West Virginia
WV’s homeless population increased in 2024, according to estimates, following national trends • West Virginia Watch
The number of people experiencing homelessness on a single winter night in West Virginia increased by about 25% from 2023 to 2024, according to point-in-time estimates released recently by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Point-in-time counts offer a snapshot of homelessness. Volunteers in communities around the country count both sheltered and unsheltered homeless people on a single night. The surveys are federally mandated to take place each year during the last 10 days of January.
Advocates say the counts underestimate the true scale of the homelessness crisis by excluding some homeless people, for instance those who are staying with friends or family because of economic hardship and those in jails or hospitals. A state-commissioned report last year found that on average, between 2018 and 2023, on average 3,624 people per year in West Virginia experienced literal homelessness.
According to the HUD 2024 report, released in December, 2024 saw the highest number of homeless people in the United States ever recorded. On a single night, 771,480 people stayed in an emergency shelter, safe haven, transitional housing program or in unsheltered locations across the country, up about 18% from 653,100 in 2023.
Several factors are responsible for the increase, the report says, including a national affordable housing crisis, rising inflation, stagnating wages among middle- and lower-income households, and the persisting effects of systemic racism have stretched homelessness services systems to their limits.
In addition, public health crises, natural disasters, rising numbers of people immigrating to the U.S., and the end to homelessness prevention programs put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic, including the end of the expanded child tax credit, made the problem worse, the report says.
In West Virginia, 1,779 people experienced homelessness on a night in January 2024, up from 1,416 the year before.
Point in time counts are coordinated by West Virginia’s four continuums of care, which are regional or local planning bodies that coordinate housing and services funding for homeless people.
Paige Looney, a data management specialist for the West Virginia Coalition to End Homelessness, said for the 44 counties served by the Balance of State Continuum of Care, multiple factors have contributed to an increase in recent years, including the ending of funding meant to mitigate damage from the COVID-19 pandemic.
“In these more recent years, as those COVID relief funds have kind of dried up, any eviction prevention funds are more limited now, that’s also been a contributing factor,” Looney said. She added that the continuum of care has gotten more volunteers in recent years, which likely has led to better counts of people in rural areas.
Lack of affordable housing has also been a big contributing factor, she said. The Balance of State Continuum of Care covers mostly rural areas of the state.
“We have very limited rental markets in some of those more rural areas,” Looney said. “And in the markets that we do have, [there’s] not a ton of affordable places for people to go. Obviously, times are tough, and if you miss a paycheck and you can’t meet rent, you end up in a very vulnerable position very quickly.”
Marissa Rhine is the director of the Resilience Collaborative, part of the United Way of Harrison and Doddridge Counties and the head agency in charge of leading the Point in Time Count in Harrison County.
Rhine said the North Central West Virginia county has seen a steady decrease in its point in time count numbers since the area’s only emergency shelter closed in 2020. The county has a winter shelter that operates with the support of nonprofit organizations, but no emergency shelter, she added.
In 2020, there were 112 homeless people in the county. That number dropped to 41 last year, according to point in time estimates.
“It’s not, in my opinion, it’s not necessarily that fewer people are experiencing homelessness who are in Harrison County initially when they become homeless,” she said. “It’s that a number of them, many of them, have to leave the county in order to access shelter services.”
Last year, the city of Clarksburg, the Harrison county seat, passed a law outlawing camping in public.
It was one of a handful of West Virginia cities and dozens nationwide that passed the bans after a U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding a similar ban in Grants Pass, Oregon. Morgantown and Bluefield have also passed the bans.
Proponents of bans argue the camps have become a public health and safety issue.
Advocates say camping bans not only do nothing to help homelessness, they make it worse by imposing fines, potential jail sentences and criminal records on homeless people and making it more difficult for them to get into permanent housing.
Rhine said Harrison County, particularly downtown Clarksburg, sees more homeless people during the summer months. Camping bans are not solutions to homelessness, she said, housing is.
“I think that there’s a lot of misconceptions within local governments about how to go about addressing homelessness,” she said. “There’s been since the closure of our emergency shelter, local officials who have taken some pretty staunch positions against emergency shelter operating and emergency shelter operating within the county. And I tend to think that’s really sort of a problematic policy position to take.
“We have a large number of people who are becoming homeless and experiencing homelessness here in Harrison County,” she said. “We don’t have an appropriate emergency service response for addressing homelessness.”
