Bowser Spreads the Wealth opens homeless shelters in each DC ward

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Some sites were rejected as too small, others where negotiations failed. The proposed site at Connecticut and Albemarle was rejected as being too close to Mary Cheh's home.

Yep, and there isn't a proposed location within 3 miles of Mayor Bowser's home...

I believe that there is transitional housing for the homeless going up at Walter Reed, which is than than a mile from her house. Your snark isn't very good.

Check your facts - it's 3 miles away from the new house she bought in Colonial Village.

Hey, that's clearly closer than Russia is to Alaska!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:Here is the complete list of sites for which proposals were submitted:

http://mayor.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/mayormb/page_content/attachments/Short-Term-Family-Housing-Site-Selection.pdf

It looks like they tried hard for Tenleytown.

Statistics show higher crime, higher rates of substance abuse, and higher rates of violence among low income/public housing residents. Will higher crime rates come along with the shelters- especially if they become permanent housing? It is a valid concern. Not sure I agree with the shelters neon in all wards. They should be near where the families work and go to school and at their last address.

Dear Ms. Nimby,

Low income housing that has the effect of concentrating poverty and other social problems should not be conflated with a small family shelter. There are 200+ families living at DC General shoulder-to-shoulder with a methadone clinic, TB clinic and the DC Jail. It's a dumping ground. Shame on you.

I want to help the homeless and have done a lot. However, you can't debate the facts that along with lower income and subsidized housing comes higher crime and a slew of other issues. The facts and statistics do not lie. You can't help one group while harming another. You would be surprised that the people fighting this idea the most are not the über wealthy but are the people that used to live in those neighborhoods or circumstances and were able to move away. They do not want the crime and issues that come along with public housing to come to their neighborhood.

So what, pray tell, is your solution?

We obviously do not currently have sufficient wraparound social services to help get the folks in DC General on their feet - and now we're going to spend a bunch of money on what appears to primarily be a real estate boondoggle which will take even more money away from actually helping the homeless aside from providing them with expensive housing that could have housed 3x as many people...

I for one will admit I don't know what the solution is but it seems pretty clear the Bowser administration and folks here on DCUM have even less of an idea of what the solution is than I do since there is zero clear strategy being articulated here, along with poor tactical usage of funding.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Some sites were rejected as too small, others where negotiations failed. The proposed site at Connecticut and Albemarle was rejected as being too close to Mary Cheh's home.

Yep, and there isn't a proposed location within 3 miles of Mayor Bowser's home...

I believe that there is transitional housing for the homeless going up at Walter Reed, which is than than a mile from her house. Your snark isn't very good.

Check your facts - it's 3 miles away from the new house she bought in Colonial Village.

The northern boundary of Colonial Village is exactly one mile from the corner of 16th St and Alaska Ave.

Three miles north of Walter Reed lies the Beltway.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:Here is the complete list of sites for which proposals were submitted:

http://mayor.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/mayormb/page_content/attachments/Short-Term-Family-Housing-Site-Selection.pdf

It looks like they tried hard for Tenleytown.

Statistics show higher crime, higher rates of substance abuse, and higher rates of violence among low income/public housing residents. Will higher crime rates come along with the shelters- especially if they become permanent housing? It is a valid concern. Not sure I agree with the shelters neon in all wards. They should be near where the families work and go to school and at their last address.

Dear Ms. Nimby,

Low income housing that has the effect of concentrating poverty and other social problems should not be conflated with a small family shelter. There are 200+ families living at DC General shoulder-to-shoulder with a methadone clinic, TB clinic and the DC Jail. It's a dumping ground. Shame on you.

I want to help the homeless and have done a lot. However, you can't debate the facts that along with lower income and subsidized housing comes higher crime and a slew of other issues. The facts and statistics do not lie. You can't help one group while harming another. You would be surprised that the people fighting this idea the most are not the über wealthy but are the people that used to live in those neighborhoods or circumstances and were able to move away. They do not want the crime and issues that come along with public housing to come to their neighborhood.

So what, pray tell, is your solution?

