Clarksburg Mission Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Us & Them: The Stigma of Sobriety

America has faced a pandemic, a polarizing election and racial equity battles in the past year. But there’s been another crisis continuing to fester — the opioid epidemic. Deaths are up with more than 1,200 West Virginians dying from overdoses last year. The fight for sobriety now deals with its own tragic divide — When is someone sober?

The road to recovery comes in many forms. For some abstinence works. But others, especially those addicted to opiates, find they need help to get off of such powerful drugs. For their recovery they turn to medication-assisted treatment. That approach has split the treatment world and created a stigma around sobriety.

This episode of Us & Them is presented with support from the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation, the CRC Foundation and the West Virginia Humanities Council.

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The Clarksburg Mission is a Christian-centered treatment facility located in Clarksburg, W.Va. that supports people in either abstinence-based or medication assisted substance use disorder recovery.

The neon cross outside the Clarksburg Mission delivers a simple, straightforward message as to the spiritual underpinnings of their recovery program.

Lou Ortenzio is executive director of the Clarksburg Mission, Clarksburg, W.Va.

Melissa Carter is recovery coach here at the Clarksburg Mission in Clarksburg, W.Va.

Angela Knight is a program manager at the Clarksburg Mission, Clarksburg, W. Va.

Dr. James Berry, Director of WVU Medicine’s Addiction Psychiatry Fellowship

Gabriella Dahalia-Jarrett with her “murphing” dog Sid.

COVID-19 Accelerated This W.Va. Community’s Efforts To End Homelessness

COVID-19 has forced Lou Ortenzio to assume a new role.

“My new job,” Ortenzio, executive director of the Clarksburg Mission in Clarksburg, West Virginia, said, “is getting here in the morning, finding people clustered around and having to tell them, ‘You’ve gotta go.’”

The mission offers emergency shelter to up to 50 people a night and has a dorm for men and another for women and children, each of which can accommodate about 20. It also offers services and support for those in recovery from drug addiction. The facility went into lockdown in March to protect its residents from contracting and potentially spreading COVID-19.

“It’s awful,” Ortenzio said of the need to turn people away, “but I’ve got to protect the folks who are here.” The mission has provided a few tents, but far more assistance is needed. “I don’t know where to tell them to go.”

Harrison County, of which Clarksburg is the county seat, has been vexed by homelessness. The county has the second-highest reported per-capita homeless population in the state. To date, there’s been no coordinated response to address it.

But on an April weekend, a group of volunteers with the Harrison County Task Team on Homelessness began a process they hope is the first step toward a long-term solution.

Marissa Rexroad, pictured here in 2019 when she was still a member of the Clarksburg Mission’s staff, is leading the charge to house people experiencing homelessness in Clarksburg during the COVID-19 outbreak.

Equipped with a COVID-19 screening tool developed by the West Virginia Coalition to End Homelessness, they hit the streets to assess and prioritize needs and began placing people in a local motel, with funding provided by the coalition and the United Way of Harrison County. The next step is securing more permanent housing.

“We’ve had a lot of stumbling blocks along the way,” said Marissa Rexroad of past efforts to address homelessness in Harrison County. Rexroad is a longtime advocate for her community’s homeless residents, a former employee of the Clarksburg Mission and an organizer of this new initiative. She hopes that out of the COVID-19 crisis the community will pull together in pursuing a solution.

Step by Step

Across the state of West Virginia, advocates for the homeless are mobilizing.

It’s been more than a month of “really chaotic contingency planning,” said Zach Brown, CEO of the West Virginia Coalition to End Homelessness. The coalition has been focused on two primary objectives: ensuring that homeless shelters have the supplies they need to guard the safety of those within their walls and working with communities to keep people who are living in encampments in place and safe.

“It’s definitely not the time to be razing or disbanding encampments,” Brown said, “because you run the risk of scattering those people to the wind.” Keeping the encampments intact, he said, makes it easier to get information out about safety precautions, and the camps serve as a central location for portable hygiene facilities and food drops.

Meanwhile, the task team in Clarksburg is taking action to get some people off the streets and into a safer environment. Over the weekend of April 18-19, they assessed the needs of about 20, the majority of whom have been living in abandoned buildings.

Priority for being moved into one of the motel rooms that have been made available is being given to those with psychiatric issues that prevent them from properly caring for themselves, those with chronic health issues and anyone over the age of 55. People began moving into the rooms that Sunday. Rexroad then began to arrange housing-focused case management.

“A big piece that we’ve been missing in Harrison County,” she said, “is a local street outreach provider who’s linked to housing.” Task team members are stepping in to provide that service.

The task team will continue to provide case management by phone and will be checking in with folks daily to ensure they have what they need. For some, the solution will be permanent supportive housing made available through the Clarksburg-Harrison Regional Housing Authority. For others, it might be assistance with a deposit and first month’s rent on an apartment and linkage to social services that can help them gain firmer footing.