President Donald Trump has said he’d work with states to ban urban camping wherever possible, saying that the country’s “once great cities have become unlivable unsanitary nightmares, surrendered to the homeless, the drug addicted and the violent and dangerously deranged.”
Trump’s proposal includes relocating homeless people to large swaths of land with access to doctors, social workers, psychiatrists and drug rehab specialists.
Traci Strickland, director of the Kanawha Valley Collective, the continuum of care that serves Kanawha, Boone, Putnam and Clay counties, said the 2024 point in time count for those four counties was 335, up by 42 people over last year, and the highest it’s been since 2016. There’s not just one reason for this year’s increase, Strickland said.
“We’re seeing increases in first-time homelessness, which I think is around a lot of the safety nets that we had through COVID expired in 2022 and 2023,” she said. “So, as those protections went away, as eviction bans went away, as a lot of the supplemental funding went away, you ended up with people falling into homelessness for the first time.”
Strickland said as people lose their homes or move into apartments and start to rely on public housing for the first time, it results in fewer housing units being available to people with lower incomes.
“We definitely have issues finding units for individuals,” she said. “So we have people that we can get housing vouchers for, but we can’t find a unit for them to lease up in, and that might be because the landlord doesn’t take housing choice vouchers, because the units won’t pass inspection. So it’s really kind of all of these different splatter points of things that are happening.”
Charleston, where the KVC operates a men’s emergency shelter, has a shortage of affordable housing, Strickland said. Apartments planned for the East End and the West Side of the city will help, she said.
“A lot of the housing stock we have in Charleston is getting old, which then makes it harder to pass inspection [for HUD approval],” she said. “We have a greater need for handicap accessible units, and a lot of the independent properties, the smaller apartment properties aren’t accessible.”
The cost of rental housing has also increased along with inflation, she said. Substance use and mental health may or may not cause a person to become homeless but make it much more difficult for a person to get out of homelessness.
“One of the things we’re going to be seeing going forward, I think we’re going to see an increase in people experiencing homelessness that are elderly,” she said. “We have served multiple people this past year in their 70s and 80s. We’re seeing people with chronic health conditions, whether they’re elderly or younger.
“Our number of individuals that have had limbs amputated seems to be increasing every month,” she said. “Health issues driving homelessness is is an issue.”
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West Virginia
West Virginians weigh in on two races for unexpired terms to state Supreme Court – WV MetroNews
West Virginia voters will play a heavy role in shaping the state Supreme Court, which has two of five seats on the ballot.
Although this is a primary election for many other races, it’s the final say-so for these two seats on the state’s highest court.
One election is for an unexpired term to fill the seat formerly held by Justice Beth Walker, who retired last year. The term expires in 2028. Two candidates are running for this seat.
The other election is for an unexpired term to fill the seat formerly held by Justice Tim Armstead, who died last year. Candidates are running to fill out the term that expires in 2032. Five candidates are vying to fill this seat.
Former Walker seat, two years on term
Thomas Ewing was appointed by Gov. Patrick Morrisey to fill the unexpired term until the election.
“What I’ve done is public record,” he said on MetroNews Talkline.
“I’m not running from that. It’s sort of my resume or my statement to the voters. I’ve demonstrated to you how I’ll do this job.”
Ewing served as circuit court judge in Fayette County for eight years before being appointed to the Supreme Court last year.
As a circuit judge, he presided over the Fayette County Adult Treatment Court. He also established and presided over several other programs, including the Fayette County Family Treatment Court, the Fayette County Teen Court and the Fayette County Truancy Diversion Program.
“I think it’s important to continue to have someone with circuit court experience on the Supreme Court,” he said.
He grew up in Hico and is a graduate of Midland Trail High School. He graduated college from Glenville State, where he was captain of the basketball team, and then the West Virginia University College of Law.
From 2004 until 2018, he practiced law with the firm Kay, Casto & Chaney.
“For me, my personal integrity matters, and if you don’t have personal integrity, if you don’t hold yourself personally accountable, then I don’t see how you can uphold the integrity of the judiciary,” he said.
Bill Flanigan is the other challenger for the seat vacated by Walker.
Flanigan is a Wheeling attorney and a Republican member of the West Virginia House of Delegates representing Ohio County. The Supreme Court race is nonpartisan.
