Reply to Bowser Spreads the Wealth opens homeless shelters in each DC ward

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[quote=Anonymous]I'm a resident of the ward 3 neighborhood in question, and the placement of this shelter concerns me. The fact is, there is a vast cultural gulf between ward 3 families, and the families that will reside in this shelter. I grew-up in a neighborhood that went from middle-class to lower middle-class/immigrant (I am an immigrant myself) as I was growing-up. Many of the boys who I knew as a teenager ended-up doing time in jail on drug charges. I still remember a conversation I had with a teen boy in my neighborhood...he wanted to have 10 kids when he grew-up. I was shocked and asked how he was going to afford that many and his response was "who cares?"-This is the type of culture that these families will be coming from.

I have worked my behind off (as has my dh) to be able to afford to live in my neighborhood, and to send my kids to private school so that they don't have the experiences that I had growing-up. When people are struggling to survive, they're not worried about whether their kids are throwing sand in the sand box, or littering, or playing obscene music, or using obscene language, or pointing pretend guns at others...however, I am worried about that. So yeah, I am clutching my non-existent pearls and worrying about how these kids will interact with mine, because I have worked hard and sacrificed to create a particular environment for my very sheltered kids and I want to continue to maintain that. The sheltered environment is something that I didn't have growing-up, and I value that my kids do have it...and I feel that I have a right to that.

These families have a right to raise their children in a safe environment, which is not currently happening. However, if this shelter is not being coupled with some kind of job training and child care and special funding for tutoring their kids, who are probably academically behind their Ward 3 peers, then this is a bad idea. This will affect those living around this shelter and using the same public facilities, because without special arrangements for childcare (for example), who is going to be supervising these kids while their moms work (or look for work)? How will this affect the children going to public school with these kids..will they end-up with less attention from their teachers who will have to spend extra time helping the kids from these homeless families? People choose to live in Ward 3 and pay for the more expensive real estate so that their kids have good public schools - so will this be fair to them? If properly funded and implemented this plan could work well, however, I don't really trust the dc gov. to properly maintain these facilities with the requisite extra help these families will need. Without the extra help (childcare, job training, ect.) this will eventually become a problem for the surrounding neighborhood. [/quote]

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