Grace Shelter is located alongside other social service providers at Hazel’s House of Hope on Scott Avenue in Morgantown, W.Va. The location is a bus ride away from the city’s downtown area. (Kristian Thacker for West Virginia Watch)
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – When the city of Morgantown passed a law in September imposing fines and potential jail time on homeless people who camp on the street, Sarah Hutson already had a plan to repeal the law.
A community organizer for Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, Hutson was following how her city leaders responded to homelessness. She studied ballot measures in city charters as a way of encouraging voter turnout in her former role with the progressive political organization West Virginia Can’t Wait.
“Before the first reading, I said, ‘if they do this, we can fight back. I know about the referendum process. I know how it would potentially work,’” Hutson said.
When the Morgantown Coalition for Housing Action filed a referendum petition requiring city council to either repeal the camping ban or send it to the city voters to decide, Hutson, a volunteer for the coalition, helped coordinate volunteers that ultimately collected the hundreds of signatures needed for the city clerk to certify the petition.
The move by Morgantown City Council to criminalize sleeping outdoors reflects a trend happening on the national level: More than one hundred places around the country enacted laws prohibiting homeless people from sleeping outside last year. Those actions followed a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that upheld a similar law in Grants Pass, Oregon as frustration over record high homelessness has grown.
Morgantown voters will decide the future of its camping ban during the April 29 election. A spokesman for the city said that ballot initiatives are not common in the city but are an “important part of our municipal charter.” Sam Workman, a political scientist and Morgantown resident, said the camping ban vote is “the defining factor” in the city election.
“If they say ‘this is a bad ordinance,’ then I believe them”
Hutson said she has been paying attention to how Morgantown responded to homelessness since 2020, when council members voted to dismantle an encampment known as Diamond Village during the COVID-19 pandemic. The next day, a person overdosed and died in the mostly abandoned encampment.
“People thought that we had this progressive city council, is what they called it,” she said. “And then all but one of them voted to get rid of this encampment that was following [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s COVID-19] guidelines. It was keeping people safe, and was a way for people to create community and take care of each other and pull each other up. So that was really frustrating.”
When the U.S. Supreme Court took up the Grants Pass case and ultimately ruled that camping bans do not violate the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment, she correctly suspected that Morgantown would introduce its own camping ban.
In advocating for Morgantown’s camping ban, Councilwoman Louise “Weez” Michael, a sponsor of the bill, said homeless people sleeping in public had “become an immediate and serious safety and health issue that we can no longer wish the issue to go away. … We need to send a message that this city will no longer tolerate nefarious behaviors.”
Michael did not respond to an interview request for this story.
Although Morgantown’s ordinance says that no one will be cited or face a criminal penalty unless they refuse an offer of alternative shelter, Monongalia County has 54 year-round shelter emergency beds and another 21 beds when the winter warming shelter is open — not enough for the 100 homeless people that were identified during the 2024 point in time count.
When the ban passed, then city manager Kim Haws said in a statement the ordinance will support the city’s “belief that all residents should have permanent housing.”
“Enforcing this ordinance doesn’t mean that we are being insensitive to a person’s housing instability,” he said. “Instead, we hope to use this policy as a tool to connect campers to services or organizations that can help them get off the streets and better their lives.”
When West Virginia Watch asked the city how it planned to enforce the ban in situations where a shelter bed was not available, a spokesman noted that the city had contributed $150,000 to Catholic Charities of West Virginia for its Grace Shelter for the fiscal year 2025 and $40,000 for its winter warming shelter and that the city employs a full-time social worker. The city also provides bus passes to people without transportation or ability to pay fares, he said. The city’s shelters are located about an eight-minute drive from the downtown area, and many take the bus to and from the shelter.
“The City of Morgantown provides significant support to services that assist our unhoused community,” Brad Riffee, the city’s director of public relations and communications, wrote in an emailed response to questions. “Currently, the ordinance is not in effect, so no enforcement is taking place. Nevertheless, we respond to individuals with compassion and explore all possible options that may help them. More often than not, this includes connecting them with treatment programs, sober living organizations, or medical care.”
“Our commitment to addressing the needs of our unhoused population reflects our belief in the dignity of every individual and the importance of fostering a supportive community. By prioritizing compassionate responses and resource accessibility, we strive to create lasting positive change for those in need,” he said.
Opponents of camping bans say the laws do nothing to address the causes of homelessness and worsen the problem by imposing potential criminal penalties on people, which can make it harder for them to find permanent housing.
Hutson said her opinion of the law was formed by volunteering at the city’s warming shelter and talking with people who are unhoused and those who work to get people into housing.
“First of all, if they say, ‘this is a bad ordinance,’ then I believe them,” Hutson said. “They’re the ones doing the work, and these are the folks going through being unhoused in Morgantown. I don’t think at any point, arresting someone for not having a place to go is the solution.”
While some homeless services providers are opposed to Morgantown’s camping ban, Jessica Thompson, director of Grace Shelter, a 28-bed emergency homeless shelter located on Scott Avenue, said she doesn’t have strong feelings about it one way or the other.
People who stay in encampments in the city often don’t want to be in a shelter environment, she said.
“This type of environment, living in a dormitory style environment, they can’t tolerate,” she said, “and they usually end up leaving.”
The shelter has been full since October, when Catholic Charities of West Virginia took over the facility, Thompson said in January. The facility was formerly run by Bartlett Housing Solutions, which closed it last summer. Catholic Charities also operates a seasonal warming shelter which houses up to 30 people at the same location.
