Nearly 8,000 structures across West Virginia require demolition, according to the survey that launched the program, yet most of the state’s counties are too rural to have the tax base, staffing, or resources to manage dilapidated housing on their own — and lawmakers have not proposed another way to pay for the work.
West Virginia has exhausted the $30 million in federal pandemic relief funds it used to reimburse local governments for demolishing abandoned buildings, leaving municipalities without state support to address a housing blight problem a statewide survey estimated would cost approximately $150 million to fully resolve.
The state’s Demolition Landfill Assistance Program, administered through the Department of Environmental Protection, was established in 2021 and funded a year later with federal COVID-19 recovery money. In two years, it helped communities demolish about 1,800 structures. About 240 demolitions remain ongoing, but officials say the last of the program’s funding has been dispersed. The legislature has not proposed a replacement.
“Abandoned buildings are in every community, and every legislator has constituents who are dealing with this,” said Carrie Staton, director of the West Virginia Brownfields Assistance Center, who has worked with communities on abandoned properties for about 14 years. “They know it’s just a matter of finding the funding.”
The scale of the problem
A statewide survey distributed to all 55 counties and more than 180 municipalities estimated that nearly 8,000 structures required demolition across West Virginia. The program’s $30 million in federal funds covered only a fraction of that need.
Staton said the state’s uniformly rural character makes the gap harder to close than in states with major metropolitan centers.
“We’re just so rural and so universally rural. Other states have at least a couple of major metro areas that can support this work,” she said. “We don’t. It just takes longer to do everything.”
Charleston’s experience
As the state’s largest city, Charleston has more tools than most communities. Over the past seven years, the city spent more than $12 million demolishing over 700 unsafe and dilapidated structures, said John Butterworth, a planner for the city. Demolitions averaged about $10,000 per property, including environmental cleanup.
Even with those resources, Charleston still depended on state support. The city received $500,000 from the program during its last round of funding.
“It’s a real cost,” Butterworth said. “It’s a necessary one to keep neighbors safe, but it is very expensive.”
The work seldom ends at demolition. On Grant Street, a vacant home that had fallen into severe disrepair — walls cracked, floors caked with dirt and moldy debris, plants overtaking the roof and yard — was demolished in May of last year after the city obtained the property and transferred it to Habitat for Humanity of Kanawha and Putnam counties. Construction crews have since built the foundation, porch, and frame of a new home on the lot.
Andrew Blackwood, executive director of Habitat for Humanity of Kanawha and Putnam counties, said that of the 190 homes the organization has built across both counties, nearly 90% were complete rebuilds after the previous structure was demolished.
Counties left without a plan
Fayette County used state demolition money to tear down 75 dilapidated structures, removing some of its most dangerous properties while tracking others through a countywide system. Leaders had planned to expand demolition efforts this year, but those plans are on hold.
John Breneman, president of the Fayette County Commission, said the county was forced to take over operations of a local humane society after it faced closure — a budget pressure that now competes directly with demolition needs.
Former Sen. Chandler Swope, a Republican from Mercer County who helped create the demolition fund in 2021, said that kind of budget competition at the local level was exactly why he pushed for state involvement.
“They didn’t have any money to tear down the dilapidated properties, so I decided that that should be a state obligation because the state has more flexibility and more access to funding,” Swope said.
Swope said he had always envisioned the need as ongoing.
“I visualized it as a permanent need. I didn’t think you would ever get to the point where it was done,” he said. “I felt like the success of the program would carry its own priority.”
Four years later, that funding is gone and no legislative replacement has been proposed.
No long-term plan, while other states act
Other states have created durable programs. Ohio operates a statewide demolition program that provides counties with annual funding appropriated from the state budget.
West Virginia lawmakers have said they recognize the scale of the problem, but none have proposed other ways to fund demolitions, Staton said.
On Charleston’s West Side, Tina and Matt Glaspey have watched the brick house on the corner of First Avenue and Fitzgerald Street go from an occupied family home to a condemned, vacant property entered repeatedly by squatters — a decline they said took just two years.
“It shows how quickly things can turn, in just two years, when nothing is done to deal with these properties,” Tina Glaspey said.
Her husband described the effect on the surrounding block.
“Sometimes you think, what’s the point of fixing up your own place if everything around you is collapsing?” Matt Glaspey said.
Reporting by Tre Spencer of Mountain State Spotlight, distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.