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. 

We must be constantly telling the stories of those we love and are in community with to advance everyone's understanding of this problem as one that the community must bear—and not a failing of any particular individual.

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.