Reply to New Ward 3 Homeless Families Shelter Site

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]People work all of their lives to get AWAY from the poors and their propensity for violence, criminality and indolence. And Chey sticks a shelter for the poors right next to them. [/quote]

If Cheh were so committed to the shelter, she would have put it in her own neighborhood of Forest Hills.  Not.[/quote]

I'm not much of a Cheh fan, but you can't accuse her of hypocrisy here: Before the current site was selected, she did propose a Forest Hills site that is just 2 blocks from her house.[/quote]

Not really, and she knew that the site was privately owned when her position was that the shelter should be built on private land.  She proposed the 2D site and then rushed approvals through without full hearings and a public consideration of alternatives.

The real question is why she so quickly turned against the original site of the Ward 3 shelter in Massachusetts Heights, citing neighbor (perhaps major donor?) concerns.  Yet then she proceeded to ignore the concerns of residents in Cathedral Heights/McLean Gardens about the Idaho Ave. location, saying that any site would face opposition and so DC just needed to push forward.

Cheh has long pretended to be a good government type, but her recent "shady" private tree bill for a favored developer suggests that her opposition to the Mass. Ave. site was also to do a favor for a crony.[/quote]

I disagree.  Here are Cheh's two public letters on the site selection and other issues:

May 2016: http://marycheh.com/letter-from-councilmember-cheh-on-the-proposed-ward-3-shelter-for-families-experiencing-homelessness/
April 2017: http://marycheh.com/april-2017-letter-from-councilmember-cheh-on-the-proposed-ward-3-shelter-for-families-experiencing-homelessness/

What she says here - and my own recollection of the discussions when these issues were debated - is that after Bowser tried to jam her original Wisconsin Avenue site onto everyone, many people rose up to complain about (1) how stupid Bowser's plan was generally, and (2) how ridiculously and needlessly expensive and wasteful it would be.  Cheh supports Bowser's plan generally, but even Cheh had to respond to the many complaints from her constituents.  So Cheh responded by proposing several alternative locations for the Ward 3 site.  The one that eventually "won" was the 2D location on public land, primarily because it would be the least expensive and wasteful of all the terrible alternatives proposed for Ward 3.  Indeed, IIRC, the cronyism complaint was aimed at Bowser for trying to force the Wisconsin Avenue site that would benefit her developer contributors who were planning to get rich on the arrangements with the City; the 2D sites makes their cronyism harder because it's on public land.

I continue to think Bowser's plan is stupid, and Cheh is wrong in supporting it.  I'm all for finding ways to fix the DC General problem, and for taking steps to help those in need to get their lives back on track.  If knowledgeable people think that smaller shelters will be more effective than larger ones, then I've got no objection to trying it (although I frankly doubt that the size of the shelter it really the tipping factor that will allow homeless residents to change their lives, and I suspect the money would be better spent on other services for the homeless).  But arbitrarily forcing each Ward to adopt a shelter is just injecting politics needlessly into a difficult situation, and it makes the whole plan more expensive and less likely to succeed.  I fault Bowser and Cheh for that.

As an aside, when I re-read Cheh's letters, my blood pressure creeps up all over again at her disingenuous claims about how minor the impact will be on overcrowding at Eaton school.  Cheh claims only 2-4 children from the shelter will actually attend Eaton.  Would she be willing to bet on that claim?: I seriously doubt it.  Then Cheh claims that "even assuming that all of those children [the shelter children] want to attend Eaton," then Eaton can simply adapt by making "adjustments ... to decrease the number of new out-of-boundary students who are enrolled, opening up spots for children in the shelter."  That's not going to work because the enrollment lottery will have occurred many months earlier, so all the OOB students who won the "right" to attend Eaton will be locked in.  This is definitely going to add to the overcrowding at Eaton.  All just another reason that forcing 50+ more families into a crowded and expensive Ward 3 neighborhood is dumb.

Cheh never explained why she jumped behind Bowser's plan to put a shelter in Ward 3.  She should be criticized for that.  But I don't think she should criticized for the selection of the 2D location over other alternatives, because at least that part of the process was conducted in public.[/quote]

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