House Passes Statewide Camping Ban For Second Year In A Row

The House of Delegates narrowly passed a statewide camping ban Tuesday.

House Bill 5319 makes it a criminal offense to camp or store personal belongings on public or private property without authorization. 

Del. Geno Chiarelli, R-Monongalia, is the lead sponsor of the bill. . He was also the lead sponsor of a similar camping ban bill – House Bill 2382 – that the House of Delegates approved during the 2025 regular session.

He and other supporters of the bill argued the bill was necessary not to punish homeless people, but to address rampant criminality.

“This bill is targeted at criminal vagrancy with people that are engaged in petty crime and actively are a detriment and they destroy the communities around them,” Chiarelli said. “I think that what we try to do sometimes is we try to paint every single person experiencing homelessness with the same brush. They just need a little bit of help. They just need a hand up. This might get me in a little bit of trouble for saying but that’s just not true.”

The bill faced bipartisan opposition on the chamber floor, where Del. Henry Dillon, R-Wayne, asked why existing criminal code could not be used to address nuisances like the ones Chiarelli described.

“That would be a question for the officers that would be answering…” Chiarelli replied.

Democrats including Del. Anitra Hamilton, D-Monongalia, argued for the retention of local control over the issue, noting the work of community members in places like Morgantown and Wheeling to try and address homelessness with a grassroots approach.

“This type of legislation undermines the work of organizations. We ask organizations to step up, and we have. There are churches that feed every day to ensure – not the state – but churches who step up every day to ensure that our homeless have a hot meal, churches that provide basic hygiene packets,” she said. “We have stepped up to try to combat this because we’re living in a time where the cost of living is so high they don’t stand a chance, and the state’s response to homelessness is to put them in jail, to further create a barrier for them to not only get on their feet to succeed.”

Del. Evan Worrell, R-Cabell, argued the bill is both cruel and inefficient. He pointed to studies showing that providing housing to people experiencing homelessness is more fiscally efficient than hospital stays or incarceration, which he said costs West Virginia $80,000 per year per inmate.

“I would submit that we could probably do that for less than $80,000 per person for a homeless individual, to help them turn their lives around and not go into corrections,” Worrell said. “I think there’s a better way to advocate and work on our homeless population throughout the state. I don’t believe that this bill is doing that. I don’t believe that making people who are down on their luck trying to turn their lives around, being, you know, fined and guilty of misdemeanors. I don’t believe that’s the right way to go about this.”

The House broadly supported and approved HB 2382 last year with a vote of 89 Yeas to 9 Nays. Tuesday’s vote was a much narrower 62 Yeas to 32 Nays. HB 5319 now heads to the Senate.

The American Civil Liberties Union of West Virginia weighed in on the bill Tuesday afternoon. The organization issued the following statement: