New Exempted Site For Wheeling’s Homeless Found
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A new exempted site for Wheeling's homeless has been found, and should soon be ready for people to move in - and it has the potential of being a long-term answer for housing the city's homeless.
Wheeling City Manager Robert Herron said the new site is about 200 meters south of the Hempfield Viaduct off the maintenance trail along Wheeling Creek. It's a defined area about 70 yards long.
"The city has been working on that for the past 10 days," Herron said Friday evening.
City crews over that time have worked to make the site accessible for first responders' vehicles as well as refuse and sanitation vehicles. Herron said the site should be ready for homeless people to occupy within seven to 10 days.
That site will take the place of the current site on 18th Street across from the Catholic Charities Neighborhood Center. Always considered a short-term solution as an exempted site, it was given a time limit when the West Virginia Division of Highways said it was terminating the lease with Ohio County for that spot.
The 18th Street lot originally was leased by the county for parking and the DOH said that, because it no longer was being used for that purpose, it would terminate the lease as of March 15. Complicating matters were the facts that a city ordinance now prohibits camping in public places and the Life Hub winter shelter was closing its doors for the season this morning.
Herron said that the homeless camped on the 18th Street lot will be able to transition to the new site when it is ready without issue.
"(The DOH) has worked with us, and we appreciate that," Herron said.
The new site is city-owned, Herron said, so there is no risk of another entity coming in and saying those camped there must leave. That gives the city and homeless advocates as much time as necessary to find a permanent site for a managed camp, which is allowed in the camping ban ordinance.
Herron said that the site off the maintenance trail could be a contender for that permanent site.
"This site is not necessarily a permanent site, but it could be," Herron said. "We're hopefully going to work through this site as a potential longer-term site."
Dr. William Mercer - founder of Project HOPE, a homeless outreach organization that provides medical care, food, clothing and follow-up appointments - said this is a good first step, but there remains a path to travel.
"I'm very happy," Mercer said of the new site's location. "If I had to pick a spot, I think the maintenance trail is very good. But we've not gotten into some of the details - who's going to manage it, there are a whole bunch of things where we still have questions.
"But the big hurdle was, OK, everybody agrees that this is a good place," he continued.
Herron added that there is some relief in knowing the new site can be open as long as the city and homeless advocates need it, and that it allows the groups to move forward in finding a permanent answer.
"If we can figure out a way to keep it clean and have the people who live there keep it clean, it has the potential to be a long-term site," Herron said. "But a lot of this relies on the people that are allowed to stay there. They have to do their part, too."
Mercer said it's important that the city soon get some of the opioid settlement money through the West Virginia First Foundation that would help fund the management of the camp. He'd also like to see the city remove the camping ban ordinance.
"It affects too many other places in the country," Mercer said. "A lot of people are looking at Wheeling and if they see that the best thing our council could come up with is criminalizing it ... it goes against every public health expert.
"What we're doing right now is good," he added. "Let's continue doing that and take away that ordinance."