Showing Digital Equity + Homelessness + Sustainability.

How Digital Equity, Homelessness and Sustainability Intersect

Picture a family that loses its apartment. Within weeks, the phone plan lapses, the benefits portal locks them out, and a heat wave hits with no cool place to go. In Charlotte-Mecklenburg, internet access, housing and weather risks land on the same households. Those who need online help, a stable home and a safe neighborhood most often find each one harder to reach.

Homelessnessthe most visible housing crisisDigital Equityaccess to modern lifeSustainabilitystewarding natural resources
Digital Equity and Homelessness: An online front door that needs an address
Homelessness and Sustainability: Who carries the environmental burden
Digital Equity and Sustainability: Green programs that rest on unequal access
Where all three meet: where daily life compounds

Where all three meet: where daily life compounds

  1. Homelessness and Digital Equity: An online front door that needs an address
  2. Sustainability and Homelessness: Who carries the environmental burden
  3. Digital Equity and Sustainability: Green programs that rest on unequal access
01

Digital Equity + Homelessness

An online front door that needs an address

Housing help, shelter intake, benefits sign-up and service referrals increasingly start online. People experiencing homelessness may lack a device, a steady connection or a fixed address for account recovery. Low-cost rentals fell from 36% of the rental market in 2015 to 8% in 2024, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Housing and Homelessness Dashboard reported. As options shrink, digital barriers make the way back from a shelter harder.

02

Homelessness + Sustainability

Who carries the environmental burden

People without stable housing face extreme heat, flooding and poor air quality with the least ability to protect themselves. Green projects and transit upgrades can raise property values and push out lower-income renters. Those renters are the same people most at risk of losing housing. Resilience built without protections for affordability can deepen the very crisis it hopes to ease. Local leaders can ask who gets to stay.

03

Digital Equity + Sustainability

Green programs that rest on unequal access

Smart energy tools, transit apps, online utility help and climate alerts all assume a good connection and digital skills. Yet 14% of homes in Mecklenburg County lacked internet access in 2023, according to fftc:FWD Folio data. Programs meant to help lower-income households can miss the very people they were built for. Green benefits will not be shared unless internet access is shared too.

How one lost lease becomes a lost lifeline

  1. 01

    Housing disruption

    A rent increase or eviction pushes a household into doubled-up or temporary housing, and address-based services slip away.

  2. 02

    Digital access breaks down

    With no fixed address, account recovery fails and benefit portals lock people out.

  3. 03

    Environmental exposure rises

    Crowded or unstable housing can mean more heat, more flood risk, worse air and less shade.

  4. 04

    Recovery needs what is missing

    Forms for new housing, utility help and resilience programs assume a connection and stability the family has lost.

Keeping affordable homes from being lost can break this chain early. So can putting devices and internet in families' hands, and planning for heat and floods block by block.

By the numbers

  • 14%14% of homes in Mecklenburg County did not have internet access in 2023
  • 2,0182,018 people in Charlotte-Mecklenburg identified as experiencing homelessness per the 2026 Point-in-Time Count
  • 48 Days48 Days The number of days Charlotte is projected to experience temperatures above 95°F by 2050 — more than double current levels
  • 8,6008,600 households connected to free home-internet services through the City of Charlotte’s “Access Charlotte” initiative

Folio links, articles, and reports

Sources & methodology15 referenced sources

Based on fftc:FWD Folio material for Digital Equity and public data sources, including the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Housing and Homelessness Dashboard, with broader context on how the issues connect.

AI assists with organizing and explaining selected fftc:FWD source material. It does not replace review by FFTC staff or the judgment of residents and civic partners.