"Segregation. Segregation forever." George Wallace would be proud.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:Here is the complete list of sites for which proposals were submitted:

http://mayor.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/mayormb/page_content/attachments/Short-Term-Family-Housing-Site-Selection.pdf

It looks like they tried hard for Tenleytown.

Statistics show higher crime, higher rates of substance abuse, and higher rates of violence among low income/public housing residents. Will higher crime rates come along with the shelters- especially if they become permanent housing? It is a valid concern. Not sure I agree with the shelters neon in all wards. They should be near where the families work and go to school and at their last address.

Dear Ms. Nimby,

Low income housing that has the effect of concentrating poverty and other social problems should not be conflated with a small family shelter. There are 200+ families living at DC General shoulder-to-shoulder with a methadone clinic, TB clinic and the DC Jail. It's a dumping ground. Shame on you.

I want to help the homeless and have done a lot. However, you can't debate the facts that along with lower income and subsidized housing comes higher crime and a slew of other issues. The facts and statistics do not lie. You can't help one group while harming another. You would be surprised that the people fighting this idea the most are not the über wealthy but are the people that used to live in those neighborhoods or circumstances and were able to move away. They do not want the crime and issues that come along with public housing to come to their neighborhood.

So what, pray tell, is your solution?

We obviously do not currently have sufficient wraparound social services to help get the folks in DC General on their feet - and now we're going to spend a bunch of money on what appears to primarily be a real estate boondoggle which will take even more money away from actually helping the homeless aside from providing them with expensive housing that could have housed 3x as many people...

I for one will admit I don't know what the solution is but it seems pretty clear the Bowser administration and folks here on DCUM have even less of an idea of what the solution is than I do since there is zero clear strategy being articulated here, along with poor tactical usage of funding.

PP, I don't want to go down this rabbit hole again, but setting aside concerns about cronyism and the NIMBYism that has characterized at least 40 of these 50 pages, all told...

Family homelessness in DC is at a crisis point. There are 800-some children living in DC General, which was closed when it was no longer possible to maintain it as a hospital. The building is disgusting. Have you been there? I have. I work there 2 days a week, and it is disgusting, unsafe, and BLEAK.

It is easy to talk about "better solutions" and the ridiculousness of spending $3300/mo on ritzy dorms, but when I hear "new building" what I hear is "...where the children will experience regularly functional heat and hot water and the absence of rats and bedbugs." It's not that I don't think the other things are important, but tomorrow morning, I will be back at DC General and those things will fade in importance when compared with the ~320 babies who live in that horrible place.

[Anonymous]

Unwed births and the shelter inhabitants multiply

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:Here is the complete list of sites for which proposals were submitted:

http://mayor.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/mayormb/page_content/attachments/Short-Term-Family-Housing-Site-Selection.pdf

It looks like they tried hard for Tenleytown.

Statistics show higher crime, higher rates of substance abuse, and higher rates of violence among low income/public housing residents. Will higher crime rates come along with the shelters- especially if they become permanent housing? It is a valid concern. Not sure I agree with the shelters neon in all wards. They should be near where the families work and go to school and at their last address.

Dear Ms. Nimby,

Low income housing that has the effect of concentrating poverty and other social problems should not be conflated with a small family shelter. There are 200+ families living at DC General shoulder-to-shoulder with a methadone clinic, TB clinic and the DC Jail. It's a dumping ground. Shame on you.

I want to help the homeless and have done a lot. However, you can't debate the facts that along with lower income and subsidized housing comes higher crime and a slew of other issues. The facts and statistics do not lie. You can't help one group while harming another. You would be surprised that the people fighting this idea the most are not the über wealthy but are the people that used to live in those neighborhoods or circumstances and were able to move away. They do not want the crime and issues that come along with public housing to come to their neighborhood.

So what, pray tell, is your solution?

We obviously do not currently have sufficient wraparound social services to help get the folks in DC General on their feet - and now we're going to spend a bunch of money on what appears to primarily be a real estate boondoggle which will take even more money away from actually helping the homeless aside from providing them with expensive housing that could have housed 3x as many people...

I for one will admit I don't know what the solution is but it seems pretty clear the Bowser administration and folks here on DCUM have even less of an idea of what the solution is than I do since there is zero clear strategy being articulated here, along with poor tactical usage of funding.

