Three Years, Chapter 13: The Changes

In the spring of 2020, everything changed.

Everything changed first over COVID-19. People worked from home, others lost their jobs. Overnight, our plans changed. Our needs changed. And the organizations we counted on to meet those needs – they had to change as well.

And something else was happening too. The same week North Carolina closed its schools, a woman named Breonna Taylor was shot and killed by police in Louisville. Two months later, George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis. And as people flooded the streets in protest, once again, we realized things had to change.

It’s now been three years since that spring. What have we learned from our experience? What lessons have we taken away? What changes have we made? And which of those changes will last?

“Three Years” is a series by 97.9 The Hill’s Aaron Keck – looking back on our memories and lessons learned from our collective experience, drawn from conversations with numerous government officials, nonprofit heads, scholars and thought leaders in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro community.

Click here for the entire 15-part series.

Listen to Chapter 13:

 

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Chapter 13: The Changes

“People talk about the new normal,” I ask State Representative Renee Price. “How do you think we’ve actually changed, if at all?”

“I think we’ve changed quite a bit!” she says with a laugh.

And she’s not wrong. After all the tension and turmoil of the last three years, it’s natural to want to go back to the way things were – but sometimes you just can’t go back. And besides: we’ve had a lot of changes forced upon us in the last three years, but some of those were changes for the better.

So which of those changes are going to stick?

One thing local leaders agree on is that our new normal, among other things, will involve a lot more working from home.

“Employees have gotten used to a different kind of work-life balance,” says Chris Blue, Chapel Hill’s interim town manager. “And in this competitive employment market, we’ve got to really be sensitive to that and be thinking about ways to accommodate it. I think we can count on seeing some folks work from home at least part of the time. That was something we would not have anticipated – we might have imagined it somewhere in the future, but the future is here.”

That’s not only true for government. It’s also the case for businesses and nonprofits – like Orange County Habitat for Humanity, where executive director Jennifer Player says they found nearly all their staff calling for some kind of hybrid model.

“I think that’s here to stay,” she says. “You know, I have young kids, (I’d been) at home with them…and so at the top level, we were modeling this extreme flexibility. We’d set up a meeting and I would say ‘Sorry, I’m having this issue with my kid right now, I’ve got to cancel the meeting.’ And so I think it forced me to say, ‘well, if I have to have that flexibility, the entire organization really needs to have that.’”

That flexibility can also extend beyond the everyday workplace, to things like meetings and conferences. Renee Price says she thinks larger conferences will go back to being in person, but Hillsborough Mayor Jenn Weaver says one-shot meetings may be a different story.

“(Recently) at our MPO meeting,” she says, “we were talking about how silly it (was) that we were having DOT staff drive from Greensboro all the way to Durham once a month, (just) to answer questions for five minutes!”

And businesses and government agencies are also looking to scale back on their facility needs.

“(When) you’ve got a third of your folks working at home half of the time, your space needs are different,” says Chris Blue. “So I think there’s some interesting opportunities here over the next couple years, to see what we’ve learned from COVID and how that can affect (our) operation.”

And it’s not just about learning from COVID: it’s also about learning from the racial justice movement, which is demanding a less heavy hand from law enforcement.

Blue – formerly Chapel Hill’s police chief – says the move to a hybrid model will help there as well.

“We’ve been trying (for years) to think about ways we could shrink our policing footprint in an appropriate way,” he says. “What are the ways that we can respond to people’s problems, without always having to send an armed cop out there? We really kicked that into high gear (with) our virtual response unit, which is now going to last into the post-COVID world. And we’ve been making great progress across every law enforcement agency in Orange County, to really be thoughtful about physical arrests – only taking someone into physical custody when there’s a real public safety interest in doing that. And I think we made great progress in that regard.

“But COVID accelerated our progress, because there was a real commitment to try to minimize close contact with people,” he continues. “And so that reality, along with the kind of fertile ground that we had already put in place, means that our arrest numbers just dropped like a stone during COVID. And I think you will see that continue.”

