Reply to Mary Cheh's new suggested locations for the homeless shelter

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]First, you're acting like DC is some expansive, sprawling city and not a city that is only 64 square miles. Second, you make it sound like these shelters won't alleviate any problems. You don't see the problem in concentrated homelessness and concentrated poverty? You could maybe make the argument that when you concentrate these issues you can flood the system with supports, but let's be real and acknowledge that what is happening in DC right now is overwhelming entire wards. It's time for Ward 3 to help out and not act like an island protected by their own wealth and status. [/quote]

I am struggling to follow what you're saying.  You're saying DC is not a large city.  But then you say that spreading shelters around DC will somehow solve problems by de-concentrating (i.e., spreading around) the homelessness and poverty.  But then you say the problems associated with homelessness and poverty are overwhelming entire wards.  It almost sounds like you're saying that there are collateral problems for the surrounding neighborhood associated with homeless shelters, and that you want to shift those collateral problems from the neighborhoods where they are now to spread them out among other neighborhoods.  Is that a correct interpretation?

As for everyone helping out and paying their fair share, I suspect most people in Ward 3 would have no problem helping out.  Indeed, I suspect the residents of Ward 3 are already paying a whole lot more in taxes to fund the homeless shelters than any other Ward.

But a big problem with this plan (aside from the sweetheart developer deals and cronyism) is that it doesn't spread the burden of the shelters fairly across everyone in the city, or even everyone in each Ward.  It imposes huge burdens on the small number of people living within a few blocks of the new shelter sites, and hardly any burden on people who live farther away.  For example, the Ward 4 shelter imposes a relatively big burden on a few blocks of East Petworth, and no burden on other parts of Ward 4, like the Mayor's neighborhood of Colonial Village for example.

Yes, I get that each shelter has to go somewhere, so someone's always going to be burdened.  But the way in which these shelters are being sited has zero transparency and was announced by ultimatum.  And now the sites are apparently being re-adjusted through some backroom negotiation, which makes me very suspicious.  [/quote]

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