St. Albans Residents Have Mixed Feelings On Growing ‘Tent City’

All over the country and in the mountain state, more and more people are learning what it means to cope with homelessness. That story and more on this West Virginia Morning.

States in the Ohio Valley are receiving more than $28 million from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to combat the novel Coronavirus. Liam Niemeyer reports the funding is part of an $8.3 billion funding bill signed by President Trump on Friday.

According to the Appalachian Regional Commission, minorities make up almost 20 percent of the population throughout Appalachia. African Americans make up about half of that minority group. Reporter Eric Douglas brings us the story of one man’s life story based on the title of a talk he gave recently called “Growing Up Black in Appalachia.”

Homelessness is one of the things that divides us in America. While the number of homeless people nationally has dropped in the past decade, there was an increase between 2017 and 2018.

A preacher in St. Albans set out to help. He now owns and supports a homeless encampment there. Independent reporter Kyle Vass produced a story on the tent camp last fall for West Virginia Public Broadcasting. Since then, the encampment has grown.

For the latest installment of WVPB’s Us & Them podcast, Vass reports on how nearby residents feel about their new neighbors. Here’s an excerpt from this episode.

West Virginia Morning is a production of West Virginia Public Broadcasting which is solely responsible for its content.

Support for our news bureaus comes from West Virginia University, Concord University, and Shepherd University.