In general, local government leaders say the big takeaway from the last three years is a greater need for flexibility across the board. In Carrboro, town officials learned that lesson early on, quickly creating emergency funds to help local businesses, renters and homeowners.

“We needed to be – perhaps more flexible than we in government are used to being,” says Mayor Damon Seils. “Be more nimble. Those were the earliest lessons: just needing to react quickly, to meet immediate needs – and to insist upon direct assistance. Not putting people through a funnel, making people check boxes, but just putting money in people’s hands. That particular experience with housing assistance has been, I think, permanently reformed, and it works a lot easier now than than it used to.”

Another thing local leaders say will continue is a greater spirit of collaboration, especially among government agencies and nonprofits.

“We’ve built good relationships across jurisdictions and within Orange County, because we had to lean on each other,” says Chapel Hill Mayor Pam Hemminger. “That will stay, because now we know we can do it.”

And that sense of collaboration also extends to individuals, who are more willing now to step in and help in times of need.

“Donations have been strong,” says Melissa Driver Beard of the CORA Food Pantry. “People really seem to understand that food insecurity is a problem. They don’t want their neighbors to go without food.”

And while agencies like Chapel Hill Police are learning how to reduce their footprint, other agencies – UNC, for instance – are emerging from the last three years with ideas about expanding theirs.

“We’ve been talking about expanding our footprint at Carolina for many years,” says UNC Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz. “More people want access to us…(and) now that every one of us have taught an online course, we’re able to reach more people through different teaching modules in different formats.”

But while the last three years have taught us how to be more flexible and more efficient, they’ve also revealed and exacerbated real problems and great needs, problems and needs that already existed even before.

“We had our mobile market in Siler City – it doesn’t start till 10:00, and people were lined up at 8:30,” says Rebecca Hankins of the CORA Food Pantry. “And they basically ran out food. First time in two years that we’ve run out of food.”

And while government agencies and nonprofits are still more committed to working together, Delores Bailey of EmPOWERment, Inc. says that collaborative spirit is less present with businesses.

“Between the nonprofits, the collaboration is still there, (but) with the for-profits, that’s kind of waned a lot,” she says. “There’s a huge gap in rental housing, affordable rental housing. All of the nonprofits are working really hard to try to create whatever they can – (but) we’re never going to be able to fill that gap without some for-profit help.”

And then there’s another question: what about those things that we want to go right back to normal?

Turns out it’s not so easy.

“Children five years old and under don’t remember a world without masks, where they weren’t afraid of everyone around them,” says Kidzu Children’s Museum CEO Jamie DeMent Holcomb. “We have taught them for two years that they have to be afraid of other people, that they can’t get near the other child, because if they get close, that person can make them sick and make them die. How do we undo that? We spent millennia teaching children to play nicely and share and collaborate. And now we’ve spent two years totally undoing that and telling them, ‘no, no, no, stay away, don’t share your toys, ever, because that can make you sick…

“And now we’re trying to take their masks off and tell them to start playing again. And we are seeing meltdowns. Because when a four year old (has) been told for two years, ‘don’t get near him,’ and now it’s like, ‘take that mask off, go play’ – they’re not just immediately retrained. It doesn’t happen with a snap of the fingers. As adults, we’re all relieved, we’re like, ‘okay, we’re vaccinated, we’re boosted, we can do things,’ and we expect our children to tag along and be as excited – but it doesn’t work that way.”

One thing is certain: the experience of the last few years has forced upon us many lasting changes, both for the better and – unfortunately – also for the worse.

“It’s hard not to throw your hands up and walk away and say, ‘how can we ever fix this?’” says Holcomb. “And we’re not at the end. Society, civilization, has been turned on its head. We’re going to have to rebuild so many things. And some of it will be amazing, change for the better. But there’s also gonna be horrible ramifications, like mental health. Those are going to reverberate throughout the rest of our lives. What we are seeing – I mean, none of us have ever seen it before. And we have no idea what to do.”

Click here for the entire 15-part series.

Featured photo: we installed Plexiglass in the studio for COVID safety purposes – only to discover that it actually improved our sound quality too.

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