Inside Outlanders, Raleigh’s Self-Governed Homeless Community

The Outlanders camp is tucked in a patch of woods in South Raleigh near Interstate 40, thick foliage camouflaging it from the road. To enter, follow the wide pathway flanked by fences made from discarded wooden pallets. Signs posted on tree trunks inform you that you’re on camera and ask you to “Pitch in! Put Trash In Its Place.”

There’s a fire pit, a picnic table, and a portable toilet. Strands of colored lights hang between the trees. Found objects and handmade decorations dot the campsite: a chipped garden statue, a custom metal signpost, pennants made from torn-up plastic bags tied onto blue twine. 

Individual campsites are tidy and personalized. They have heaters, generators, TVs, fans, microwaves, full-size beds, and pantries full of nonperishable food. Some residents live in clusters of tents; others have built apartment-sized dwellings out of posts, tarps, and wood panels. 

At any given time there are about a dozen people living here. Most of them are middle-aged; a handful are married couples. Newcomers and rule-breakers live on the edge in a zone called Receiving and Noncompliance. Off to the side is an area called Veterans’ Ridge, home to two former service members.

“We chose to live this way,” said Will Harris, who last year was elected mayor of Outlanders—believed to be the first self-governing homeless encampment in North Carolina. “People have that misconception: You live out in the woods, you’re either a drug addict or this and that. No we’re not. We’re none of those. We chose to do this.”  

Every Outlander has a different reason for being there. Some of them aspire to live in houses; others like Harris would prefer to camp forever. Some of them have jobs; some don’t. Some have a history of substance abuse or incarceration. Some are sick or disabled. 

Many of the campers don’t consider themselves homeless. After all, they have a safe place to sleep at night and neighbors who care about them. They’re homesteaders, an intentional community. 

“I enjoy being out here. I love it,” said Maurice Fowlkes, one of the newest residents. He’s in his early 60s, tall and lanky with a pencil mustache. He nicknamed his campsite, where he and his wife, Shaun, have been living for about seven months, Fowlkes’ Frontier. They came here to find their footing after a hard time: The couple recently got out of prison and Shaun is in cancer recovery. 

“I want other people to know, don’t be ashamed of living in a tent,” Fowlkes said. “Because you’re just in a different structure. We’re in a vinyl structure instead of a concrete [or] wood structure.”

Still, life as an Outlander isn’t easy. The camp doesn’t have running water (they shower and do laundry at Oak City Cares). Sleeping outside can be dangerous and uncomfortable. Some of the campers have to wake up at dawn to walk to work. People sometimes come from outside of the Outlanders camp to harass them. And underneath everything, there’s a low-simmering anxiety that the refuge they’ve built for themselves could be taken away.

“Building Something Together” 

Standing atop a low hill near the middle of the camp, Harris can survey every corner. 

“I have to look at everybody like they’re chess pieces,” he said. “Me and Karen are the king and queen. So now I need my knights. I need to put my pawns out where I need them.” 

Harris and his wife, Karen, live in a structure of their own design that’s bigger and sturdier than a tent but less permanent than a house. Will is tall and bald; Karen is petite with streaks of silver in her long dark hair. They both have crinkly, expressive eyes. They share their home with their black cat, Midnight, their puppy, Layza, and the occasional overnight guest who needs a safe place to sleep. 

Will works full-time as a traffic controller for a construction crew, and Karen takes odd jobs through a temp agency. They lived together in the woods for about two years before moving to the Outlanders site seven years ago. Since then, they’ve slowly attracted a community of other people who were also looking for a safe, stable place to be. 

Well before the group elected him mayor in September 2025, Will was the de facto leader. He made the rules (basically, keep your space clean and treat each other with respect) and enforced them. No one can join the group without his permission, and he’s the one who decides if and when they graduate from Receiving and Noncompliance to the main site. He tapped his “knights,” his security team, from among the most established Outlanders. Together, they keep an eye out for intruders and “noncompliant” behavior that violates the Outlanders Community Charter, a document which gave the community an official name and rules last year. 