“What I tried to do as a legislator and what I want to do on the court is that our laws should be written in a way that are clear and precise, easily applied and within the purviews of the Constitution as it was originally constructed,” he said on Talkline.
He was first appointed to the House of Delegates in 2016 as a Republican representing Monongalia County, but a cancer diagnosis at that time prevented him from seeking election to the seat.
Flanigan and his family moved from Monongalia County to Ohio County so his son could participate in a program for students with dyslexia. After moving to Ohio County, Flanigan was elected to the House in 2024 and currently serves that district.
Flanigan earned his bachelor’s degree from Salem Teikyo University and his law degree from the West Virginia University College of Law.
“I fell in love with the Constitution. I fell in love with the law — how it affects us, what it does for us and how it can apply to each of us as citizens,” he said.
Former Armstead seat, six years on term
Gerald Titus III was appointed by the governor to fill the unexpired term until the election.
“For me, courts, judges should not legislate, should not wade into policy issues — they should let those leaders lead and simply apply the law,” he said on Talkline.
“My job is very simple. It doesn’t mean it’s easy. There are times that it’s weighty and challenging. But for our government to function properly, I think the court plays a vital but limited role.”
Titus, a Charleston attorney, has 22 years of experience in law practice.
Before his appointment to the Supreme Court, he was an attorney with the Charleston-based law firm Spilman Thomas and Battle
He previously served as an assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of West Virginia, where he worked in the Violent Crime Division.
He is a graduate of Washington and Lee University in Virginia, where he earned both a bachelor’s degree in politics and American history and his law degree.
“I just found myself in a place where I wanted to do more, where I wanted to put that experience to use. I’m in the absolute prime of my legal career. I feel like I have the most to give now as I ever will,” he said.
Laura Faircloth is a veteran attorney who has served as a circuit judge in the Eastern Panhandle for nearly a decade.
She was first elected in 2016 to the 23rd Judicial Circuit covering Berkeley, Jefferson, and Morgan counties and then was elected in 2024 to the newly created 27th Judicial Circuit, which serves Berkeley and Morgan counties.
“I am the only independent registered to run in this contested election in division one. I’m also the only woman who is running,” Faircloth said on Talkline, referring to her personal voter registration.
“I’m not a good old boy, and I don’t subscribe to backroom politics, which is where deals are made oftentimes. That’s never going to happen in my courtroom, and it will not happen if I’m a justice on the Supreme Court of West Virginia.”
Before her time on the bench, she led her own six-person law firm in Martinsburg.
She earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from Shepherd University and got her law degree from the WVU College of Law.
“We are like umpires in a baseball game: We call fouls, strikes and balls. We call outs and safe. And that’s it. And to do anything more is trying to assume a role that we are not permitted to assume because the sanctity of the judiciary is not to allow that,” she said.
Todd Kirby is is a circuit judge in Raleigh County and a former Republican member of the House of Delegates.
In the House, he represented the 44th District in Raleigh County starting in 2023.
He was appointed to the bench by then-Gov. Jim Justice in July 2024 to fill a vacancy and successfully won election to the seat that same year.
“There’s a long history of West Virginia Supreme Court justices having served in the Legislature,” Kirby said on Talkline.
Earlier this year, Kirby appeared at a Health Freedom Day rally at the West Virginia Legislature that focused on school vaccination requirements. But he said his appearance was an expression of his principles and should not be interpreted as him taking a stance on specific cases that might come before the court.
Kirby recused himself from a school vaccine exemptions case in Raleigh Circuit Court last year because of votes he had taken at the Legislature.
Kirby opened his own law practice in Beckley in 2011. His career has been heavily focused on child welfare, including serving as an assistant prosecuting attorney in Raleigh County handling child abuse and neglect cases. He has also worked as a guardian ad litem and as an attorney representing foster parents and respondent parents.
He graduated from Marshall University and got his law degree from Liberty University.
“My area of expertise has been the law and of course now as a circuit court judge. I feel like I have the experience as an assistant prosecutor, as an attorney for respondent parents, for foster kids, as guardian ad litem, my time on the House Judiciary Committee,” he said.
“My conservative credentials and my background, I feel like I’m the right candidate for the state at this time in its history.”
H.L. “Kirk” Kirkpatrick is a senior status judge and a long-time circuit court judge in Raleigh County with more than 30 years of experience on the bench.
