MORGANTOWN — Bartlett Housing Solutions emergency triage shelter at Hazel’s House of Hope has been left off the list of shelter facilities to receive state funding in the 2024-‘25 fiscal year.
Project Rainbow’s The Rainbow House — an emergency shelter for unsheltered LGBTQ+ individuals — has been added.
Morgantown City Councilor Danielle Trumble raised her concerns about Bartlett House during her report at the end of Tuesday’s regular meeting.
“If that shelter closes, the only other shelter in our community will be Rainbow House, who was funded, but they are limited in the population that can go there. So, we’re going to have to come up with another plan for what our unsheltered neighbors have as options,” she said.
Following the meeting, Trumble explained Bartlett House has traditionally received $166,000 of the triage shelter’s approximately $500,000 budget from the state by way of the West Virginia Coalition to End Homelessness and the West Virginia Department of Human Services.
“I have been raising concerns about [Bartlett House] funding and their financial state for a few months, but this puts them in a way worse position than even I anticipated,” Trumble said.
Rainbow House, which opened in 2023, will receive $250,000 according to the WVCEH list of proposed funding awards.
The Rainbow House provides temporary shelter as well as resources to help each client find long-term housing solutions, mental health support, gender-affirming care, employment assistance and more, according to a January report in The Dominion Post.
Councilor Brian Butcher, who serves on the Rainbow House Board of Directors, said federal assistance may be needed to address what he called “a crisis with our shelter system.”
“I think we need to have some real serious, intentional, hard conversations right now about what is going to happen soon,” Butcher said. “We’re already lacking on shelter space. The solvency of the emergency shelter is definitely a crisis in our community, so we need to be thinking about it.”
Bartlett Housing Solutions Executive Director Keri DeMasi told The Dominion Post the nonprofit intends to issue a statement regarding funding this week.
According to The Dominion Post archive, Bartlett House first opened its doors in 1985. In addition to the triage shelter, Bartlett Housing Solutions offers rapid re-housing and permanent supportive housing assistance.
