Four days after the latest snowfall, snow remained covering much of Charleston, W.Va., on Tuesday, Jan. 14, 2025. (Leann Ray | West Virginia Watch)
The death of a homeless man found near a bridge in Charleston, West Virginia, on Saturday evening after the city received 3 to 4 inches of snow overnight is raising concerns about the city’s policies and temperature threshold for operating warming centers.
The man — whose name has not been released — was found under or near the Spring Street Bridge near the Bigley Piggly Wiggly grocery store Jan. 11. The cause of the man’s death is still under investigation, but it was not the result of violence, said Matt Sutton, chief of staff to Mayor Amy Goodwin.
Another person alerted police when they found him Saturday evening, Sutton said. Police do not know how long the man had been there before he was discovered.
The man had been at a warming center at a West Side church earlier in the week as a snow and ice storm bore down on the Capitol City, homeless service providers say. However, on Friday, the night before the man was found dead, the warming center did not open. There was no space for him at a men’s homeless shelter either.
Amy Wolfe, CEO of Manna Meal, said the man was a frequent guest of the Charleston soup kitchen. He didn’t show Saturday, she said.
“I think part of the conversation needs to be ‘how do we do better?’” Wolfe said. “What do we do to try to help more people in circumstances like this? Let’s look to see what other cities do that maybe we can incorporate that into our services as well.”
The city contracts with Kanawha Valley Collective, a homeless service continuum of care, to open warming and cooling centers for unhoused people and those without adequate heat or air conditioning at the church on the coldest and hottest nights of the year.
The city sets aside $100,000 a year to reimburse KVS for setting up and running the shelters. According to the agency’s memorandum of understanding with the city, the warming centers are to open when the temperature dips to 20 degrees or below, regardless of windchill. Cooling centers are to open when the National Weather Service issues a heat advisory, according to the agreement.
Outside of those weather parameters, the KVC can operate the centers, but the city will not reimburse expenses unless other inclement weather is forecasted, and the city gives prior authorization for the KVC to open the shelter.
In a statement over the weekend, Mayor Amy Goodwin said she was saddened to hear of the man’s death during the cold temperatures.
“In light of this news, we are reminded of the importance of our community’s collective efforts to help ensure the wellbeing of our most vulnerable community members,” Goodwin said. She said that the temperature thresholds for opening the warming center are set in collaboration with local service providers. And that the temperature threshold was raised in 2023.
The warming center had been open earlier in the week as Winter Storm Blair dropped several inches of snow and ice in the area. It reopened Saturday and Monday nights and was expected to be open Tuesday and Wednesday nights.
The National Weather Center in Charleston had issued a winter weather advisory for Kanawha County that began at 1 p.m. Friday, Jan. 10 and stretched to 4 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 11, in anticipation of more 2 to 4 inches of snow, said Levi Cornett, a meteorologist with the weather servicein Charleston. Cornett said the city got 3 to 4 inches of snow and the low temperature Saturday morning was 24 degrees.
Traci Strickland, the director of the Kanawha Valley Collective, said the agency did not open the warming center Friday night because it wasn’t forecasted to be 20 degrees.
“I don’t think it got that cold either,” she said. “We got way more snow than what was forecasted. I think we got five inches of snow. It felt like there was a lot of snow. Had that been forecasted, we would have had conversations about opening and I figured we would have.”
Strickland said the forecast kept changing.
“I know at one point it was like one to three [inches] I mean it was all over the map,” she said.
Sutton, Goodwin’s chief of staff, said Monday the city has a great relationship with the Kanawha Valley Collective and other agencies that partner to host the warming centers.
When the city began contracting with the Kanawha Valley Collective for warming centers in 2023, it changed its temperature threshold for opening them from 15 to 20 degrees. In 2019, Goodwin increased the threshold from 10 degrees to 15 degrees
“If they collectively feel like there needs to be something different, we’re all ears,” Sutton said. “I mean, we haven’t gotten that yet. We continue with the MOU, we continue with working with them and helping to fund the centers. But we haven’t had a conversation long and in-depth about raising the temperature [thresholds].”
He said the city has allowed the KVC to open warming centers when the temperature did not dip to 20 degrees. He said the KVC had not exhausted its available funds the first year. This year, the agency is on track to spend the money, he said.
Sutton said it would take a while to figure out what happened to cause the man’s death and determine a plan moving forward.
“Hopefully we can figure out the best way to move forward, and if that means changing up the warming centers, then we were happy to take a look at that, but we really need a plan from the people who are going to do the work.”
Strickland said the warming center threshold is a discussion that always can be had, but the city really needs a year-round low barrier shelter so that providers do not have to make the decision about a warming center based on forecasts that can change.
“As long as you’re opening based on a forecast, there’s always room for error,” Strickland said. Opening a low-barrier shelter would require funding as well as a place to put it. In prior discussions about such a shelter, council members have not wanted to put them in their wards, she said.
The man’s death Saturday was likely the first due because of exposure since 2018, she said.
City Council member Chelsea Steelhammer said Monday she’d talked to fellow council members and service providers about how to improve homeless services.
The city has 181 shelter beds, short of what’s needed for the estimated 335 people who are homeless according to the latest Point in Time count, she said.
“I think one of the most important things is we’re going to have to have more beds, not just in warming centers,” Steelhammer said. “Warming centers are kind of a Band-Aid. We need more long term solutions, but right now, we also need more Band-Aids until we can get physical space.”
Steelhammer and Councilman Joe Solomon want the city to allocate more money to the KVC than the $100,000 it currently allocates.
“One thing that the KVC does need is they need more funds in order to continue, because the warming centers are on the same budget,” Steelhammer said. “And $13,000 was spent doing the cooling centers this year because we had so many very hot days, and we did, like seven days in a row just recently,” she said.
In a written statement, Solomon said he was “deeply shaken” by the news of the man’s death.
“As a city councilor, I feel the weight of this tragedy and my responsibility to advocate more effectively for additional funding for our city’s warming centers,” he said.
“I’m hopeful for the opportunity to collaborate with the Goodwin administration and all of City Council to provide critical funding needed now by service providers to get us through this cold season and to significantly expand resources in next year’s budget,” he wrote. “Together, we can keep lowering the thresholds, open our doors more often, and ensure everyone in Charleston has a safe place to turn when extreme weather hits.”
Steelhammer said she also wants the city’s next agreement with the KVC to give the agency more leeway about when to operate the shelters.
“Another thing that we definitely want to ask for in the next MOU is that even if we don’t change the temperature threshold, is to say that KVC has the discretion when weather is inclement to open a shelter and we trust the service provider to make that judgment call,” she said.
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