PP, I don't want to go down this rabbit hole again, but setting aside concerns about cronyism and the NIMBYism that has characterized at least 40 of these 50 pages, all told...

Family homelessness in DC is at a crisis point. There are 800-some children living in DC General, which was closed when it was no longer possible to maintain it as a hospital. The building is disgusting. Have you been there? I have. I work there 2 days a week, and it is disgusting, unsafe, and BLEAK.

It is easy to talk about "better solutions" and the ridiculousness of spending $3300/mo on ritzy dorms, but when I hear "new building" what I hear is "...where the children will experience regularly functional heat and hot water and the absence of rats and bedbugs." It's not that I don't think the other things are important, but tomorrow morning, I will be back at DC General and those things will fade in importance when compared with the ~320 babies who live in that horrible place.

Nobody here disagrees with you on how bad DC General is. But what people are clearly skeptical about is how much better this will be. If people still don't have basic life skills, hygiene skills, et cetera there will still be babies being raised amidst roaches, bedbugs, lice, et cetera... except now in a $3300/month unit. Simply throwing more money at apartments doesn't somehow magically solve those problems. Even rich people can engage in behaviors like hoarding and poor care of their self and home that allows those things to happen, but it's far more likely to happen among the very poor who in many cases either never learned how to take care of themselves and their surroundings in the first place, or for whom given other issues it may be so far down on their basic survival hierarchy of needs that even if they know how they can't or won't. And it also doesn't make the legitimate concerns about cronyism magically disappear either.

We want ALL of those concerns addressed and dealt with in some form. Simply redirecting back to "yabut DC General is horrible" doesn't accomplish any of that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Unwed births and the shelter inhabitants multiply

Long term birth control until they are able to get themselves more financially stable. If you can't afford to have kids then you shouldn't be having them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:Here is the complete list of sites for which proposals were submitted:

http://mayor.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/mayormb/page_content/attachments/Short-Term-Family-Housing-Site-Selection.pdf

It looks like they tried hard for Tenleytown.

Statistics show higher crime, higher rates of substance abuse, and higher rates of violence among low income/public housing residents. Will higher crime rates come along with the shelters- especially if they become permanent housing? It is a valid concern. Not sure I agree with the shelters neon in all wards. They should be near where the families work and go to school and at their last address.

Dear Ms. Nimby,

Low income housing that has the effect of concentrating poverty and other social problems should not be conflated with a small family shelter. There are 200+ families living at DC General shoulder-to-shoulder with a methadone clinic, TB clinic and the DC Jail. It's a dumping ground. Shame on you.

I want to help the homeless and have done a lot. However, you can't debate the facts that along with lower income and subsidized housing comes higher crime and a slew of other issues. The facts and statistics do not lie. You can't help one group while harming another. You would be surprised that the people fighting this idea the most are not the über wealthy but are the people that used to live in those neighborhoods or circumstances and were able to move away. They do not want the crime and issues that come along with public housing to come to their neighborhood.

So what, pray tell, is your solution?

We obviously do not currently have sufficient wraparound social services to help get the folks in DC General on their feet - and now we're going to spend a bunch of money on what appears to primarily be a real estate boondoggle which will take even more money away from actually helping the homeless aside from providing them with expensive housing that could have housed 3x as many people...

I for one will admit I don't know what the solution is but it seems pretty clear the Bowser administration and folks here on DCUM have even less of an idea of what the solution is than I do since there is zero clear strategy being articulated here, along with poor tactical usage of funding.

PP, I don't want to go down this rabbit hole again, but setting aside concerns about cronyism and the NIMBYism that has characterized at least 40 of these 50 pages, all told...

Family homelessness in DC is at a crisis point. There are 800-some children living in DC General, which was closed when it was no longer possible to maintain it as a hospital. The building is disgusting. Have you been there? I have. I work there 2 days a week, and it is disgusting, unsafe, and BLEAK.

It is easy to talk about "better solutions" and the ridiculousness of spending $3300/mo on ritzy dorms, but when I hear "new building" what I hear is "...where the children will experience regularly functional heat and hot water and the absence of rats and bedbugs." It's not that I don't think the other things are important, but tomorrow morning, I will be back at DC General and those things will fade in importance when compared with the ~320 babies who live in that horrible place.