Many, but not all, of the campers have signed the charter, which reads: “We are a group of people living together, trying to survive and get back on our feet. To do that, we need peace, respect, safety, and a clean place to stay. These rules help make sure everyone is treated right and this camp stays strong. 

“We’re not just camping—we’re building something together. The Outlanders look after one another not just because we’re a family, but because we are working together to build a place where others can find hope, healing, and a future.” 

While nothing like this has existed in North Carolina previously, cities in other parts of the country are beginning to recognize self-governing encampments as a viable, empowering solution to homelessness. 

The oldest, most fully realized example is Dignity Village in Portland, Oregon, which formed in 2000 as a tent city under a bridge and now comprises tiny homes for 60 residents on a tract of publicly owned land. Because it’s sanctioned by the city, Dignity Village has amenities the Outlanders don’t, like running water, mail service, Wi-Fi, garbage and recycling pickup, and a dedicated social worker on the city’s payroll. Villagers pay monthly dues of $100 for services and vote on big decisions. Over the years the village has incubated several “microbusinesses,” including a scrap metal recycling business, a firewood business, and a hot dog stand called Dignity Dogs. The median stay in Dignity Village is one year, and 80% of villagers reportedly move into permanent housing.

In its early days, Portland tried to squash Dignity Village. It was founded by a group of homeless activists who staged protests and parades around the city to call attention to the lack of available shelters. Each time they set up “Camp Dignity,” the police would come and decommission it. But they kept moving to new locations and re-forming. They also started a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and gave interviews to local media highlighting the injustice of being repeatedly displaced. Public support for the village grew, and in 2004, the City Council agreed to rezone a piece of land as a campground so the villagers could stay indefinitely.

A Push to End Homelessness

In Raleigh and wider Wake County, there are at least 1,200 unhoused people and only about 600 beds in the city’s overnight shelters. But even if the shelters had more capacity, lots of people don’t like or trust them.

“You’re essentially in a minimum security prison,” said Penny, her pale green eyes narrowing in frustration. She and her husband, Johnny, learned about the Outlanders less than a year ago when they were bouncing between shelters and budget motels. (Some of the people in this story, including Penny and Johnny, asked to be identified by their first names only for privacy.)

They found that camping with the Outlanders offered them a degree of freedom they’d been missing in the shelters, which are tightly controlled. You can’t bring in food or even a sealed plastic water bottle, Penny explained. You can’t bring most of your belongings into the shelter with you. Once you come in for the night, you can’t step outside for fresh air. Many people avoid the shelters because they’d be separated from their pet or their partner (many of Raleigh’s shelters are gender segregated). 

“If somebody’s angering you, and you need to get away from them, you can’t leave,” Penny said. “And then they treat you like you’re inmates. They have jail-orange bedding, jail-orange blankets, jail-orange towels, jail-orange washcloths. It’s like, you want us to be self-sufficient, but you won’t let us be self-sufficient.”

That leaves hundreds of people sleeping in cars, on couches, in jails and hospitals, and on the street every night. And being unsheltered makes every other dimension of life harder: If you’re struggling with the basics like shelter, hygiene, food, and sleep, it’s very hard to stay employed, maintain relationships, save money, and take care of your physical and mental health.

Raleigh set a goal last year to reduce unsheltered homelessness to “rare, brief, and non-recurring” instances by 2030. Wake County has the same goal. Last year, Raleigh launched a pilot program aimed at getting unhoused people into permanent housing by providing them with rental assistance, case management, and peer support for up to two years. The first participants were 50 people who had been living in an encampment in Dix Park. Six months into the program, 90% of the group was housed and the encampment was gone, according to the city.