These most immediate measures are steps in a longer-term solution Rexroad and members of the task team have been working on for nearly a year, long before COVID-19 was a threat to their Appalachian community.

Rexroad and her team had mapped a multifaceted plan to create a housing-first program, placing people in housing then providing them with mental-health, substance-misuse or other supports as needed, linking already-existing services in the county in a more organized context.

But when coronavirus arrived in West Virginia, and Harrison County was deemed a hotspot for community spread, the plan accelerated. The most immediate priority, said Rexroad, who is also the United Way of Harrison County’s housing and communications director, is to help protect the community from the advance of COVID-19; secondly, “to begin building relationships with those on the street and begin the process of getting them into the appropriate program and helping them to stabilize” for the long term.

“I think we’ll start to see our community become more understanding as they see that [homelessness] can be effectively addressed,” she said.

The task team requested $5,000 from the Harrison County Commission to help finance the project for the next 30 days. If approved, equal funding would be provided by the commission, the United Way and the West Virginia Coalition to End Homelessness.

At its Tuesday, April 21, meeting, the commission tabled the request and asked for additional information.

Commissioner Patsy Trecost recognizes the funding as only a first step. Sometimes, he said, “you have to throw a Band-Aid on as a temporary solution when you know you really need stitches.”

“I am on board with the $5,000 allocation to give to the United Way, as a nonprofit organization, to do what they want with it, and move forward with the housing,” he said.

Guidance from Up the Road

For a model of an effective community-wide response to homelessness in a time of crisis, Clarksburg advocates looked 40 miles up the highway to the city of Morgantown.

Rachel Coen, the West Virginia Coalition to End Homelessness’s chief program officer, said that the people of Morgantown, which already had a housing-first program in place, have really stepped up since the outbreak of COVID-19.

“This has brought everybody together in a way that they’re very much relying on one another,” she said. “Everybody’s moved forward in a way I’ve never seen before.”

Support, Coen said, has come from, among others, the county commission, the health department, the police and EMS, the hospitals, the United Way and Bartlett Housing Solutions, which provides supportive services locally to those in need of a home.

Keri DeMasi, Bartlett’s executive director, said that her staff “pulled the trigger very, very quickly, a little bit ahead of the curve” in addressing the coronavirus outbreak in Morgantown, providing their clients with information on proper sanitation, distancing and the availability of resources. “We know our clients and we know their vulnerability.”

The staff is now making certain that those they serve are receiving meals and medications; they’re getting them to necessary doctor’s appointments and coordinating virtual support services. They also have a Facebook group to circulate information. For more than a month, Bartlett staff has been taking the temperature of everyone they serve at their emergency shelter. “My favorite part of the day,” DeMasi said, “is when I see that all temperatures are normal.”

“This community has just been unbelievably responsive,” she said. “Not just the other agencies in this community but the citizens.” For example: She posted a request for Easter baskets, and within an hour the need was met.

Filling the Gaps

Zach Brown said that, as of last week, to his knowledge there had been no confirmed cases of COVID-19 among those being housed in emergency and temporary shelters in the state.

At the Clarksburg Mission, the staff is taking every precaution to protect their residents and the broader community. They’re taking in no new residents; those within are closely monitored.

Not everyone is able to cope; many can’t take the close quarters and careful scrutiny. “If people wander away, if they’re AWOL, then they’re asked not to come back,” Lou Ortenzio said.

The Clarksburg Mission, in North Central West Virginia, is a faith-based emergency shelter that has expanded in recent years to serve the needs of a community hit hard by the opioid epidemic. It now offers sober living dorms for men and women, emergency beds for veterans and a sober living home, in addition to its support programs for people in recovery.

Marissa Rexroad is hopeful that out of this crisis will come an awareness “that we have major gaps in our system, and maybe give us an opportunity to educate folks about what addressing this in an effective manner looks like. We have not had that opportunity yet.”

“When you have a crisis like this,” Brown said, “you sort of hope the better angels of people’s nature are gonna rise to the top and things like the bureaucracy or politics or moral viewpoints of homelessness are just gonna go away, and we all come together and work toward one solution.”

“All it takes is all of us,” Ortenzio said. “That’s what we say. It really takes an effort of the entire community to try to solve the disconnection problems that we have and the isolation that folks suffer.”

This article was produced with support from the One Foundation.

With Higher Risks Of Relapse During COVID-19, Appalachians Are Finding New Ways To Support Recovery

At 8:15 every weekday morning, the Clarksburg Mission’s staff circles up their chairs to share gratitude. It’s generally thankfulness for something that happened within the past 24 hours, big or small– help from dorm residents in moving furniture, a kind word from a colleague, a new day.

