Reply to Petar?

Forum Index » Metropolitan DC Local Politics

Reply to "Petar?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]If this is a serious question, there are African-American's living throughout the Ward in every neighborhood. Obviously not is an high of percentages as in other parts of the city, but that is changing, for the better.[/quote]

The rich blacks- a handful. You all trying to stop the shelter bc you dont want the ghetto blacks. [/quote]

Well, obviously people who choose to live in NW DC (black, white or other) are not choosing to live in a poor neighborhood. I highly doubt that anyone is planning to "hang out" with the residents, mostly because I doubt the city is going to manage the shelter well. They could forge work/resident relationships like asking local businesses to open entry level jobs to shelter residents, search for host family partnership, have conditions for residents like maintaining jobs or gainful education or counseling as needed (which would both move them forward  in life and off dependency)- but they won't. The whole thing is opaque. I 've lived next to group homes and subsidized housing in DC where residents sat on the stoop every day and collected checks and the city hasn't indicated this will be any  different, so yeah, some  people will probably feel annoyed by that because it doesn't seem to achieve any discernible positive goal. But primarily I think people who disagree with the plan are disturbed that DC, which could not administer ONE shelter efficiently, has now taken it upon themselves to administer 8 with "free money" from taxpayers . They are also disturbed by the haphazard way the site was chosen. Ward 3 is large and this is not necessarily the best site for another poorly administered city shelter.[/quote]

You keep posting a version of this rant in every fora where there is a topic to raise these complaints.

This in fact is a pretty good location for the shelter - the city has relatively few parcels of land with some spare buildable space on it, particularly this close to a major transportation corridor.  And though there is no reason to believe the population at this shelter will pose a safety issue to anyone it should mollify any safety concerns that this shelter is literally right next to a police station.

And as I've responded to you multiple times when you've posted different versions of your concerns the vast majority of homeless people are in fact employed.  We can keep explaining this to you but there are two groups of homeless people - a small group of long term homeless who typically have mental and substance abuse issues and a much larger group of homeless who because of unfortunate circumstances suddenly find themselves without places to live.  Most of the people in the former group have trouble getting and holding jobs while the opposite is true for the latter.

The Ward 3 shelter will be designed for the latter and getting these families sheltered asap so the adults can hold their jobs and the kids can continue going to school will help to keep these families stable and from becoming part of the long term homeless population which is the group with the greatest societal costs.

Ironically there is a facility in Ward 3 which serves the long term homeless that has been operating without controversy for decades also on Wisconsin Avenue and also in a very affluent neighborhood.

I get that you are terrified that McLean Gardens is going to be overtaken by drunk, smelly and aggressive pan handlers.  Even drunk, smelly and aggressive pan handlers have better places to hang out than McLean Gardens.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics