RALEIGH COUNTY, WV (WOAY) — The only shelter south of Charleston, Pine Haven is due to close on February 28.
Beckley Mayor Ryan Neal said the City Council met in a special session on January 23, 2025, to address this closure and how the city is trying to help.
“We’re out doing a story and it is freezing cold. People have nowhere else to go and have to sleep in conditions like this,” the mayor said. “We want to do everything we can to try to keep this place open.”
This has hit a nerve for many in the community and they aren’t going to sit idly by.
“At 5:30 on (January) 28th, there’s gonna be people on the mayor and city council lawn, if this doesn’t go away where we can solve it,” said Community Activist Gabriel Covington.
The shelter is a last resort, Neal says nobody wants to spend the night there. The funding was cut at the state level.
“Our city manager, Michael Resare, and recorder/treasurer Jessica Chandler had already run numbers to see if we could pull funds from something else to keep this at least temporarily open,” he said. “It was minus seven degrees the other day; we just can’t think of having to shut this place down. Where are the people who are here now going to go?
Covington says we need things that help and affect our community.
“Every four years or two years these people get in office and give us a plan of what they’re gonna do,” said the community activist. “I want to see action, I don’t want you to promise me anything because lives are gonna depend on it.”
They are working on a joint effort between the city and the county to try to find funds, the mayor said, as well as issue a temporary stay for an additional three months, and see what else they can do long-term.
“Council members and myself have been on the phone with our local representatives trying to find out why it was cut,” Neal said. “What can we do on our side to try to get the funding back to where it was last year?”
According to the mayor, the shelter had more than 400 families in 2023, he says the big misconception is that it’s a draw.
“And people are coming to Beckley because we have a homeless shelter,” said Neal. “But no, three-quarters of them are Raleigh County residents, so we obviously want to help our own.”
