Housing.

Hunger.

Healthcare.

Across West Virginia and the country, a survival crisis is hitting us right at the winter holiday season.

And instead of helping alleviate it, our government is making it worse.

That must stop.

This split between a government that helps versus a government that hurts is on full display in Morgantown and Wheeling.

Morgantown is trying to help by opening an emergency winter-weather survival shelter. Wheeling, by contrast, is evicting more than 70 people from a city-established homeless camp, even though local shelters are already full and there is no meaningful plan for where these people will go.

This isn’t isolated. It’s a symptom of state and local leaders siding with extreme national interests over West Virginians. It’s playing out on housing, hunger, and healthcare, and we have to stop it.

On housing, the unprecedented and counterproductive homeless bans passed by Wheeling, Parkersburg, Morgantown, and several other West Virginia cities copy-paste ideas from national political playbooks that offer easy headlines but no solutions.

Instead of governing to make housing affordable, officials are passing bans that do nothing to address the root problem.

On hunger, out-of-touch leaders created a preventable SNAP processing crisis in the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving. Thousands of eligible households experienced delayed or interrupted benefits because of state administrative failures.

While hungry families waited, communities and food banks were forced to compensate for government inaction. That is not governing.

On healthcare, these same leaders supported a 43-day federal government shutdown that delayed medical reimbursements, threatened rural clinics, and drove up uncertainty for families already struggling to access care. Instead of governing responsibly, they are playing politics with our lives.

And these failures are not Republican versus Democrat issues. West Virginians across the political spectrum are calling for change.

People of faith — Protestants, Catholics, Evangelicals, clergy across denominations, and countless religious West Virginians — are stepping up because they know their faith commands them to help, not hurt. Housing, hunger, and healthcare affect all of us — Republicans, Democrats, and Independents.

West Virginia voters, including many who supported Donald Trump, did not vote for this cruelty.

During the holiday season, this behavior is unfathomable. This is when we give thanks for what we have, not seize the few possessions of our poorest neighbors. We celebrate generosity, not what Dickens called “scrooges” eager to “decrease the surplus population.” And we celebrate the hope of a child born in a lowly manger because there was no room at the inn — not the eviction and banishment of people who have nowhere else to go.

As a candidate for the U.S. House in West Virginia’s 2nd Congressional District, I will work to stop systemic government cruelty and restore the basic promise of a government that helps — not hurts — the people it serves.

Steven Wendelin is a retired commander in the U.S. Navy and a Democratic candidate for Congress in W.Va. House District 2.