I can be around level-headed people that’s pretty much in the same boat as me,” he said. “And I want a job. I want to be able to wear clean clothes every day.”
He looks down at his outfit — a pair of slacks, a zipped-up hooded sweatshirt and a dark blue peacoat — and smiles.
“This is the cleanest I’ve been in a long time,” he says. “I gotta tell you, it feels good.”
And so does being substance-free.
“I’ve been poking myself since I was 18 — shooting that meth — but this time, I made it past the shakes and the shivers,” Jason said. “Nothing will bring me back. I’m never going back to (Tent City) to stay. I will never be down there in that life again. I will never do those drugs again.”
But he will also never forget what he learned during his seven-plus-year stay in those woods — lessons about the human condition, his inner strength, and his ability to survive when it felt like he was moments away from giving up on life.
“It made me stronger. It’s given me a voice in the back of my head that’s a lot louder than it was when I was 18 and snorting powder,” Jason said. “And, you know, I never thought I would be able to cut down a tree and use that tree to build — to make shelter and a fire and survive off just that one tree. When you can survive out there, you know you can survive anywhere.”
So, if he doesn’t get into rehab, he will do whatever he must to ensure he stays on the path he believes God set him on the day He brought Kellie into his life.
“I said, ‘I don’t care if you send me to jail this time. I’ll do it there.’ I would go to the mental hospital and do it if that’s the only place she could send me,” Jason said. “I’m done. That’s how done I am.”
And he believes that when the GPD begins what has been characterized as a “compassionate relocation” of the homeless both in Tent City and encampments in other corners of the community, the men and women he has called neighbors for all these years might have no choice but to make the same decision that took him nearly a quarter of his life to finally make.
“It’s coming. I feel it. They’re coming again, and this time, they are bringing more intelligence with them. They’re done with Tent City and the problems out there with the homeless,” Jason said. “So, I hope the ones out there make the right decision. They can change, but they just don’t want to. And I hope when they do make that decision, that Kellie still has the money to help. God bless them. For real. If they ever lose the help, people like me will never have a chance — especially around here in Goldsboro, North Carolina.”
