Women face danger with few options in Wheeling’s only legal homeless encampment

Tents are set up in an area along Maintenance Trail in Wheeling. Since April, it's been the one legal spot for homeless people in camp in the city. (Daniel Finsley | Finsley Creative for West Virginia Watch)

WHEELING, W.Va. — Roberta, a 39-year-old homeless woman in Wheeling, has stayed in the city’s one legal encampment since it opened in April, but a recent run-in with a former partner made her want to leave.

“My ex just destroyed everything I own yesterday,” said the woman, who declined to tell a reporter her last name. “So I am not going back out there. Either put me in jail, whatever. I’m not going back out there to have to deal with that.”

Roberta can’t move her tent and belongings to another part of town. Earlier this year, the city of Wheeling enacted a camping ban aimed at keeping homeless people from sleeping on its streets. The only exception to the law is a 70-yard area in the woods along a trail.

Shelter beds — especially ones for people who use drugs or have a criminal background — are scarce. The situation has left some women with an impossible choice: live in a camp with their abusers or leave and risk being arrested for living elsewhere in the city.

“There’s really nothing I can do, I shouldn’t have to sit out there…” Roberta said. “… If I get in trouble [and go to jail] for putting my tent up somewhere else, then so be it. I’m guaranteed three hot [meals] and a cot, if that’s the case.”

According to a recent study commissioned by the state Department of Human Services, nearly one in six people experiencing homelessness in West Virginia between January 2018 and December 2023 said that they were “fleeing” or attempting to flee domestic violence.

Lynn Kettler is a co-founder of the homeless outreach team Street MOMS, one of the Wheeling service providers that are tending to the people staying at the exempted site.

While domestic violence can happen anywhere, Kettler said having one legal site for homeless people to stay is making problems worse for the women staying there. Domestic abuse is a reality for “every” one of the 15 to 20 women staying in the site, she added.

“It’s the only place they’re allowed to go, so they’re forced into a 70-yard area to live with their abusers,” Kettler said. “We don’t have one woman that’s not been [beaten], traded or sold … Every single one.”

Kettler said providers recently removed two other women who had been assaulted and put them in a hotel room for a week with no plan for when they exit after the week is over.

“They’re not going to continue to keep them [at the hotel]there, so they’re back at the camp with the abusers that we just took them from,” she said. “It’s a nightmare.”

Police didn’t respond to questions

Laura Albertini-Weigel, director of programming for the Wheeling YWCA, which operates a homeless shelter for women, said the city has limited shelter beds. Availability depends on their situation, like whether they’re using drugs, facing mental health issues or fleeing domestic violence.

“We continue to struggle with the need for beds and services to be able to meet the need,” she said.

While the scarcity of shelter beds is part of the problem, Kettler doesn’t think many of the women would go to a shelter, even if they could. They’d still have to eat meals at the same services as the men, she said. Getting away for the night isn’t worth angering the men, she continued.

The Wheeling Police Department did not return a message asking what process, if any, exists for removing people from the camp in the case of domestic violence. City Manager Bob Herron and newly-elected Mayor Denny Magruder also did not respond to requests for interviews.

Christine Pritt said she became homeless four months ago, following a man she fell in love with. Becoming homeless was the only way she could be with him, she said. Pritt has lived at the exempted site since it opened in April.

She said the man started abusing her. The two are no longer a couple, but because of a lack of other options, he still lives in the camp, she said.

The man is “not allowed around me,” she said. However, that’s a rule she will enforce on her own.

“I’ve got a club now,” she said. “I will beat him with it. I’m not doing it.”

She continued, “We need help down there, serious help. There’s some of us that knows what we’re supposed to do and does it. And then there’s others that … want to keep stealing everybody’s stuff and tearing down the things they’re putting down there.”

Kettler makes a point to visit the camp often and check in on the 40 to 50 people who live there at any given time. When she’s away from the camp, Kettler said the stories of the women there haunt her.

“I haven’t had any sleep for three nights. Just because I go home — how do you turn it off?” she said. “I lay there and I think, ‘My god, what’s happening down there to those girls?’ Because they call us. They call us at night. They call us all the time. They’re in their tents. They’re scared to go out. They’re scared to call 911 because that makes them a narc or a rat.”

Dr. William Mercer, a physician and the founder of the street medicine team Project Hope, said it’s common for him to treat women with black eyes. He said the police recently arrested a man from the camp who was dangerous to other people, though no one is sure how long the man will be in jail and away from the other residents.

Providers are trying to keep open lines of communication with the city, he said.

“It’s kind of tough,” he said. “ We deal with homeless [people] and people who are down on their luck, but you can’t be what I call a real criminal. And if you are, we want you out. So we try to communicate with the police.”

Albertini-Weigel said service providers, like herself, are still trying to figure out how to best meet needs in the camp against a backdrop of shortage of mental health providers and housing.

“I want to provide as many social service supports as possible to meet those individuals’ needs,” she said. “I don’t think we’ve hit the mark yet. I think we are a work in progress, and sad to say that the individuals that are in these camps are basically paying the price while we work through what is a more ideal situation.”

Supreme Court decision could mean more camping bans like Wheeling’s

Earlier this summer, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that arresting people for sleeping outside does not violate the constitution’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment, even when there are no shelter beds available to them.

Across the country in recent years, states and cities have enacted laws prohibiting camping or sleeping in public as the number of people experiencing homelessness has increased.

So far this year, at least three states — Oklahoma, Kentucky and Florida — have passed camping bans.

Advocates say the Supreme Court’s decision may lead to cities around the country enacting similar ordinances.

In Morgantown, a council member has proposed extending the city’s public camping ban from parks to residential properties, city streets, alleyways and sidewalks. A leader in Charleston said the city was reviewing the decision to determine what it might mean for the city’s homeless policy.

Cheryl Smith has been homeless for four years due to relationship issues with her family, she said, and has been staying in Wheeling’s exempted site. On a recent Friday, she was preparing for a job interview. Looking presentable is more difficult when you’re staying in an encampment with no electricity or running water, she said, but “anybody can do anything if you put their mind to it.”

Smith cannot get into a shelter because she’d need to quit using drugs, something she said she’s not ready for yet.

She said the city is being harsh to homeless people by imposing a camping ban.

“That’s stupid. Why do that?” she said. “I mean there’s going to be people that are homeless. There’s going to be people who can’t get into housing.”

A week after talking to a reporter, Roberta was back at the legal camping spot along Maintenance Trail, where the man also lives, confirmed Kettler with Street MOMS.

Roberta called the camping ban “ridiculous,” and said the bad behaviors of some people have led to stereotypes.

“We’re not all bad people, we’re not all addicts,” she said. “If they would get to sit down and get to know all of us at once and find out our stories, they would realize that.”

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