Desi Underwood, who serves as the mission’s ministry coordinator, said that in the past four weeks, as the cloud of COVID-19 has drawn nearer to her Appalachian community, spirits remain high; appreciation, deep. She said that throughout the mission, those with the resources to do so are pulling together impressively.

Desi Underwood is the ministry coordinator at the Clarksburg Mission, located in Clarksburg, West Virginia, where she’s continuing to provide programming for the 50 people who are now on lockdown in the emergency shelter to avoid the spread of COVID-19. Photo:

But not everyone within the walls of the Clarksburg, West Virginia, facility has the resources. The mission offers emergency shelter to up to 50 people a night in its Welcome Room. It has a dorm for men and another for women and children, each of which can house about 20. A large majority of those for whom the mission is a temporary or midterm home have experienced addiction; many also grapple with mental health issues.

COVID-19 is a formidable challenge to those across the spectrum of addiction– those in recovery and those still actively using– and to those who provide them with care.

Melissa Carter has traversed that spectrum. Her Martinsburg, West Virginia, youth was nightmarish. She suffered sexual and emotional abuse; repeated rejection and displacement. She’s been jailed and imprisoned multiple times, rehabbed and relapsed many more.

She eventually made her way to the Clarksburg Mission’s sober-living housing, some 300 miles west of her hometown. It was there that, at 38, she was thrown her first birthday party. Carter has been drug-free for two years. She’s now serving multiple roles at the mission, including as a recovery coach.

“Stress is a big trigger,” Carter said of those in recovery. Today, stress abounds.

As of Tuesday, no one at the mission had tested positive for COVID-19. But everyone there is bracing for the near inevitable.

They began preparing four weeks ago with hand-washing and social-distancing instructions.

“And then it just got more and more intense,” said Lou Ortenzio, the mission’s executive director, “and we realized we should probably lock down as a facility.”

Lou Ortenzio’s name is known in many circles in the tight knit community of Clarksburg, West Virginia. Shown here in 2019, Ortenzio was once a prominent doctor in the area and struggled with substance abuse issues of his own, but now serves as the executive director of the Mission where he leads programs and support systems for others in recovery.

Many residents, Ortenzio said, “have come through, found amazing strength, have stepped up and are volunteering and cooperating in new ways,” cooking, cleaning, comforting.

But it’s a fragile equilibrium. Like caregivers and advocates everywhere, the Clarksburg Mission team fears what the COVID-19 crisis will mean for those along the edge of addiction.

Sharing Vital Information

Measures are being taken across the country to help people in recovery get the care they require.

On March 16, the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration relaxed its restrictions on the number of doses of methadone clinics can dispense to patients. Methadone is used in medication-assisted treatment for opioid addiction.

In the past, most people enrolled in an opioid-treatment program would have to visit a clinic daily to receive their dose. After proving stable, they might be allowed to take a few home with them. Now, a person considered stable can take 28 doses home; those not yet deemed fully stable but a good risk can be given 14 doses.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid loosened restrictions on services its beneficiaries can receive through telehealth, using computers or smartphones. Health care providers now are able to offer more addiction-treatment services via telehealth. And providers can now initiate medication-assisted treatment, or MAT, via telehealth.

Cabin Creek Health Systems, based in Dawes, West Virginia, 20 miles south of Charleston, serves more than 100 people in its MAT program. Cabin Creek is now using telehealth to reach those patients.

“We tend to have strong relationships with the patients in that program,” said Executive Director Craig Robinson. “They know and trust us, and that carries over into being willing to try the new technologies.”

Narcotics Anonymous chapters throughout Appalachia are convening meetings on Zoom, and Narcotics Anonymous World Services has a webpage with listings for virtual meetings all over the world.

“It’s been really cool to see the recovery communities come together so strongly,” said Dan McCawley, a peer-recovery coach with West Virginia Peers in Morgantown who is himself in long-term recovery. “I’m going to more meetings now than I did before because it only takes me 30 seconds to join in. I’ve been to meetings in Ireland, California, New York, North Carolina, Virginia. It’s cool to feel a sense of unity worldwide, that the recovery community is still there for one another. ”

Telehealth is not, however, always a viable option.

Hillary Brown is director of the Steady Collective, which offers harm-reduction services, referrals to care and education for those using drugs and in recovery in Asheville, North Carolina. The Steady Collective serves a great many people who are homeless, and, Brown said, “virtual isn’t accessible for our folks. Most of our folks don’t have phones or any access to internet.”

The Steady Collective is now providing its syringe-exchange services from a mobile unit. But Brown is plenty concerned about the other essential services her clients are losing access to: food, housing, public restrooms and medical care. (The North Carolina Harm Reduction Coalition has petitioned municipalities to reopen public restrooms and deploy portable latrines and to refrain from clearing encampments.)

