MORGANTOWN — People can and do move beyond homelessness.
Daniel Lightner did.
He was homeless for about five years.
Then he ended up in Morgantown, staying at the Bartlett House shelter with his girlfriend and their dog.
“It’s the first time we ever stayed in a shelter. In [Pennsylvania], you can’t go to a shelter where it’s male and female and you can bring your dog,” he recently told Morgantown City Council. “It was very difficult to be homeless out in Pa. There were no tents or camps or anything like that. It dries you out to get better.”
Lightner’s comments before council were in support of Councilor Louise Michael’s request that the city explore the expansion of the city’s sleeping and camping ban — which currently only pertains to city parks — to include residential properties, city streets, alleys and sidewalks.
In other words, downtown.
“It’s starting to look a lot like Kensington in certain spots downtown – needles, homeless camps, nothing changing,” Lightner said, comparing Morgantown to the infamous drug saturated Philadelphia neighborhood.
Lightner said he’s been working with the local homeless community for a little over a year.
“I had a friend from California come out here because I thought I could help him get housed. He did good for the first month, then he met the people out here who stay on the street. It’s hard,” he said.
“It could be good for everybody, but it’s a great place to be homeless out here with the benefits. If you want to add water fountains, bathrooms and s***, there’s no need to go to a shelter then because everything you need will be on the street downtown.”
He said allowing people to congregate in encampments may offer a sense of protection, but it’s not helping anyone move forward.
“Their lives are on pause still,” he said. “They’re just surviving there.”
Like Lightner, Jason Gillespie found himself turning to the Bartlett House shelter.
This was in 2007.
“I had addiction and alcohol problems,” he said. “I had nowhere to go and no one to turn to. I was lost.”
Gillespie said he considers his experience a testament to the idea that people struggling with addiction and without a place to lay down can turn things around with help.
He said additional laws are not the answer.
“The misery that those people experience out there is hard. They don’t really have a choice in the matter if they’re going to use, drink or steal because there is no option for them,” he said. “If we don’t present those options to them, it’s kind of a moot point to try to kick them out of there to go into prison to come right back and do the same things.”
Currently, Gillespie continued, there are no real alternatives for people to turn to.
“I’ve been out there meeting these people, too,” he said. “Just a little compassion from everybody goes a long way. Just a little bit.”
