Morgantown City Council candidates aim to end homelessness in the city

“We know whose side we’re on,” Butcher said. "We’re on the side of renters, not giant developers. We’re on the side of people who don’t have a place to stay..."

By DOUGLAS J HARDING

Three candidates for Morgantown City Council announced during a press conference Thursday their plans to ensure housing as a right for all citizens and to halt evictions throughout the city. For one candidate, the issue is a particularly personal one.

Brian Butcher (7th Ward) said when he moved to West Virginia, he “knew these mountains would be [his] perfect home.”

However, since moving to the Mountain State from Chicago when he was just 5-years-old, Butcher has learned all too well the troubles so many residents experience with finding affordable housing. Perhaps the most harrowing of his experiences, Butcher said, occurred while he was living in Huntington, where he attended college.

“While there, I came upon hard times,” Butcher said. “Through a series of events, I became an unemployed and houseless individual. Every day, I would search for a job, and then I would search for food, and then I’d search for a place to sleep.”

Butcher said he often was allowed to sleep on a friend’s couch, but sometimes, when he had nowhere else to go, his only shelter was the car his parents had helped him to acquire.

Even though no one should be forced to endure such experiences, Butcher said he is certain many others in West Virginia constantly are enduring much worse.

“I want to be absolutely clear: The psychic shock and terror of constantly worrying about where my next meal would come from, or if someone was going to break into my car and take what little I had, or if the place I sleep tonight will end me up in jail, was nothing compared to the experiences of those who had even less than I did,” Butcher said. “I often had the kindness of my community of friends and family I had cultivated over the years. There are many who don’t have that luxury. There are many who don’t have the privilege of being a white male when they are beset upon for enforcement of homelessness laws.”

Butcher said his troubles finding affordable housing in the state did not end when he moved away from Huntington to Morgantown, nor when he found more financial stability for himself.

“Most regular people are priced out of living in Morgantown,” Butcher said. “When I first moved here on my own, I had to live inside a subleased student apartment complex. I was 23-years-old with no desire to live with college students I barely knew, but the $450 sublease was all I could afford in Morgantown. I was paying more [in Morgantown] for a four-bedroom apartment full of kids I didn’t know than I ever had [paid] for two-bedroom spaces in Huntington or Beckley.”

Butcher said when he was ready to buy a home in Morgantown, he was shocked by the state of the city’s housing market.

“When I went to buy a home here, I found that it was nearly impossible to find a house for under $200,000 for a family of four unless that house was literally falling down,” he said. “The condition of the housing market in Morgantown persists today. We need proven, efficient and dignified ways to increase our housing stock [and] to get the Morgantown housing market under control.”

Butcher’s housing plan—the Morgantown Can’t Wait housing plan—features several policy initiatives that were crafted with the help of hundreds of Morgantown residents, including fellow W.V. Can’t Wait candidates for Morgantown City Council, Marly Ynigues (5th Ward) and Ixya Vega (3rd Ward).

Some of those initiatives include:

·      Ensuring affordable housing for all and ending the criminalization of homelessness by passing Evictions Moratorium and Right to Housing ordinances

·      Working to educate local tenants about their rights

·      Fining disobedient landlords

·      Repurposing planning and zoning ordinances

·      Shifting law enforcement priorities to be more “Housing First”

·      Ending “Quality of Life” ordinances, which are used to harass homeless individuals

·      Banning the clearing of street encampments

·      Providing free public transit to individuals experiencing homelessness

Butcher said part of his plan is to help implement set-aside ordinances which would ensure that all large developments in the city must include a certain portion of affordable housing. He said he also would like to pass a home-set ordinance requiring landlords to better maintain properties and to fill ones which are currently abandoned.

Butcher also said he would like to work with local business owners and community members to establish a housing cooperative which “collectively controls costs and has strength of bargaining and buying power” to help build a future where affordable housing is a foundation of life in the city.

“We know whose side we’re on,” Butcher said. “We’re on the side of renters, not giant developers. We’re on the side of people who don’t have a place to stay. All Morgantown residents deserve a community in which we can thrive, [and] no one should be priced out of living in Morgantown. We need housing solutions that actually work for all classes of people, be they a working-class family or a houseless person battling drug addiction. We cannot allow the interests of profit motive to dictate to our citizens who gets to live in dignified housing.”

Vega, a recent graduate of West Virginia University, said the issue of affordable housing in Morgantown impacts students and young people as well as individuals experiencing homelessness.

“Housing costs are an issue that many students and young professionals face in Morgantown,” Vega said. “Landlords understand that students have security of student loans and their families to pay for rent, and they increase prices to profit from taking advantage of students.”

Vega said she remembers being forced to move apartments on several occasions because rent was so expensive. She said simply educating tenants about their own rights can go a long way in helping to prevent other individuals from having similar experiences.

“Many students are forced to live in run-down apartments without someone to advocate for their rights,” Vega said. “If we work together to educate tenants of their rights, we are able to hold code-violators accountable […] Morgantown’s residents deserve better.”

Ynigues said the government in Morgantown can do much more to protect the rights of tenants and to ensure affordable housing for individuals in need, in part through their planning and zoning policies.

“There is so much we can do for Morgantown,” Ynigues said. “We are not at the whim of developer prices to create affordable housing. Let’s make safe and affordable housing a foundation of our community.”

The West Virginia Holler is an affiliate of The Tennessee Holler and is powered, in part, by West Virginia Can’t Wait.  

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