Bluefield Becomes Fourth West Virginia City To Pass Camping Ban This Year

The Bluefield Board of Directors voted Tuesday to adopt an ordinance that would make it illegal to sleep on public property. 

The U.S. The Supreme Court ruled in June that local government ordinances with civil and criminal penalties for camping on public land do not constitute cruel and unusual punishment of homeless people. Since that ruling, four Mountain State cities have passed “camping bans”, aimed at curbing the presence of people experiencing homelessness on public property. 

Leslie Nash, an attorney with Mountain State Justice, a non-profit legal services firm, says that ordinances like Bluefield’s criminalize poverty without addressing the root causes of homelessness. 

“People sleep outside often because they have nowhere to go, and whether that’s due to disability or to a mental health issue, to a substance use disorder or addiction of some kind, whether that’s because they’re fleeing domestic violence or parental or spousal abuse,” Nash said. “People end up in the situation for a whole host of reasons, and the last thing that any of them need is to be fined and get a criminal record and potentially end up jailed because they have nowhere else to go” 

Bluefield is the fourth city in West Virginia to pass a camping ban this year, after Clarksburg, Morgantown, and Princeton. 
A copy of the ordinance was not made available in time for publication. The video recording of the meeting where the camping ban was approved lost audio for about ten minutes, at the time the camping ban was approved.