MORGANTOWN — Jessica Gregg, shelter policy director for the West Virginia Coalition to End Homelessness, told The Dominion Post funding for the Bartlett Housing Solutions emergency shelter will be awarded for the 2024-25 fiscal year under specific circumstances.
What that means for the shelter’s future remains to be seen.
“A letter was sent out this week to Bartlett from the Bureau for Social Services under the Department for Human Services regarding their funding, and it’s basically telling them that they can be funded if certain criteria is met,” Gregg said. “I’m sure once they receive that letter they’ll have to make some decisions as to if they’re actually going to close or not.”
As previously reported, Bartlett Housing Solutions officially announced on Monday that the shelter, located in Hazel’s House of Hope, would close no later than June 30 after nearly 40 years in operation.
Bartlett Housing Solutions CEO Keri DeMasi told The Dominion Post she had yet to receive the letter as of early Wednesday afternoon and therefore could not speak to whether the facility would be able to remain open.
The decision to close came after the March 1 news that the $166,649 state allocation the shelter has received annually for decades would not be awarded in the coming fiscal year following a WVCEH shift to a competitive grant process.
That process was used to allocate $1.85 million to 11 shelters across the state, starting July 1.
Among those to receive funds is The Rainbow House, a local emergency shelter that opened in 2023 with the primary goal of serving unhoused members of the LGBTQ+ community.
“The same 10 entities have been funded since the 80s. There’s been no increase in funding for those entities, nor has there been opportunity for new applicants and new shelters anywhere to apply. There also wasn’t very good oversight in the administration of those funds,” Gregg said.
“So, when we took over that was the goal in mind. We wanted to make sure applicants could apply and increase funding to be able to pay staff more and do more as far as focusing on the individuals in their shelter.”
With that in mind, DeMasi said Bartlett House applied for “significantly more” than its traditional allocation this time around.
While the shelter can operate on a $500,000 budget, she said actual costs range as high as $675,000 annually.
The hope, DeMasi said, was a larger state allocation could make up for the recent loss of two funding sources — the West Virginia Emergency Solutions Grant and United Way of Monongalia and Preston Counties — both of which stopped allocating funds to Bartlett House following allegations lodged at a March 2022 Morgantown City Council meeting and later distributed to funding agencies.
While the amounts varied annually, DeMasi said it wouldn’t be uncommon for those two sources to provide a total of $150,000 on any given year.
Gregg acknowledged the situation.
“There’s always been issues, not just with community members, but the city, the county, with how Bartlett is being run. There’s been some support there, but there’s also been some difficulty. I’m just saying overall, over the years, the city, the community has not been completely supportive of or in line with Bartlett,” she said. “And they have lost other funding.”
As for why Bartlett House has now been left off the state’s funding list, Gregg said that decision came down to the application process as graded by a six-member panel, which determined, “They were unable to show that they answered those questions adequately and up to par with everyone else.”
The Rainbow House ended up receiving a Tier 1 score and a $250,000 state allocation. Bartlett House ended up in Tier 5 and unfunded.
“Of course we wanted to look at it regionally, but that’s not what happened here. It was solely based on application and what these shelters are going to do and how they did with the competitive process. That’s mostly what this was about,” Gregg said.
“Nobody stole anyone’s funding. Rainbow House scored in Tier 1 and they did that all on their own. It is helpful that if one is losing funding that there’s another one in that same area. That’s always a good thing.”
Asked what Bartlett House will need to do to receive the $166,649 come July 1, Gregg said it will involve a new application and certain criteria involving “performance measures and improvement plans.”
