Reply to MLK closing--DC General needed more than ever to serve homeless!

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[quote=Anonymous]As Muriel Bowser and the Council prepare this valuable city property giveaway, they are not accounting for the surge of chronic homeless who bus to and fill MLK library daily and now will have few alternatives with the coming 3 year renovation. The city is suggesting other library sites for their 'customers without homes'. So the city wants to close the large capacity shelter it owns (rather than renovate it and rethink services) but would encourage satellite libraries as the space for now displaced homeless to gather?
Have they considered renovating DC General and providing, as part of it, a cozy central space with table, computer monitors, newspapers, libraries, tables...not to mention beds and services...so that libraries are libraries and shelters are shelters? 
The proposal below costs additional money to the 8 shelter program or uses an existing facility in a way it was not intended for.

"[b]The city would like to create a downtown day center for the homeless[/b], like the one it operates on Adams Place in Northeast Washington, she said. Until then, it will add shuttle stops to its buses to give the homeless other options....
The library system itself is also trying to help the homeless adjust. It is one of the few library systems in the nation to employ a full-time homeless coordinator, Jean Badalamenti, a licensed social worker who assists homeless people and trains staff to recognize and work sensitively with “customers without homes.”
Badalamenti said [b]the library has been encouraging the homeless to use other branches[/b]."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/where-will-they-go-mlk-library-a-refuge-for-the-citys-homeless-closes-for-renovation/2017/03/03/4f9b6218-fc7e-11e6-8f41-ea6ed597e4ca_story.html?utm_term=.b14778662c58[/quote]

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