Brown and her colleagues are distributing masks made by a local kid (“Great fabric. They’ve been a big hit.”) and hand sanitizer provided by the state. They have an herbalist riding along with them a couple of times a week talking with people about how to manage withdrawal symptoms using herbal formulas.

A lot of the folks the Steady Collective is serving are not getting much information around COVID-19, Brown said. “They don’t have access to televisions or to social media, and so they’re not getting a lot of updates about this. So we’ve had to do a lot of education, giving folks materials and saying, like, ‘You know, this is a serious thing.’”

“But how many protections can you really give yourself when your only option for staying inside is an apartment where 10 people are staying,” Brown asked, “or an abandoned house or camp where a lot of people are sleeping?”

Stephanie Almeada is battling a lack of access to information in her rural Western North Carolina community, where she is providing emergency tents, food and medical supplies to people who are homeless, some of whom are also in recovery.

“I have really deep concerns that because we’re working with so many folks who were already immune compromised, that we’re going to lose a lot of people,” she said. “And that’s really heartbreaking.”

Seventy miles to the southwest of Asheville in Franklin, North Carolina – a town of 3,800 in a mountainous, predominantly rural region – Stephanie Almeida provides care to those across the spectrum of addiction. She runs Full Circle Recovery Center and is the executive director of Smoky Mountain Harm Reduction.

Almeida is distributing food, medical supplies and tents for clients who are homeless. But like Brown, she recognizes the urgency of providing information. In these mountains, bandwidth is coveted; cell phone service is spotty.

“Most of the people that I talk to have no idea at all about what’s happening or ways to prevent the spread of infection,” Almeida said. “They’re cut off completely, really, from the information that’s life saving.”

What they do learn is often of little use: “They’re told, ‘If you get sick, just stay at home and call your doctor.’ Well, my folks don’t have a doctor. Cut them off from every access to life and then tell them to call your doctor? They don’t have medical insurance. They don’t have $5 to get to [the convenience store] to get gas.”

Almeida is witnessing her neighbors cycling through the stages of grief. Many are still at denial.

“‘No, this isn’t gonna bother me; I’m healthy.’ And I’m like, ‘Okay; let me show you this little infographic of how your “I’m healthy” has just exposed 100 people.’”

“Those that do get it,” she said, “are, like, ‘Holy shit.’”

“I think we know what’s coming,” Almeida said. “We can’t handle that here.”

‘Forcing People to Be Still’

Though the Clarksburg Mission isn’t taking in any new residents, it’s not turning anyone out– not unless it’s necessary for the well-being of the others. Some have chosen to leave, unable to handle the pressure of being cooped up. Some have returned to drugs. As of last week, Melissa Carter said, nine people had relapsed in the previous couple of weeks.

Melissa Carter has found a sense of home and community at the Clarksburg Mission. A former resident of its sober-living home, she now works for the facility in a number of ways, including as a recovery coach

Carter is especially concerned about those newly in recovery, a particularly fragile time. She shares the story of a guy with whom she’s been working very closely:

“He hasn’t really had too many people show him that they really care whether he’s clean or not. So I’m trying to take the time to not only help him figure out a way to get clean but to show him that he matters.” He continues to struggle.

“I’m taking the people that just relapsed and the people that are in recovery, and we’re starting back at the beginning,” Carter said, “the relapse warning signs, writing about it. We’re just going to meet each day and talk, talk about our struggles, talk about where we are and try to work the problems out.”

The Mission folks, residents and staff alike, are doing the best they can, given the dimensions, to be mindful of social distances. Chairs are set apart in the now-otherwise-empty dining hall for small recovery meetings. Daily devotions are held in the dorms.

Desi Underwood emceed a spelling bee in the Welcome Room one afternoon, with prizes for the winners. On a recent Friday night, the mission staff threw an ice cream sundae party to show their appreciation for the cooperative spirit that’s prevailed.

“We’re trying to get by as best we can,” Ortenzio, the director, said.

“I think it’s giving everyone an opportunity, almost forcing people, to be still,” Underwood said. “I think people are becoming more insightful and more aware of their struggles, and ways to deal with their struggles, and they have more opportunity to come alongside one another– to be kind and see kindness in each other.”

This story was co-published by 100 Days in Appalachia, Microsoft News and Spotlight for Poverty and Opportunity, a nonprofit, nonpartisan site featuring commentaries and original journalism about poverty and mobility. MSN News and Spotlight partnered on a package of stories and long-form videos, Poverty Next Door, late last year. Follow Spotlight on Twitter @povertynews and 100 Days at @Appalachia100

Correction 04/16/20 10 a.m.: A previous version of this story included an image that misidentified Melissa Carter. It has been replaced. We regret the error.