A camping ban aimed at addressing homelessness in Morgantown is expected to pass next week, but community members and advocates are speaking up in opposition.
The Morgantown City Council voted 4 to 3 to advance a new article of City Code entitled “Camping on Public Property” Aug. 20. The ordinance would expand an existing camping ban to all public property and carries fines as high as $500 per day and up to 30 days imprisonment for repeated violations.
There has been some public support for the ban, most notably from landlords and business owners in Morgantown’s downtown. But Morgantown residents have overwhelmingly voiced their opposition to the ordinance, like Annie Cronin York who spoke against the camping ban at the Aug. 20 meeting of the Morgantown City Council.
“I’m not opposed to something being done here,” Cronin York said. “I think something needs to be done, and I’m glad to see that so much work has been done and so many changes made, but I think we have far to go, and I’m not sure what the rush is.”
The ordinance was first proposed to the city council by Ward 3 member Louise “Weezy” Michael July 2, just four days after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson that local government ordinances with civil and criminal penalties for camping on public land do not constitute cruel and unusual punishment of homeless people.
But Michael said the court’s ruling was not an impetus for her proposal, and she wanted to present the proposal as far back as January, when Wheeling implemented its own camping ban.
“I was responding mostly to the legitimate complaints of our constituents,” she said. “There’s a lot of people staying out in these camps near our downtown and on our rail trails and near our rivers. And it’s becoming a public safety and a health issue, and that’s mostly why I took up this ban.”
Two months since the initial proposal, Morgantown City Council appears poised to enact the broadened camping ban at their upcoming meeting Sept. 3. According to analysis from nonprofit advocacy news organization “The Appeal”, Morgantown is one of more than 20 municipalities across the country that have passed or proposed new camping bans that levy the possibility of fines, tickets, or jail time against their homeless residents since the Supreme Court ruling.
Even before the Grants Pass ruling, cities in West Virginia have recently looked to camping bans to address housing issues in their communities. In November, the Wheeling City Council voted 5 to 2 to enact a camping ban on public property in the city, punishable by a fine of up to $500. That ban was not implemented until January. Amidst legal pressure from the American Civil Liberties Union and other organizations, the city of Wheeling agreed to exempt a camping site at a leased parking lot near the Catholic Charities Neighborhood Center.
Michael said the council has a responsibility to all of their constituents and things cannot continue the way they are now.
“My intention is not, was never, to criminalize homelessness,” she said. “We’re just trying to get them to a point where they want to seek treatment and help and shelter, because I’ve been down to these encampments, and I just don’t want to see anybody live in these conditions.”
Michael pointed out the ordinance is written to require that shelter be offered to a homeless individual on first contact and before further action can be taken. But advocates and service providers said there is no shelter to offer at the moment. Morgantown’s emergency shelter experienced a budgetary crisis earlier this year and has not accepted new intakes since mid-March.
Cassidy Thompson, a housing stabilization case manager at the West Virginia Coalition to End Homelessness, said a new organization is poised to take over management of the emergency shelter, but it still won’t be anywhere near the capacity the community needs.
“It looks as though Catholic Charities is going to take on the triage shelter at Hazel’s House of Hope on Scott Avenue, which is great and it’s very needed,” Thompson said. “However, that is a 28-bed facility, and we have another 26-bed facility in Morgantown with over 150 people currently experiencing unsheltered homelessness. So, it’s still not enough.”
Thompson and other advocates would like to see the city take on more “evidence-based practices” to resolve homelessness. She said her organization works in what is called a “housing first” approach, where the immediate issue of homelessness is addressed with housing to then be able to connect an individual with support services and address any underlying issues. But Thompson said those support services often have their own barriers to access.
“We have a lot of difficulty accessing basic health care, mental health care, for people,” she said. “It’s hard to practice this evidence-based practice when not every piece of the puzzle is on board. I would like to see WVU Medicine, Mon Health Systems, Valley Healthcare, I would like to see all of these entities come sit down and help develop a tangible strategy to really address healthcare and mental healthcare for folks who are new to housing, folks who are unsheltered and looking to get into housing.”
The proposed ordinance states that its enforcement shall comply with the provisions of the city’s existing camping restriction, Morgantown Police Department General Order No. 339, entitled “Transient/Outdoor Encampment.” The order lays out timelines and posting requirements for the city to issue before evicting people from encampments and taking their belongings.
Lindsey Jacobs is the advocacy and access director at Mountain State Justice. MSJ sued the city of Charleston to create the humane eviction guidelines that the general order is based on. Jacobs said the two Morgantown statutes will be at odds.
“Carrying either policy out is incompatible with the other,” she said. “The new ordinance that will pass on Sept. 3 basically says, if you’re caught outside sleeping, and they offer you somewhere to go and you don’t go to whatever it is that they’re offering you that you’re then engaging in criminal conduct. So, the first time you interact with law enforcement as a warning, the second is a fine up to $200 and the third is a fine or jail time.”
Like Thompson, Jacobs points out the lack of shelter to be offered as required by the ordinance, but also points out that some won’t accept shelter regardless of its availability.
“First, we don’t have places to send folks. But then there are other folks who, even if there were that available, won’t go to shelter, and there are a variety of reasons,” Jacobs said. “It’s often very dependent on that person’s lived experience. So, for example, some people have been sexually or physically assaulted in shelters, and so they’re afraid of shelters.”
Jacobs said the shelter issue is just the tip of the iceberg. Like Thompson and other residents, advocates and service providers, she said the city and the country more broadly need to invest in more services, not policing.
“If you look at other cities, similarly sized cities, cities that are seriously addressing the problem, they’re spending way more money, way more resources, investing in the services that folks need, like mental health services, wraparound services, social work services, medical services,” Jacobs said. “There are all these sorts of things where we folks, those of us on the ground, we see these gaps in services every day.”
More immediately, Jacobs said a petition has been circulated to halt the ordinance via a referendum once it is passed. Amidst the U.S. Supreme Court ruling, she said more legal avenues are also being explored.
“The smartest lawyers in the country are looking at that and creating new legal theories and causes of action,” Jacobs said. “If cities think that we’re done suing them to protect the rights of the most vulnerable people in our communities, they are sadly mistaken.”
Jacobs and Thompson both said a silver lining of the Supreme Court ruling and camping bans has been a reinvigorating of community action on the issue of homelessness. Amidst a housing and affordability crisis, they say that renewed energy is what it will take to solve the problem.
The Morgantown City Council will meet Tuesday, Sept. 3 at 7 p.m.