Thompson said so far 15 people have gone from the shelter to permanent housing, which is the shelter’s goal, she said.
In order for people to continue to stay at the shelter, they must participate in some of the services offered, like assistance getting housing or a job, she said. People who have refused to “sign paperwork,” are limited to 45 days in the shelter, she said.
“This is not a long term facility,” Thompson said. “So some of them have a hard time understanding that. They think, once they get the bed, they’re permanent and don’t have to do anything. But that’s not the way we work.”
‘There is nowhere else to go’
On a cold, blustery day in January, Jeff Harder and Joanna Huffman kept warm at the Morgantown Public Library. At night, they stay at one of the city’s two emergency shelters, located a bus ride away on Scott Avenue.
Harder said he’s been without a place to live since March, and in that time he’s had to stay in a tent at times. When it got too cold for that, he moved to an abandoned home, then to the warming shelter. He said he expects to have a place soon.
Harder said he hadn’t heard about the camping ban.
“I’ll just go somewhere where there ain’t no ban,” he said.
Huffman said she’s been homeless for about six years total. When she heard about the camping ban, she called it “not smart.”
“Where else are they going to go?” she said. “There is nowhere else to go. There’s one or two homeless shelters in Morgantown that I know of, and then they have to leave Morgantown altogether.”
Ballot initiatives ‘tend not to be viewed kindly’ by political scientists
While the referendum may be rare for Morgantown, ballot initiatives generally aren’t unheard of in the state, said Workman, director of the Institute for Policy Research and Public Affairs at West Virginia University. For instance, state voters last year approved a constitutional amendment prohibiting medically-assisted suicide.
“This one’s a little unique in that it’s not targeted at making a new policy, but of getting rid of a policy that’s already been passed by elected representatives,” he said of Morgantown’s camping referendum. “So it’s a little bit unique in that way, but not unheard of.”
Workman said that ballot initiatives generally are not looked at kindly by political scientists. They tend to be “very low information” elections, he said.
“When a voter goes to the booth, the best signal they have as to public policy is whatever party ID is beside the candidates’ names,” Workman said. “That already details a whole range of things about policies without having to understand every policy. Ballot measures by their very nature, are asking citizens to weigh in directly on the text of a policy. And that’s not the greatest thing in a democracy that is by necessity a representative democracy.”
Ballot initiatives also create “policy lock in,” Workman said, where officials are loath to change a policy after citizens have weighed in on it, even though circumstances may change.
“In general, when you lock policy in, it doesn’t matter what policy it is, political science will tell you it tends to lead to bad things later on, because you’re unable to revisit the policy and adjust it,” Workman said.
They also tend to be low turnout elections, he said. Morgantown’s election in particular could see an “extra low turnout” because it will be held in April, separate from the state and federal elections, Workman said.
“They also tend to be disproportionately affected by factions, groups or folks with resources,” Workman said. “So in a low information environment, if you have a lot more resources, or at least you’re a lot more vocal than the opponents, that tends to matter more in initiatives and ballot measures.”
The ‘defining issue’ of the election
While getting the referendum on the ballot was the coalition’s first challenge, its next challenge will be getting voters to vote it down during the city’s election.
“We’re confident that this ordinance is incredibly unpopular. We’ve seen that. We’ve knocked on doors — very few people wouldn’t sign,” Hutson said. “Our only issue was getting to enough doors to get signatures. It was not about people not wanting to sign it. So we’re confident that we’ll be successful in overturning this ordinance come April.”
Hutson said plans include continuing door-to-door canvassing, phone banking, texting, sending postcards and mailers and a practice called “Friend Banking,” where volunteers go through their own phone contacts for people who live in the city and ask them to support repealing the ordinance.
Along with supporting the referendum, Morgantown Can’t Wait will also endorse three city council candidates to replace three of the four members who voted for the ordinance. The fourth — bill sponsor Michael — is not up for election this year.
“We don’t want to have to ever do a referendum again,” Hutson said. “It was an incredible amount of work. Our goal is to elect policymakers who won’t put us in this position and who will look out for all Morgantown residents.”
Harshbarger, who voted for the ban, currently represents the city’s sixth ward.
“The only thing I would say is, council is dealing with and has dealt with a number of complex issues,” he wrote in a response to West Virginia Watch’s request for comment. “I hope the candidates and this election are not about one issue.”
Workman said the camping ban will be the “defining issue” of the election. While camping bans tend to be viewed as “unidimensional,” he said, the issue is tied to a range of other issues in the city such as building codes and the economic future of the city.
“What tends to happen is you have two aims, one of which is making sure folks are healthy, fed, sheltered, all of this,” he said. “It’s possible that then that creates scenarios where businesses are less able to generate revenue potentially. And then, of course, it becomes a deadly cycle where revenues decline so there’s also less revenue for a lot of the services we tend to provide in those areas.
“So it’s a hard issue, actually. And it touches a lot of other things that municipalities, not just here in Morgantown but everywhere, have to address and navigate,” Workman said.
Councilman Brian Butcher, a co-founder of West Virginia Housing Justice, voted against the camping ban. He’s not up for re-election this year, but he also expects the law to be a big factor in the race.
“I don’t see how anybody can run a campaign and not take a position on it,” Butcher said. “And I’m sure that they’ll be asked multiple, multiple times what their position is on it.”
Workman said ballot initiatives are “not often beneficial,” regardless of the outcome.
“It would be better off if our municipal elections were held along with the rest of the state so we had more robust turnout,” Workman said. “And it would be better for citizens to either reward or punish elected officials based on the decisions they make.”
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