On this West Virginia Week, homelessness in the southern coalfields, losing a dream job to federal cuts and the legislature looks at transgender rights and vaccine exemptions.
On this West Virginia Week, we hear from homeless people in the southern coalfields and their advocates about the unique challenges of being unhoused in a rural community.
Plus, leaders from the state legislature discuss issues in our schools including discipline, as well as proposed exemptions to the state’s school vaccine requirements
Also in this episode, a local woman grapples with losing her dream job in the recent federal cuts.
Chris Schulz is our host this week. Our theme music is by Matt Jackfert.
West Virginia Week is a web-only podcast that explores the week’s biggest news in the Mountain State. It’s produced with help from Bill Lynch, Briana Heaney, Chris Schulz, Curtis Tate, Emily Rice, Eric Douglas, Jack Walker, Maria Young and Randy Yohe.
On this West Virginia Morning, how people experiencing homelessness and their advocates in the southern coal fields are addressing housing and Mountain State Spotlight’s Duncan Slade reflects on the legislature’s actions on education so far.
On this West Virginia Morning, politicians have moved to enact camping bans at the local, state and federal level. As part of the WVPB newsroom’s series on homelessness, Briana Heaney spoke with people experiencing homelessness, and their advocates in the southern coal fields.
And each week, our reporters get together – sometimes with a reporter from a different news organization – to discuss some of the major issues they covered on our daily television program The Legislature Today. Recently, host Bri Heaney welcomed Duncan Slade, the deputy managing editor for the nonprofit newsroom Mountain State Spotlight. Here is part of that discussion.
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 Shepherd University and Marshall University School of Journalism and Mass Communications.
Maria Young produced this episode.
Listen to West Virginia Morning weekdays at 7:43 a.m. on WVPB Radio or subscribe to the podcast and never miss an episode. #WVMorning
Note: A shorter version of this story was published Jan. 30, 2025.
Each year, thousands of volunteers and advocates across the country come together on a single night in January to count people experiencing homelessness. That can mean quite a lot of legwork in the Mountain State.
Volunteers met at a bookstore in downtown Morgantown on the night of Jan. 29 before hitting the streets to take part in a 24-hour national initiative known as the Point in Time count.
Emily Hileman is the captain for the count in Monongalia County. She works for the West Virginia Coalition to End Homelessness, which coordinates the federally mandated count for most of the state.
“(The) Point in Time count is a night that shows what homelessness is like on any given night,” Hileman said. “It provides a snapshot of what that looks like in each of our communities across the state and across the nation.”
Covering 44 counties, the West Virginia Coalition to End Homelessness is the largest of four regions for homelessness advocacy in West Virginia. Designated by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development as “continuums of care,” the other three are Cabell-Huntington-Wayne, the Kanawha Valley Collective and the Northern Panhandle region. Each conduct their own counts in their regions.
Hileman breaks the dozen or so volunteers into three teams. One group will walk the streets downtown, while another takes the rail trail by the river. Hileman’s team heads to the shelter at the edge of town, but only to park.
Rather than check on the individuals in the shelter, whose numbers will be added to the count later, Hileman and her team of volunteers walk by flashlight on a utility access road through the woodland outskirts of Morgantown. They look for any signs of habitation, like tents, tarps or mattresses.
“Anything that looks like somebody could have been here,” Hileman said.
These signs can indicate to volunteers where people are living with inadequate shelter.
Hileman takes her team down an icy hill, to the other side of the county shelter to try and gather just one of those essential data points. On this night they locate three campsites, all empty. For, Hileman it’s still worth it.
“This is essential data that we need now more than ever, especially in our communities,” Hileman said. “We need more services. We need more resources for individuals. We need more housing.”
Funding for homelessness relief services is tied to how many people are counted on this night. Last year’s count showed that close to 1,800 people experienced homelessness in West Virginia on a single night.
The count stretches a full 24 hours. Hileman started canvassing at 4 p.m. Wednesday, when she walked an estimated 6 miles on Morgantown’s rail trails. By the end of the night, she’s walked another 4 miles and plans to get up in the morning to do more canvassing before the 24-hour period ends at 3:59 p.m. Thursday.
But by Wednesday night, she said the count felt low.
“I would say that it seems like we’ve had less individuals this year,” Hileman said. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean that homelessness is less prominent in the community this year.”
She said the low count could be attributed to a myriad of reasons, from the cold weather forcing people to take temporary shelter to camping bans pushing people away from population centers. But with tallies coming in from other teams as well as shelters over the 24-hour period, Hileman said she was confident the count would be accurate..
More than 360 volunteers took part in the 2025 census across the coalition’s 44 West Virginia counties. Beth McCreight is one of those volunteers, as she has been involved for several years. McCreight, who last year led the count in Taylor County, agreed that the count felt different this year.
“It feels a little bit more intense, and not just because of the hiking. It feels like it’s time to really bear down and get accurate numbers to show the need,” she said. “Without this accurate number, we can’t prove to people that there is something wrong going on in the world.”
Despite all the volunteer’s efforts on the day of the count, an accurate number takes time to achieve.
Paige Looney is a data management specialist with the West Virginia Coalition to End Homelessness. A few days after the Point in Time count, she said her team is working to ensure the quality of the data that was collected.
“Part of the things we go through is to look for duplicates in very similar geographic areas,” Looney said. “Somebody’s got the exact same demographic information, same name, it’s likely that there’s two surveys that have been submitted on the same person.”
