Charleston City Council candidates push to ban sweeps of homeless encampments
"The first thing we do when we connect with such unprecedented pain is we stop making it worse. In Charleston, one of the best ways we can stop making our pain worse is to ban these sweeps."
By DOUGLAS J HARDING
Candidates for Charleston City Council held this week a ‘Ban the Sweeps’ press conference on the steps of City Hall, calling for a halt to the destruction of homeless encampments throughout the city.
“Stop tearing up our homes,” Sheena Griffith, a candidate for City Council who said she has experienced homelessness, demanded. “It doesn’t matter if it’s a tent or what it’s made out of. It is ours, and we probably worked a long time to get that tent or that tarp just for you to cut it up and look down on me like you’re something better when really you are one bad decision away from where we are.”
Griffith said it is a myth that people experiencing homelessness are lazy or jobless. The issue of homelessness cannot be solved by further stigmatizing and punishing unsheltered individuals, she said. The solution, rather, lays in offering to such individuals the resources and services they desperately need to survive.
“Being unsheltered is caused by poverty, by circumstance, by escaping violence, by a lack of affordable housing and the limited scaled of housing assistance programs, by a lack of employment opportunities and by substance use disorder,” Griffith said. “It is caused by mental illness, by lack of education, by a lack of skills taught in order to understand how to obtain and maintain a stable home. Imagine having a medical condition, a mental illness, substance use disorder, and only being allowed in the shelter from evening until morning, then being made to walk on the streets during the day with nowhere to go, no one to talk to, and being criminalized for being on the streets.”
Griffith said some people experiencing homelessness receive trespassing tickets simply for sitting down to rest on a sidewalk, which only makes their situations worse because they cannot afford to pay the ticket.
“And if you decide to talk back against that ticket, you’ll get in even worse trouble than that,” she said.
Another obvious way to begin solving the issue of homelessness, Griffith said, is by treating unsheltered people with the same basic human decency and respect with which we treat others in our lives.
“When I think of my unsheltered neighbors, the first thing that comes to my mind is something my grandma used to tell me all the time,” Griffith said. “She said ‘Love your neighbor.’ It doesn’t matter if my neighbor has a brick home or a stick home or a classic home. I will love my neighbor. When I was out there, nobody could come and tell me what I should do or what I need to do. Someone came to me and met me where I was and showed me kindness and love, and that’s what changed my life.”
Candidate for City Council Corey Zinn said throughout his life in Charleston he has witnessed a change in the way the community views and treats people experiencing homelessness.
“When I remember growing up in Charleston, I remember going to churches and soup kitchens and these events where people really cared about the homeless and wanted to listen to them and wanted to help them and find them clothing, find them shelter, find them services,” Zinn said. “But all I’m hearing now is, ‘Well, I want to help the homeless, but…’ and then fill in the blank right there with whatever you want.”
Zinn also called for a more empathetic and sensible approach to dealing with the issue of homelessness throughout the city.
“We need to meet the homeless with compassion,” Zinn said. “We can’t criminalize them. We can’t punish them. They have nothing. Everything they have has been given to them through a service that can help them just get to the next day. You can’t do anything with that. You can’t build off of that.”
Zinn said the city’s clearing of homeless encampments is especially problematic because, oftentimes, everyday community members do not realize it is happening. He also said that sometimes the city does not even notify the people living in the encampments when a sweep is about to occur.
“We have to ban these sweeps. This has to stop,” Zinn said. “We’re tired of seeing homeless encampments cleared—sometimes in the shadows, sometimes we don’t even see it on the news. We hear about it from volunteers and we hear they weren’t even given a warning. That is illegal.”
Since 2017, following a federal lawsuit faced by the City regarding the clearing of “Tent City” near the Elk River, City ordinances have required that people living in homeless encampments be given prior notice of planned sweeps. Those living in an encampment which has existed between 7 and 30 days must be notified at least two days in advance of a sweep. Those living in an encampment which has existed for longer than 30 days must be notified of a sweep two weeks in advance.
Zinn also called upon City leadership to adjust the temperature at which the community warming shelter opens when there is cold weather. Currently, the warming shelter opens only when temperatures are expected to sink below 15 degrees Fahrenheit for an extended period of time.
Mayor Amy Goodwin’s administration received criticism earlier this year from activists enraged that city crews were sent out to clear encampments on three separate occasions in a period of less than two weeks, including when temperatures were expected to sink to just 17 degrees.
“We have to raise the temperature [at which] the warming shelter opens,” Zinn said. “It should be a full-time facility. This is ridiculous. It’s a waste of money to tear it down every night and then have to be checking the weather just to put it back up.”
Candidate for City Council Joe Solomon said solving the issue of homelessness is particularly important in Charleston and Kanawha County, which, along with Huntington and Cabell County, typically see some of the highest overdose rates in the country.
“We know we live in the overdose capital of the world. In this city and in this county, we lose someone [to overdose] every other day. In this city and this county, we lead the state whose overdose count leads the nation,” Solomon said. “We are overdosing largely from fentanyl. So, what is fentanyl? Fentanyl is a painkiller. If we are the capital of deaths from painkillers, that also means we are the capital of pain. We are America’s capital of pain.”
Solomon said the state’s epidemic of pain manifests itself through various crises being experienced by the people who live here, including a homelessness epidemic, the nation’s most dangerous HIV outbreak, regular gun violence and masses of young people leaving the state with no intentions of ever returning.
“And that’s just a few ways our pain expresses itself,” Solomon said. “So, the first thing we do when we connect with such unprecedented pain is we stop making it worse. In Charleston, one of the best ways we can stop making our pain worse is to ban these sweeps.”
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