Tomorrow, Morgantown City Council will vote to either repeal its camping ban ordinance or to double down and send the issue to voters in spring of 2025. A petition for referendum received enough signatures to stop the ordinance and send it back to council for reconsideration.
Morgantown is one of four West Virginia cities to enact an ordinance outlawing “camping” on public property: Wheeling has had a ban since January; Clarksburg recently voted to implement a ban effective Jan. 1, 2025; and just last week, Bluefield voted to create a similar ordinance despite not having a particularly large homeless population.
Such bans began sweeping the nation — and taking root in the Mountain State — after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of a camping ban in Johnson v. Grants Pass. The City of Grants Pass had implemented a new law that banned camping or sleeping on public property, punishable by fines or jail time, even if the offender was homeless with no other place to go. Opponents argued that the law was a violation of the Eighth Amendment protection against cruel and unusual punishment. The Supreme Court disagreed and allowed the law to stand, paving the way for similar bans across the U.S.
Which is how West Virginia has ended up with four such camping bans. All are very similar: First offense gets a warning; second and third offenses are punishable with fines and/or jail time.
Morgantown has a very visible homeless population, despite the city’s repeated efforts to remove unhoused people from downtown and other public spaces.
Several years ago, the city worked with organizations and charities to move the majority of addiction, mental health and social services into the former Ramada Inn on Scott Avenue, a couple miles outside of downtown. The new hub was named Hazel’s House of Hope, and while its denizens do good work, moving the services failed — as many of us predicted — to also remove the homeless people out of downtown.
I can respect that the businesses downtown perceive unhoused people as a detriment to their livelihoods. I can respect that many people are uncomfortable seeing or interacting with homeless individuals, especially since there is a strong association between homelessness, addiction, and mental health problems.
What I can’t respect is criminalizing someone’s mere existence.
Morgantown does not have enough shelter space for its unhoused populace. That was abundantly clear last winter, even before Bartlett House collapsed. For many of Morgantown’s unhoused, there is literally no place to go.
Even if there was, in theory, enough shelter beds for every person sleeping outside or in their cars, many shelters have barriers that make them unusable for certain people: strict sobriety requirements, separate quarters for men and women that cause families to be divided, no-pet policies, and rigid operation hours.
That’s the part so many of us who have never experienced homelessness don’t understand. What if your shift at work doesn’t end until 7 p.m., but the shelter has a strict must-be-inside-at-exactly-7-p.m. policy? Where do you keep your belongings while you’re at work, since the shelter makes you clear everything out every morning? What if you’re a single parent with a child of the opposite sex and you can’t get into the designated family apartments that would allow you to stay together? Would you want to leave your beloved pet — possible the only family you have left — behind?
No- and low-barrier shelters are hard to find because they can be risky to run, which is why many of the unhoused individuals who can’t use regular shelters resort to sleeping outdoors or in encampments. They do not have a feasible place to go, so a camping ban effectively punishes them for existing.
Even worse, fines and/or jail time make it even harder to escape the cycle of homelessness: fines drain what little savings the individual may have, and an arrest record makes it harder to get a job and access certain types of housing.
So far, Wheeling’s has been the only one to take effect. But Wheeling’s ban also contains a noteworthy exception: the city manager can designate an exempted site. This has allowed the homeless people there who can’t get into a shelter for whatever reason (e.g., having a pet, not meeting sobriety requirements, working odd hours) to create a semi-permanent encampment.
The hope was the designated exemption site would open the door for a managed encampment — an official homeless encampment overseen by area social services or charities. Thus far, no organization has stepped up to run a managed encampment, but the designated exemptions have allowed for a place where volunteers and services can reach the individuals who need them.
Wheeling’s system isn’t perfect; it’s already moved the designated exemption site several times this year, which means the inhabitants must periodically back up all of their belongings and trek to a site several miles away. Sometimes this takes them further away from some services but perhaps closer to others. This month, Wheeling is moving the exemption site to a more open space with an access road so emergency vehicles and others can reach the camp throughout the winter.
Back here in Morgantown, city council will meet tomorrow night, where it will receive the certified petition to repeal the camping ban ordinance. At that point, councilors will have to decide whether to let the ordinance die or to double down on it and place it on the April 2025 ballot.
You can attend the meeting in person, if you desire, at 7 p.m. Or you can write to city councilors and remind them that criminalizing homelessness does not make it disappear.
And for my readers outside of Morgantown and West Virginia: Keep an eye on your local governments. There’s a good chance a camping ban will be coming to a municipality near you, if it hasn’t already.
J. Nelson - Writer 