Charleston officials plan to settle a lawsuit brought after Mayor Danny Jones decided to eject a group of homeless people living in "Tent City" last year in below-freezing temperatures.
As part of the settlement, the city agreed to create a $20,000 fund for people who claimed to have lost property when the encampment on the bank of the Elk River was taken down. The city also agreed to create an outdoor storage facility for homeless people to store their personal items.
The settlement was agreed to in mid-July, after about a year of back-and-forth court filings, said City Attorney Paul Ellis.
"We paid off to get rid of it," Jones said Thursday. "These people were on private property. We were asked to remove them. There were threats that had been made, and we have no regrets. We took care of a problem."
Attorneys for both sides are set to appear in federal court in Charleston before U.S. District Judge John T. Copenhaver Jr. at 10:30 a.m. on Friday for an update on the settlement and to dismiss the case. Ellis said the money has already been split up and given to about a dozen different people who lived at "Tent City" in the form of vouchers to buy food, clothing, medicine and other items they might need from local businesses.
"We are really pleased to have reached a resolution for clients, who suffered tremendously when their limited personal belongings were destroyed by the City of Charleston with no warning whatsoever," said Sam Petsonk, a lawyer representing the homeless people who lived in the encampment, in a statement. "While they can never be fully compensated for losing their food, medical records, photos of loved ones, clothes, and supplies to cover their basic needs, they are glad to have helped create improved policies for the City to ensure that nothing like this ever happens again."
In January 2016, Jones ordered police to remove the encampment of homeless and transient people living at "Tent City" - a collection of about 20 tents which sat along the bank of the Elk River near the Spring Street Bridge. The encampment was on land owned by Waste Management, but had been there for at least a decade.
Jones ordered police to remove Tent City residents' personal property without notice, to intentionally prevent them from seeking legal help to prevent the loss of their personal property, according to a copy of the original lawsuit.
Terry Cutright and John Wilson filed the lawsuit, alleging the city violated their right to be secure from unreasonable searches and their right to due process.
The two lived at "Tent City" for three years before Jones ordered the encampment taken down, according to the lawsuit. A little more than a year before they were ejected, counsel for the police department allegedly told them the city had no plans to evict the residents, but that if the plan would change, police would let them know.
But on Jan. 19, 2016, Jones "personally supervised" police as they moved out the group of people and threw their personal belongings in trash compactor trucks, the complaint reads.
Shortly after Jones ordered the encampment torn down, police told the Gazette-Mail that only trash was thrown away. People living there said their personal belongings, including hundreds of dollars of food, was trashed.
Mountain State Justice, a nonprofit legal aid group based in Charleston, is representing the group.
"There's nothing frivolous or ridiculous about the case," said Petsonk, who works for the non-profit. "Everyone knows what happened there and it was a tragedy. Our clients took the opportunity to use this unfortunate situation to improve not only their personal situations, but the situation of their community so all homeless folks will have access to stable property storage."
Petsonk said the outdoor storage facility to be constructed after the settlement is approved is important for all homeless people in Charleston.
"We never needed a lawsuit," Ellis said Thursday. "The lawsuit was actually fairly ridiculous... There was certainly never any intent to inadvertently destroy or dispose of anybody's personal property."
Ellis said the city had agreed shortly after the encampment was taken down to reimburse people for any property they could prove had been thrown away - except the city had no proof anyone's belongings were trashed. He said Mountain State Justice collected affidavits from people living at the camp, and used those affidavits to decide who to distribute the vouchers to.
The city tried to get the case dismissed, arguing in November the people at Tent City did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy sufficient to be protected under the U.S. and West Virginia constitutions, according to court documents.
The city also argued that the case should have been dismissed because Cutright and Wilson were trespassing on private property. Before "Tent City" was taken down, local homeless service providers offered the people living there housing or shelter, according to the city. "Thus, any damages they allegedly suffered as a result of being removed from private property were caused by their own refusal and not by any act or omission by the defendants," the city's response reads.
In December, about a year after Tent City was torn down, City Council passed a resolution that requires the city to provide 14 days written notice before vacating such an encampment. It also increased the city's contribution to the Prestera Center by about $25,000 to hire two full-time outreach workers who will act as liaisons between law enforcement, homeless individuals and the business community.
The new policy has been used about six times because of smaller encampments, according to Ellis. The city hasn't actually had to physically remove any homeless people, he said, but has notified people of their intent to do so.
Reach Jake Jarvis at jake.jarvis@wvgazettemail.com, Facebook.com/newsroomjake, 304-348-7939 or @NewsroomJake on Twitter.