NEWS

An Impossible Choice: Domestic Violence a Cause of Homelessness

The YWCA receives at least three calls a week regarding domestic abuse in the Wheeling area and beyond. But for many survivors, escaping the abuse is only the first barrier.

Staff 10/14/26 Staff 10/14/26

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.

Vincent DeGeorge 8/10/26 Vincent DeGeorge 8/10/26

Faith Leaders and Our Homeless Neighbors - A Walk that Continues

With the convening of Wheeling’s new clergy-led Homeless Taskforce, we reflect on Wheeling’s long and active tradition of faith-based accompaniment with our homeless neighbors. It gives us hope that the City is now adopting this time-tested approach.

Staff 8/3/26 Staff 8/3/26

Setting the Stage for Wheeling’s Homeless Taskforce

In June, Mayor Denny Magruder announced the formation of a new taskforce to address the issue of homelessness in Wheeling. Magruder said the taskforce will be “guided by local clerics” and is intended to “balance compassion with accountability.” At the time of publication, the council has released little information about the makeup and specifics of the group aside from its chair – Rabbi Joshua Lief of Temple Shalom. As Wheeling’s ‘Homeless Taskforce’ takes shape, Mustard Seed Mountain reflects on the last decade of advocacy for our homeless neighbors.

Niamh Coomey 5/21/26 Niamh Coomey 5/21/26

The Camp Closure — What’s Next?

It is nearly six months since Wheeling closed its exempted homeless camp in freezing December temperatures, displacing around sixty individuals.

Some former camp residents are now in permanent housing, but many more are staying in abandoned buildings and local shelters. For certain groups, there is still not a clear path forward.

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.

Douglas Harding 10/13/23 Douglas Harding 10/13/23

Editor’s Desk: Homeless criminalization is ‘blatantly cruel,’ ‘accomplishes nothing’

Put simply, the city’s shutting down of the East Wheeling encampment and its forced evictions of dozens of residents who were not provided with any practical alternatives has been wholly unnecessary, senselessly destructive and totally unjustifiable.

Betsy Brossman 9/1/21 Betsy Brossman 9/1/21

Welcome to Blossoms

For a woman, life on the streets offers no glamor or beauty. Surviving outside amongst the elements takes grit, strength, and a special kind of resilient spirit that many of the unhoused women in Wheeling possess.

Crystal Bauer 9/1/21 Crystal Bauer 9/1/21

Uncomfortably Numb

In our street medicine program, Project HOPE long recognized that there were three times as many males experiencing homelessness as there were females. Or so it seemed.

Crystal Bauer 5/1/21 Crystal Bauer 5/1/21

Why You Have More in Common with a Homeless Person than You Think

Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs for humans is shown as a pyramid.