Looney said homelessness can feel like an invisible issue a lot of the time. But she is bolstered by the effort so many volunteers not only across the state but across the country put in to ensure an accurate count is made.
“The Point in Time count in particular is just a huge undertaking,” she said. “Our volunteers know their communities better than we do. It’s only really possible through them and their efforts.”
As of Monday afternoon, Looney said the coalition’s count for its 44 counties stands at just over 1,070, but a more official number is set to be released by Feb. 7. Their information will be combined with the other three groups to provide a total number of people experiencing homelessness in the state, which is expected by mid-February.
Volunteers walk through a wooded area on the outskirts of Morgantown as part of the 2025 Point in Time Count January 29, 2025.
Volunteers and housing advocates have wrapped up a massive count of the state’s homeless population, a 24-hour national initiative known as the Point in Time count.
From Wednesday afternoon to Thursday afternoon, volunteers and housing advocates counted the state’s homeless population, a 24-hour national initiative known as the Point in Time count. That can mean extraordinary efforts in the Mountain State.
Wednesday night, volunteers walked by flashlight on a utility access road through the woods at the outskirts of Morgantown. They were looking for any signs of habitation: tents, tarps, mattresses.
“Anything that looks like somebody could have been here,” said Emily Hileman, the county captain for the Point in Time count in Monongalia County.
Those signs can indicate where homeless people are staying, so that volunteers with the count can find and add people living with inadequate shelter to their tally.
Hileman works for the West Virginia Coalition to End Homelessness (WVCEH), the organization that coordinates the count for most of the state. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development requires that organizations like WVCEH conduct the annual count of people experiencing homelessness – including those who are in emergency shelters or transitional housing on a single night. More than 300 volunteers took part in the 2025 census across the 44 West Virginia counties for which WVCEH is responsible.
“This is essential data that we need now more than ever, especially in our communities,” Hileman said. “We need more services. We need more resources for individuals, we need more housing.”
The funding for all those resources is directly tied to how many people are counted on this night. Last year’s count showed that close to 1,800 people experienced homelessness in West Virginia on a single night. Hileman said their count this year has been low.
“I would say that it seems like we’ve had less individuals this year,” she said. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean that homelessness is less prominent in the community this year.”
She said the low count can be for a myriad of reasons from the cold weather forcing people to take temporary shelter, to camping bans pushing people further away from population centers. But with tallies coming in from other teams as well as shelters over the 24 hour period, Hileman and her colleagues are confident an accurate count will be made.
Preliminary numbers are expected to be publicly available in mid-February.
It’s the highest number of unhoused people in the state in almost a decade, and a 25 percent increase from 2023. West Virginia had seen a steady decrease in homelessness since a high of more than 2,400 people experiencing homelessness at a point in time in 2007.
The data is collected during point-in-time (PIT) counts, unduplicated one-night estimates of both sheltered and unsheltered people experiencing homelessness. The counts are conducted nationwide and occur during the last week in January of each year.
The study distinguishes between unsheltered homelessness – sheltering in places not meant for human habitation – and sheltered homelessness, which refers to people who are staying in emergency shelters, transitional housing programs, or safe havens. In West Virginia, 788 people (44.3%) experienced unsheltered homelessness while 991 people (55.7%) experienced sheltered homelessness.
Eighty-nine percent of all people experiencing homelessness in West Virginia at a point-in-time were individuals – the highest rate in the country..
West Virginia was singled out in the report for a decline in unaccompanied youth homelessness, defined as those under the age of 24 that are not part of a family with children or accompanied by their parent or guardian during their experience of homelessness.
West Virginia had 108 unaccompanied youths experiencing homelessness in 2024, a 29% decrease (43 fewer youth) since 2023. This shift was attributed to several new Youth Homelessness Demonstration Program (YHDP) grantees in the state. YHDP grants provide communities resources to develop a coordinated approach to ending youth homelessness, including connection to and provision of permanent housing.
Nationally, the number of people experiencing homelessness on a single night in 2024 was the highest ever recorded.
There’s not just a single reason that people end up being homeless in West Virginia, according to a new study.
The first comprehensive study of homelessness in West Virginia was released by the West Virginia Department of Human Service (DoHS), Bureau for Behavioral Health (BBH) Monday.
In 2023, the legislature passed a bill tasking the DoHS to study who comprises West Virginia’s homeless population, what resources are available to them and what factors led to their living situation.
The study found that 58 percent of individuals experiencing homelessness self-identified as male. Nearly half of those experiencing homelessness were between the ages of 25 and 44.
Additionally, 13 percent self-identified as Black or African American, a figure notably higher than the 3.7 percent of the total West Virginia population identifying as Black or African American, as reported by the 2020 U.S. Census.
The study notes that while substance use disorder and mental illness are drivers of homelessness, individuals face a combination of challenges, from arrest records to lack of affordable housing and unemployment.
According to data from the National Center for Homeless Education, cited in the report, 3.6 percent of all public school students enrolled in West Virginia experienced homelessness from 2021 to 2022, which is 50 percent higher than the national rate of 2.4 percent.
Geographically, the study found the majority of West Virginians experiencing homelessness were found in population centers, where most of the services aimed at assisting this population are located.
Finally, the study found that many individuals experiencing homelessness are long-term residents of West Virginia. When asked their reasoning for relocating to or staying in West Virginia, respondents said the availability of services, proximity to family and personal relationships are some reasons they’ve stayed in the state.
