Clarksburg considers camping ban for homeless people
Clarksburg City Council discussing a proposed camping ban during its meeting Thursday, Oct. 17, 2024. (City of Clarksburg YouTube channel Screenshot)
The city of Clarksburg is considering an ordinance that would impose fines on homeless people sleeping on its streets.
Clarksburg City Council heard the first reading of the camping ban during its regular meeting Thursday . The bill is expected to be read a second time and put to a final vote Nov. 7, following a public hearing.
Under the ordinance, camping on streets, parks or trails, public property and private property without permission is prohibited. It also prohibits storage of personal property in public areas. Penalties for violating the ordinance are fines of up to $500 for a third offense, but do not include jail time.
If the city passes the law, it would become at least the second West Virginia municipality to impose a camping ban for homeless people since June, when the United States Supreme Court ruled that a similar ban in Grants Pass, Oregon does not violate the constitution's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. At least 23 U.S. towns and cities considered or passed such a ban in the two months after the high court's ruling, one analysis found.
Morgantown passed a camping ban last month.
Across the country in recent years, states and cities have enacted laws prohibiting camping or sleeping in public as they responded to an increase in the number of people experiencing homelessness.
Wheeling and Parkersburg passed camping bans last year, prior to the Grants Pass decision.
During the Clarksburg City Council meeting, Councilman Marc Jackson said he proposed the ordinance because of about 50 to 75 people "wandering around our city who may be unhoused."
"Those individuals are moving around and they're getting in and out of things," he said. "I've been in some of these places. When we hear 'camping' this isn't like your camp up on the Tygart River. I've gone in there. You have to go in and see the mess that is created. They go in and they take all this garbage, these clothes. It's one outfit off, one outfit on. Whatever they've eaten. Whatever they drink, whatever drug paraphernalia."
Rev. Chris Scott, priest of Christ Episcopal Church in Clarksburg, was among the handful of people who spoke out against the proposal during Thursday's meeting. He raised concerns about a lack of emergency shelter beds in the city.
The bill says the city shall not issue a citation for a violator of the ordinance unless they are offered alternate shelter and refuse the offer.
"My question is what alternate location? Where? There is no alternate location that I know of," Scott said. "If you know it, please tell me. We have no emergency shelter for people who are unhoused. And passing this ordinance just before the winter and when we have not done our due diligence to truly provide alternatives to me is just cruel."
In a letter Thursday, the ACLU of West Virginia asked the Clarksburg council to reconsider the ordinance. Legal director Aubrey Sparks wrote that the camping ban likely violates residents' civil rights and liberties.
"A 'solution' to this problem would require Clarksburg to address the availability of low-barrier housing options, the rates of substance use disorder, access to mental health care, barriers to keeping families intact, and myriad issues that are tightly interwoven and impact the rates of homelessness and the factors that a person who is unhoused may consider when deciding where to spend their time, and where to seek safety each night," Sparks wrote.