This summer, the Wake County Continuum of Care, the agency in charge of coordinating homeless services across local governments and nonprofits, plans to announce a “surge” to get more unsheltered people into housing using the same model. With $22 million, the agency believes it can “effectively end unsheltered homelessness” in two years, director Eileen Rosa told the Raleigh City Council in April.

That’s good news. But it might cause problems for the Outlanders, who by the city’s and county’s definitions, are chronically unsheltered. Their improvised version of case management, peer support, and transitional housing isn’t documented on any website or funded by any outside grant.

The Outlanders inhabit a gray zone between sanctioned and unsanctioned. Technically, they are occupying public land without authorization. The city could decide tomorrow to decommission the camp and evict the residents. Yet, Harris says the police department and fire department know they’re there, and no one has tried to kick them out. It’s not like they’re taking up prime real estate; the area is hilly, close to the highway, and unlikely to be developed anytime soon. There are no houses or businesses nearby to complain. For now, the Outlanders’ presence is tolerated. 

In response to questions from the INDY, a Raleigh Police Department spokesperson wrote in an email that the department’s approach to encampments is to prioritize “outreach, safety, and connection to services whenever possible” and that police do not “independently initiate homeless encampment closures.”

Encampment closures tend to happen when the property owner has concerns about environmental impacts, public safety, or repeated criminal activity, the spokesperson said. The Outlanders camp is peaceful and unobtrusive, with the recent exception of a stabbing in May. A man whom the Outlanders know—and had previously reported to police for unpredictable, sometimes aggressive behavior—came into the camp and attacked two people, who sustained non-life-threatening injuries. The attacker was arrested and is currently in jail. Harris says this was the first incident of its kind and doesn’t represent the community norms he and the other Outlanders are working hard to uphold.

Before closing an encampment, the police spokesperson wrote, the police department’s co-response unit staffed by officers and social workers known as ACORNS and partner outreach teams will “attempt to conduct repeated outreach and engagement efforts” to connect residents with social services and let them know the area may be closed. The agencies “work closely with city departments, property owners, and community partners to ensure the process is coordinated, informed, and as respectful as possible.”

The Eliza Park Homeless Initiative

To receive outside help, the Outlanders needed an official channel through which they could access Wake County’s homeless support apparatus without overly exposing themselves and jeopardizing the tacit permission they’ve received from the city to continue existing. 

Enter Paul Geigel, an optician turned homeless services advocate and founder of the nonprofit Eliza Park Homeless Initiative (EPHI). Geigel met residents of the South Raleigh encampment in 2024 while he was running a weekly food pantry and making an amateur documentary about homelessness in Raleigh. He befriended the group—particularly Harris, with whom he felt an instant kinship—and asked what they needed.

Though Raleigh doesn’t officially recognize Outlanders as a community or homeless services provider, EPHI is bringing the camp closer to the formal infrastructure it currently exists outside of. Geigel acts as a conduit between Outlanders, the police, and the Wake Continuum of Care, especially in light of the recent stabbing.  

As another example, based on requests from the Outlanders, Geigel came up with the “Cash for Trash” program, where participants clean up trash from the woods near Eliza Pool Park and sell the filled bags back to EPHI for $10 apiece. They don’t have to register as employees or deal with employment documentation, and they get paid immediately in cash to clean up public spaces. 

In June 2025, Raleigh City Councilmember Christina Jones gave the nonprofit $8,000 in seed funding for the Cash for Trash program from the City Council’s discretionary budget. In December, Councilmember Jonathan Lambert-Melton gave the nonprofit another $5,000 from the same discretionary pool. 

The nonprofit hosted its fourth and fifth Cash for Trash days in April and May. In April, 13 paid participants and seven community volunteers filled 111 bags with 3,345 pounds of trash and recycling in the course of a few hours. The nonprofit plans to continue holding cleanups and collecting data in the hope of proving their concept to a longer-term funder.