Nobody here disagrees with you on how bad DC General is. But what people are clearly skeptical about is how much better this will be. If people still don't have basic life skills, hygiene skills, et cetera there will still be babies being raised amidst roaches, bedbugs, lice, et cetera... except now in a $3300/month unit. Simply throwing more money at apartments doesn't somehow magically solve those problems. Even rich people can engage in behaviors like hoarding and poor care of their self and home that allows those things to happen, but it's far more likely to happen among the very poor who in many cases either never learned how to take care of themselves and their surroundings in the first place, or for whom given other issues it may be so far down on their basic survival hierarchy of needs that even if they know how they can't or won't. And it also doesn't make the legitimate concerns about cronyism magically disappear either.

We want ALL of those concerns addressed and dealt with in some form. Simply redirecting back to "yabut DC General is horrible" doesn't accomplish any of that.

nicely put.

[Anonymous]

Bowser: The ultimate NIMBY queen.

[Anonymous]

Closing DC General in its current form seems like the right call, but there are legitimate concerns about the efficacy of Bower's "solution." The Mayor has refused to disclose the details of her plan, including the actual budget estimates, and there are a lot of questions that need to be answered (see here to name a few homewarddc.com). Neither the taxpayers nor the homeless win with an ill-conceived plan.

[Anonymous]

Laura Zeilinger, director of DC Department of Human Services, was one of the few people who admittedly had insight into the Ward 3 shelter sites considered. She lives in Tenleytown. Is it a coincidence that the proposals for shelters at 4620 Wisconsin Ave and 4000 Brandywine St were both dismissed by her or that the proposed shelter a block away from Mary Cheh's house was also not chosen? Is it a coincidence that not a single officer of the Ward 3 Democratic Committee lives in Observatory Circle or Glover Park? I find that hard to believe, especially when Mike Matthews, Ward 3 coordinator for the Mayor's Office of Community Relations, let slip in a conversation following the last Ward 3 ANC meeting that "the sites in Tenleytown were dismissed because they were too close to schools." Notably, this statement was made prior to the time the alternative sites were even made public. I'm sure the parents of Stoddert children would like some further elaboration on what exactly Zeilinger's concern was in respect of a shelter's proximity to schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is DC planning to build the shelters? The Ward 3 location is an empty lot that seasonally has been leased to Christmas tree sellers. It stands next to a house that has been rumored to be occupied by FBI Counterintelligence (with shuttered windows and three opaque skylights facing the Russian embassy compound). The site lacks Metro access but at least the homeless will be well-watched.

It will be good cover for FBI counterintel agents hanging around outside the Russian embassy.

[jsteele]

Did everyone see this article about the costs of Bowser's plan:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/homeless-shelter-plan-could-be-profitable-for-bowsers-backers/2016/03/16/cbab0e76-eadc-11e5-b0fd-073d5930a7b7_story.html

"But records show that most of the private properties proposed as shelter sites are owned or at least partly controlled by major donors to the mayor. And experts have calculated that the city leases­ would increase the assessed value of those properties by as much as 10 times for that small group of landowners and developers."

I've been a supporter of the shelter plan and I don't think cost-effectiveness should be the major consideration. But, at the same time, the costs must be in the realm of sanity and it is not clear to me that is the case with this plan. Even in Ward 3 which we know has high-priced real estate, Bowser has managed to commit to paying over twice as much as the going rate:

"In Ward 3, Bowser is proposing to spend $56 million to lease 38 units that would be built on Wisconsin Ave. NW near Observatory Circle. The District would pay an estimated $6,187.26 in monthly rent per unit over 20 years. The average rent for high-end apartments in the ward is $2,973."

It would be a really tragedy if the Bowser administration sought to exploit the homeless situation as an opportunity for some individuals to make a quick buck.

[Anonymous]

I'm not sure that the OP intended this thread's header this way, but it now is clear that "Bowser spreads the wealth" means spreading wealth to her developer friends. The Post article stated that some favored contributors may see their property values rise ten-fold.