When a city councilman can’t figure out what ordinances are supposedly being violated, you know it isn’t an issue of code enforcement. It’s a matter of criminalizing homelessness.
At Tuesday’s Committee of the Whole session, several community members and Councilman Zach Cruze spoke about law and code enforcement harassing a homeless encampment off Pennsylvania Avenue. The camp is on privately owned land, and the unhoused people living there do so with the landowner’s express permission. The camp is clear of needles and syringes; trash is dealt with as necessary; and a portapotty was supplied to keep the area clean of human waste. As Cruze said, there is student housing in Morgantown that’s in worst shape than this encampment.
And yet code enforcement has shown up at the camp every day for a week and called the landowner with non-existent violations. Cruze pointed out that every time he asks what the problem is, code enforcement’s story changes. Several speakers noted that the property owner hasn’t received any official documents charging him with violations. Just a litany of phone calls from public officials.
In addition to harassment from city officers, residents of the neighborhood have been posting violent, threatening rhetoric on social media. Mollie Kennedy, ACLU staff member and Greenmont resident, said the homeless at the camp are being blamed for “any and all” crime in the area. Kennedy said armed vigilantes have taken to patrolling the neighborhood, which “doesn’t make me feel very safe at all.”
A peer recovery coach, Dani Ludwig said Milan Puskar Health Right is trying to get help for the people at the encampment and can’t, because the system is shut down. Well, it seems the system is shut down for those trying to help, but not for those trying to get the encampment removed.
Delegate Danielle Walker pointed out that so many of us are one paycheck away from becoming unhoused. Watching this drama over the homeless community play out reminds us how easy it can be to fall on hard times, and how hard it is to get back on our feet.
Nichole Rose, who lives at the encampment, was choked up as she told council this is her first year of homelessness. Her husband was a coal miner and a veteran, and she was a stay-at-home mom. Now all she has left are the encampment and its people, who have become her family.
Brent Stewart, looking far younger than his 31 years, was an honor student at University High and made the Dean’s list at WVU, where he studied entrepreneurship. And he’s a member of the homeless community of Morgantown.
Watch the video of the Committee of the Whole session. To see the faces and hear the voices of the unhoused is a poignant reminder that we aren’t talking about a theoretical situation, about hypothetical people. They are real. They are human. They deserve our support, not our condemnation. They have permission to camp on private property, and they’ve kept the land clean. There is no reason for law and code enforcement and neighborhood vigilantes to harass them. We hope city council will put an end to this disgraceful behavior and do it soon.