Geigel’s group also provides weekly food assistance for the Outlanders and people in their orbit. On Sunday mornings, they bring a tower of cheese pizzas and bins full of donated nonperishables to the gazebo at Eliza Pool Park, gatherings that double as casual, nondenominational church services (though Geigel stresses that he did not impose the religious component and participation is not required to access the food pantry). The group stands in a circle and passes a microphone around, sharing stories, prayers, and reflections.

“I finally found a community I felt like I knew I belonged to … that would help me help myself, but also let me help them,” Penny shared on a recent Sunday. “I have yet to encounter somebody [here] I really don’t like, which is kind of interesting, because I’m not a people person. But at the same time, I want to help people.”

Geigel runs the nonprofit as a volunteer but would like to expand. Both he and Harris have big plans for replicating their grassroots homelessness response model.

Growing the Community

When Harris began building what would become the Outlanders’ camp, he was doing it for Karen. He set it up to be “as hippie as I could get it” according to her tastes, so she’d feel comfortable inviting her adult children to visit. He strung up colored lights and rigged the ceiling of their home to be removable so that on warm, clear nights, they could lie in bed and look up at the stars. 

Karen, though quieter and less authoritative than her husband, is a community leader in her own right: the spiritual, emotional kind. People tend to seek her out when they’re struggling. She and the other women in the camp formed a group called the Crafty Divas—an informal peer support group with a side of arts and crafts. She’s one of the people who helped make Outlanders into a true community.

Harris tells a story about a homeless veteran named Bernie who has been living in the woods in Raleigh for more than 25 years. This winter, Bernie got an infection and ended up in the hospital, where they amputated part of his foot. He was discharged, in a wheelchair, on the night of a January storm that coated Raleigh in snow and ice. He tried to check into a shelter but was turned away because it was full. Harris said he found Bernie wheeling himself down the road and brought him to the Outlanders.

“The only reason he survived that snow was that me and Karen came up with a tent, hooked up electrical cords from our generator, and put a heater inside that tent,” Harris said.

But Harris believes Outlanders offer a lot more than basic survival. He’s seen the community restore people’s senses of purpose and self. 

Take Penny and Johnny. They met in a mental health treatment facility, found each other again at Oak City Cares, a service hub for people experiencing homelessness, and are rebuilding their lives as Outlanders.

“I got my dignity back,” Johnny said. “Truly I’ve been blessed, because we’re in a community, we look out for each other. [For] so many people out there, it’s completely different. I feel sorry for them. But our circle, our organization, has tried to help and mend people that have been wounded.”

Penny has been unhoused on and off for about 18 years. She said that in a perfect world, “I’d like to have a home with my husband and be able to just live. But at the same time, we already have that. … I’m out here in a tent. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have a home. It doesn’t mean I don’t have a neighborhood, a community.”

Harris would like to expand Outlanders and invite more people to join. To do that, he’d need to reach an agreement with Raleigh or Wake County similar to Dignity Village’s with Portland, to permanently and legally occupy a piece of land. It doesn’t need to be their current spot in South Raleigh. In fact, Harris would prefer they move somewhere a little more remote, where they could plant a vegetable garden and raise livestock.

“It’s overdue,” Harris said. “These are citizens of the United States.”

What he is envisioning sounds a bit like farm-based therapy, a newish intervention model that exists all over the U.S.— including down the road in Pittsboro.

Harris’ version would emphasize community, peer support, and shared responsibility. Riffing on it, Geigel envisions daily shuttles to worksites, tiny homes for residents, and a commercial campground nearby to create jobs and fund the whole endeavor.

Convincing Wake County to let the Outlanders start a self-governed therapeutic community on public land feels like a tall order, one that would require funding, political will, and a maze of permissions. 

For now, Harris doesn’t want to disrupt the fragile equilibrium the Outlanders have today. He is focused on tending to his work, his community, and his perfect view of the night sky.

“Staying out in the middle of a storm, while the trees and branches around you crack, and you can look up at the heavens and see God being pissed—I love it,” he said. “Ain’t nothing like it.”

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