They hate to move every night. They hate to bother people. So they're looking for a place where they can just kind of shelter and know that nobody's going to discover
the stand is a local pastor in St. Albans, West Virginia. He's driving us near the land he recently purchased the town's tent city is located on. It's an encampment for homeless people before camping here was considered trespassing, but he bought the land so the people here could have a legal place to say I've been surprised
by that life of concern for people.
That move didn't sit well with Rick Willis. He helped start a Facebook group against what he calls the homeless vagrants of St. Albans.
They call it Tim city, but actually it looks like a lot of tarps and whatever these people gathered a shelter over there had a lot of trash laying on the ground. And of course, there's a lot of people that are very angry about what he did you know, it was the I'm kind of in the dark. And all those are still small town and word got around. Like took my picture, posted my address posted my telephone number. encourage people to dump garbage at the church, and they did the garbage at the church.
The garbage on the lawn of Stan's church was an act of revenge. Stan finds that retaliation odd considering he spends a lot of his time cleaning up homeless camps. That's how he got involved with them. Originally, more than a year ago.
I was dumping trash at the dumpster behind the police barracks. And there was a lady feeding an 18 month old baby hell of a garbage bag that was in a dumpster and it was pouring the rain and the baby was picking up pasta off the plate as fast as she could put it in and putting it in it smile. I said this can't be any more this. This is my problem. That's what opened my eyes.
We approached a few people when we visited the tent city with Stan, but no one wanted talk with us on the record. Stan wasn't surprised.
They feel ashamed of where they are. I mean, I heard one of them tell me and to share this spring, who who?
Despite not wanting to be intensity, there is strength in numbers. According to Dr. Sidney McIlroy, forming a small community like this, it's beneficial for everyone involved. Sydney's a doctor in nearby Huntington, West Virginia, and the host of the medical podcast saw bones,
the more connected you are to other humans and to a community of people. The longer you live, it improves your health outcomes to have connections.
for medical providers, it makes outreach more viable to have a place where they know they can find those suffering from homelessness.
Let's say it's a weekend and we can't make them a follow up appointment will tell them to call. Well if your home moves about and you don't have the phone number. That's impossible, we have now created a situation that is impossible for you to solve.
Standard would ultimately like to move his church to be closer to this homeless community. And he thinks that if the people of St. Albans could learn to engage these humans with a little more well, humanity, they'd stand a better chance at overcoming homelessness. That's how Stan came to know the people who lived here.
Somebody mentioned that there were a few people that stayed over here. So one Sunday night, about seven o'clock I walked the railroad tracks and I said I've got Chilean blankets, and all these slots came on down here like fireflies. And they came up and they said you're the first person to treat this like a human years and they begin to win.
This piece was produced by Team Radio Bumpus - Michael Falero and Kyle Vass - as part of the 24 hour radio race from KCRW independent producer project
