NEWS

Wheeling’s Homeless Ban: A Three Year Retrospective

This fall marks three years since Wheeling’s city council passed legislation banning eating, sleeping, cooking food and storing belongings in public spaces – effectively making it illegal to be homeless. As many have observed, homelessness is perhaps more visible now in Wheeling as the ban merely displaces but does not alleviate homelessness, just as several dozen homeless service providers warned.

Mustard Seed Mountain’s staff looks back on the past several years of local anti-homeless legislation, which can be closely traced back to the national political climate and rhetoric about unhoused communities.

Justice Hudson 8/3/26 Justice Hudson 8/3/26

Demanding Due Diligence: Warwood Organizes Against a Data Center

As the sun rises over Ohio County, J. Arnold steps out her front door overlooking the southern portion of Warwood, a Wheeling neighborhood two miles north of the city’s urban core. It’s a quiet neighborhood, all things considered. Arnold can see the mighty Ohio River with the town of Martins Ferry, Ohio, to the west. Through her neighbor’s yards, she can see a shopping complex close enough to hear conversations held in the parking lot. South of the former Save-a-Lot, Arnold sees the historic Centre Foundry and its gray-blue walls.

When Arnold first bought her home, Centre Foundry was still an operating steel mill – the same steel mill that lasted some 183 years since its founding before West Virginia was even a state. In 2023, the foundry quieted as its furnaces ran cold, parking lots emptied, jobs evaporated, and its doors closed for one final time. Now, a new business is preparing to move in; and it’s a neighbor Arnold, and other Warwood residents, are concerned about.

Ashlie Howard 6/15/26 Ashlie Howard 6/15/26

“Tri-me-delphia” — A Flood Story

June 14th was a productive day for me. I had just replaced the banister railings on both sides of my steps that led up to my back porch, cleaned off the porch, and set up the new storage bench I had put together the day before. I had also laid a new patio the previous weekend. The place was really coming together. I had been steadily working on my trailer almost every weekend since 2023. My plan was to sell it and use that money for a down payment on purchasing a house.

Kate Marshall 5/20/26 Kate Marshall 5/20/26

Beyond The Walls: From Cell to Sacred

As an Uplift WV member and artist, Idle is one of the lead curators of Inside→OUT: incARceraTion, a traveling exhibit that fosters community conversations and education on mass incarceration and the need for community-driven, supportive reentry in West Virginia and across the nation. This might seem unexpected, as Idle is incarcerated at Mount Olive Correctional Facility, serving a life-without-mercy sentence. He views his work as an opportunity for restitution — to repair the harm he has caused and to help create the world he needed as a child.

Justice Hudson 3/15/24 Justice Hudson 3/15/24

UNFRIENDLY CITY: How Wheeling became WV’s capital of criminalizing homelessness

As dawn broke over the city of Wheeling on Thursday, January 18, on the heels of a statewide emergency declaration related to a massive winter storm, city officials mobilized dump trucks and bulldozers to a hillside in the neighborhood of East Wheeling.

Gabrielle Marshall 12/14/22 Gabrielle Marshall 12/14/22

My Neighborhood is Not for Sale