“I decided I had plenty of life in me and I could serve West Virginia by serving on the Supreme Court,” Kirkpatrick said on Talkline.
He was first appointed to the bench in Raleigh County by then-Gov. Gaston Caperton in 1995 and was then elected in 1996. He served as the chief judge of the Raleigh County circuit and retired in December 2024.
“I look at myself as a referee,” Kirkpatrick said. “We are required to be impartial and be fair and apply the law in a fair manner.”
Kirkpatrick administered the Raleigh County juvenile drug court for 10 years. He also served on the state Judicial Investigation Commission, which is responsible for enforcing the Code of Judicial Conduct for judges and justices.
After retirement, he was appointed as a senior status judge, a role that allows him to be recalled for temporary assignments.
That way, he presided over the high-profile murder trial of Natalie Cochran, a pharmacist convicted of using insulin to fatally poison her husband. He also filled a vacancy on the Fayette County Circuit Court when Thomas Ewing was appointed to the Supreme Court.
He is a graduate of the University of Kentucky and earned his law degree from West Virginia University.
“My strong suit is my experience,” Kirkpatrick said. “I’ve presided over every conceivable type of trial and case from speeding ticket appeals to murder trials. I’ve handled just about anything that could come down the pike.”
Martin “Red Hat” Sheehan is a veteran Wheeling attorney with 45 years in the legal profession, during which he says he has done a little bit of everything.
Sheehan is a former assistant U.S. attorney and federal prosecutor. He has been in private practice since 1990.
He is the former chairman of the Ohio County Republican Executive Committee and has previously run for a seat in the West Virginia House of Delegates as a Republican.
Sheehan, speaking on Talkline, said he has been motivated by a backlog in the judicial system.
“I think that’s the big issue for me in this particular campaign is to try to get action by the court in a more timely way,” Sheehan said.
“The court loses its moral authority to help the circuit courts to manage their caseloads as well by not being able to take care of its own house.”
Sheehan notably sued the West Virginia Judicial Investigations Commission in federal court, challenging a rule that prevents judicial candidates from speaking publicly about issues likely to come before the court. He argued the rule is unconstitutional.
“I think I’m dedicated to trying to get something done,” he said. “The problem is it’s very hard for the judges to campaign. I’ve also brought suit, somewhat unsuccessfully at this time, to declare a couple of cannons in the judicial code unconstitutional because they limit the ability to have contact with the public as candidates.
“What you’ll see is, everybody running for the Supreme Court says they’re people of integrity, people of experience, whatever, and nobody is talking about any serious issues about how to fix things at the court.”
Sheehan got his bachelor’s degree from Tufts University and his law degree from Duquesne.
While he appears with the nickname “Red Hat” on the ballot, he was previously known on ballots as “Red Shoes” because of his choice of flamboyant footwear.
West Virginia
West Virginia Lottery results: See winning numbers for Powerball, Lotto America on May 9, 2026
The results are in for the West Virginia Lottery’s draw games on Saturday, May 9, 2026.
Here’s a look at winning numbers for each game on May 9.
Winning Powerball numbers from May 9 drawing
15-41-46-47-56, Powerball: 22, Power Play: 2
Check Powerball payouts and previous drawings here.
Winning Lotto America numbers from May 9 drawing
08-12-13-27-42, Star Ball: 04, ASB: 04
Check Lotto America payouts and previous drawings here.
Winning Daily 3 numbers from May 9 drawing
5-0-6
Check Daily 3 payouts and previous drawings here.
Winning Daily 4 numbers from May 9 drawing
8-0-6-1
Check Daily 4 payouts and previous drawings here.
Feeling lucky? Explore the latest lottery news & results
When are the West Virginia Lottery drawings held?
- Powerball: 11 p.m. ET on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday.
- Mega Millions: 10:59 p.m. ET Tuesday and Friday.
- Lotto America: 10:15 p.m. ET on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday.
- Daily 3, 4: 6:59 p.m. ET Monday through Saturday.
- Cash 25: 6:59 p.m. ET Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday.
This results page was generated automatically using information from TinBu and a template written and reviewed by a USA Today editor. You can send feedback using this form.
We recognize you are attempting to access this website from a country belonging to the European Economic Area (EEA) including the EU which
enforces the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and therefore access cannot be granted at this time.
For any issues, contact support@wvnews.com or call 1-800-982-6034.
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