Brian Butcher (left) and Zac Morton, co-founders of the Ramp Hotel program in Morgantown, W.Va., say the program is on the verge of closure following federal funding cuts by the Trump administration. (Amelia Ferrell Knisely | West Virginia Watch)
In Morgantown, volunteers have been using federal emergency funds to put people and families — typically single mothers and their children — in hotels, helping them avoid sleeping in their cars or on the streets.
The Ramp Hotel program has been almost exclusively funded by a federal emergency food and shelter program, which is now frozen by the Trump administration. The program is under review to ensure compliance with the president’s executive orders and new guidelines.
Volunteers with the Ramp Hotel say that, following the federal funding freeze earlier this year, they only have enough money to cover a few more hotel rooms for people who are on the verge of homelessness.
“We’re not dealing with dollars and cents here. We’re dealing with human dignity,” said Zac Morton, a pastor who co-founded the Ramp Hotel program in 2021. “To make cuts that directly take away tools that are helping the most vulnerable people in our populations, is essentially saying we don’t care about them.”
After paying for 795 nights of hotel stays, the program’s other co-founder, Brian Butcher, recently changed his voicemail to say the program will soon have to stop.
The Ramp Hotel program serves individuals who typically have nowhere else to go because local shelters are full or they’re unable to stay in a traditional shelter.
“There were always people who slipped through the cracks of the established emergency shelter program for all sorts of reasons,” Morton said. “Sometimes there were health concerns. Sometimes it was about keeping a family together.”
Butcher said they most commonly help single mothers with kids, some who have ended up in Morgantown for medical appointments at the children’s hospital and don’t have a way to get home.
“There is room for families in our current shelter, but it’s always full,” said Butcher, who serves as deputy mayor of Morgantown. He recalled getting a hotel room for a mom who was living in her car with seven children.
“There’s a big gap we’re trying to fill,” he said.
A piece of art in Zac Morton’s office. Morton serves as pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Morgantown, W.Va. (Amelia Ferrell Knisely | West Virginia Watch)
The program works with local social service providers to first try to put people in traditional shelter spaces. Butcher and Morton recently provided a hotel stay for a family who lost their home to a fire and were waiting on an insurance check.
The Ramp Hotel program has been funded almost exclusively through the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) emergency food and shelter program. The funds have been indefinitely frozen since January as part of the broader halt on federal funding.
“This is our steady funding source that actually makes sure that we can do the program,” Butcher said.
Because the Ramp Hotel program is run on a volunteer basis, Morton said that all of their federal funding has been used to pay for hotel rooms and food gift cards. He and Butcher spent around $17,000 last fiscal year on 269 hotel room nights and 288 meals.
Local United Way organizations have often doled out the federal emergency food and shelter program funds to organizations addressing homelessness. Courtney Summers, community impact director for the United Way of Monongalia and Preston Counties, said they’re waiting to hear about when the federal dollars will be available.
The Ramp Hotel program doesn’t receive any state funding.
Service providers in Morgantown, W.Va,, work with the Ramp Hotel program’s volunteers to provide hotel rooms for people who are unable to stay in the city’s shelters. (Amelia Ferrell Knisely | West Virginia Watch)
After starting the program with their own funds, Butcher and Morton said they’d now have to find completely new funding sources to keep the program running. They don’t think community donations would come in at the level they need.
Morton, who pastors First Presbyterian Church in Morgantown, said the program has less than $1,000 left in funding. He noted his program dissolving ultimately just puts more work and financial strain on Morgantown’s other homeless service providers.
“We’ve helped keep people in a situation where they can stay sober. We’ve helped people get in a situation where they can find some stability and get a little bit of time before they find permanent housing,” Morton said. “To not have that just means that we have more people in more dire situations with less options than we had before.
He continued, “There are citizens in West Virginia who want to take care of each other, but we need to be cooperating with our governments to resource those kinds of efforts.”