Wheeling City Councilman Ben Seidler, center, speaks during Tuesday night’s meeting of Wheeling City Council while fellow council members Tony Assaro and Connie Cain listen. (Photo by Eric Ayres)
WHEELING – Wheeling City Councilman Ben Seidler on Tuesday night asserted that the city’s efforts to address homelessness “are not working” and that a new approach is needed.
During Tuesday night’s meeting of Wheeling City Council, Seidler used his portion set aside for “remarks from members of council” to deliver a program – complete with an accompanying video – to propose a new idea to help address the city’s ongoing issues pertaining to its homeless population.
“We’ve thrown a lot of time, effort and money – and our hearts – into making this problem better,” Seidler said. “I fully believe at this point that we have much less of a homeless problem than we do an addiction and mental health problem. And it’s troubling.”
Seidler noted that the city created a homeless liaison position, worked to help create a Life Hub and has consistently provided financial assistance to many local service agencies that work with the homeless.
“We have worked to consolidate camps into one central location at the request of our providers so that we could consolidate resources and hopefully get those folks through the cycle of homelessness and back on their feet,” Seidler said. “It’s just not working. Unfortunately, we still have a pretty decent number of folks down there that need rehab or mental health assistance. Our efforts are not working right now.”
Seidler said that over the last couple of weeks, city leaders have been discussing new ideas internally in hopes of addressing the homeless issues.
“I’m ready to share a new approach that I’m willing to push the city forward on,” he said. “I’d like for us to create a Homeless Engagement Assistance and Resource Team – basically a HEART Team similar to a county in Colorado – Douglas County, Colorado – that has implemented this and has had great success in their community.”
During his presentation, Seidler had a short video played in council chambers that explains the Douglas County, Colorado HEART Team program.
“This is my vision for us,” Seidler said.
The video can be viewed here.
Like Wheeling, a camping ban has been in effect in that Colorado county, which is located south of Denver. The program involves a team member – accompanied by a law enforcement officer – proactively going out into the community, locating individual homeless individuals and navigating them to resources they may need.
According to Douglas County officials, the team leads with compassion, but also focuses on code enforcement and good communication. They stressed that homelessness is not a crime, but it is a crime to vandalize property, urinate in front of a building or break other laws.
After about a year of utilizing the new HEART Team program, the county has seen a 36% reduction in homelessness, and panhandling has “dried up,” officials said in the video, encouraging citizens who give money directly to homeless individuals to instead give to the Red Cross.
“So it’s time the city takes the lead here and creates partnerships with key providers here to address this problem,” Seidler said. “What we’re doing today isn’t working. We have people that are thrashing in the cycle of homelessness and the cycles of addiction – it’s not working.”
The city of Wheeling has provided a property near Wheeling Creek along what is known as the Maintenance Trail to use as an exempted site to the city’s new camping ban. Under the new city code, a managed camp is permitted. While local agencies and organizations go into the homeless encampment to provide services, no specific entity has been designated as the lead agency to head a managed camp.
“We’ve got to give folks a clear path to mental health resources, addiction resources, sober living, resources after the fact, job services and housing,” Seidler said, noting that he believes there are agencies in the city that are not focused on reducing the number of homeless individuals in the community or helping people actually break the cycle of homelessness.
A large homeless encampment along 18th Street under the U.S. 250 overpass in East Wheeling in 2021 was removed. Since Wheeling’s camping ban was implemented, one site on public property has been exempted from the ban, allowing homeless individuals to stay there. (File Photo by Eric Ayres)
“Agencies like the Soup Kitchen, Wheeling Health Right, YWCA, Northwood and a few others are doing great things,” Seidler said. “But there are absolutely a number of agencies in the city of Wheeling – supposedly focused on the homeless – who are just not even remotely successful at helping to put an end to an individual’s homelessness. They lie and manipulate the narrative with false and half-truths, and tug on the heart-strings of our community in order to justify their existence. As far as I’m concerned, some of these folks won’t have a seat at the table much longer.
“They might be experts on homelessness but they are clearly not experts on ending a person’s homelessness.”
Seidler did not specify Tuesday which agencies were not acting properly.
This weekend, Seidler publicly described some of the local providers and activists – while not naming any specifically – as having a “lack of character and integrity” that “create a neverending victim mentality” and mischaracterize what is actually happening within Wheeling’s homeless population. This prompted Susan Hagan, who serves on the board of directors for Wheeling Health Right as well as a number of other local agency boards, to step forward during Tuesday night’s council meeting to express disappointment in Seidler’s generalization of the local agencies.
“You paint such a broad brush of the agencies,” Hagan said, noting that there is a difference between an agency and a nonprofit, and that city leaders’ public statements can affect their fundraising through community donations. “I’m not entirely sure that you understand what a lot of these agencies actually do.”
Hagan encouraged an open dialogue between the city and all of the service providers.
“I think a lot of people assume that if you’re an agency and you’re in Wheeling, you work with the homeless. And some of them do,” Hagan said. “For most of them, it’s about 10% of what they do. They have a 100 other missions other than that – feeding children, feeding the elderly and everything else.”
The task force proposal is a great idea that has been brought to the table in the past, Hagan said, noting that it has not come to fruition because there are not enough mental health and addiction services in the area.
“The agencies struggle to find the help that they need,” Hagan said. “It’s not that they’re not trying.”
Seidler invited Hagan to speak with him privately after the meeting to discuss matters. Hagan noted that she and the councilman “fall on the same page” with many of the homeless matters, including the task force proposal.
While Seidler publicly introduced his proposal during Tuesday night’s Wheeling City Council meeting, no action has been brought forward to take action on the matter.
Wheeling City Councilman Ben Seidler speaks Tuesday night about the city’s ongoing issues surrounding its homeless population. (Photo by Eric Ayres)