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

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Well, say good bye to that nice Guy Mason playground. It's going to be fun to see litter and people sleeping all over it at 3pm. I am a firm believer in NIMBY. What next, a methadone clinic?

Oh, and whatever schools these shelters will be inbounds for, prepare for those schools to go downhill fast.[/quote]

So you are saying that homeless shelters should not be spread throughout the city and should be concentrated in less affluent neighborhoods?  Well, the people in Ward 5 and Ward 6, who have shouldered the majority of the burden thus far, want to know what makes your ward so special?  This is everyone's burden to bear. Sorry. [/quote]

What I have not seen in this whole discussion is where those folks are coming from. From outside DC? Mostly from DC itself? If so, from which Ward? Sorry, but if (imagine) all homeless people were raised in Ward 5, and that's what they know best, it makes no particular sense to spread them across all Wards. If they all come from (say) Virginia, why should DC wear the burden?

If Bowser trying to help existing homeless people or to disrupt a number of neighborhoods and potentially bring even more homeless into the city? Those are different objectives[/quote]

Bowser is trying to close DC General, the existing family shelter that houses ~230 families. These new shelters are for families who are living there, or in the NY Ave motels. I understand that there is the perception that homeless people are flocking to DC for our amazing homeless services, and while there is some truth to that, these families are overwhelmingly DC residents. I met with a man yesterday who is homeless and mentally ill from Ward 3 (born, raised, lived there when he had an address). He's not the target population of these shelters because he is a single adult male, but he is not a poor black man from Ward 8. [b]Many of these young women are from SE, from Brookland, from Trinidad. There is an argument that if you house people in a community with better examples - working people, good schools, easily accessible grocery stores (vs. high unemployment, failing schools, and an overabundance of stripmall 7-Elevens) - they will be better situated to get out of poverty. [/b]

These are not shelters to "bring more homeless into the city." They are shelters to rehouse the people living in the toxic human rights violation that is DC General into humane living conditions and help them break the cycle of homelessness.

I wish I wrote for the Washington Post so that I could write that into the first line of every single story, since so many of you seem to think that these are shelters for individual adults from other jurisdictions.[/quote]

Thank you for the thoughtful response. That argument may be a good one, but would require the buy-in from those communities asked to serve as "better examples," since they are working hard precisely to create safe and nurturing environments for the people actually living there. Did Bowser lead a process to engage relevant neighbors, or was this more of a Stalinist top-down decision?[/quote]

I actually don't think that it does "require" buy-in from neighbors.

Let me put it to you this way. Up in Ward 3, you guys have amazing schools filled with children who are motivated to learn and families who support that learning. You have libraries with storytelling for young children. You have new playgrounds that are safe and nice to look at. You have multiple grocery stores with fresh produce. You have extensive public transit that (despite the previous remarks about the 30 buses) is reliable. I'm sure many of us read the article about the woman living in the motel on NY Ave with her kids, how long it takes to get her daughter to school, her concerns about safety for her kids, etc.? Those are the families that these shelters are being designed for. That woman, if she moved into the Wisconsin Avenue shelter, could send her daughter to Stoddert, perhaps get a job at one of the retail establishments in the area. There are options available to get high quality food because you have several actual grocery stores, rather than several bodegas with the week's shipment of bananas browning next to the bullet proof glass.

It would be great if the neighbors did buy in and welcome these families into the community. As a parent, I want my children hanging out with friends who set good examples so that everyone motivates everyone else to do better. The likelihood of that happening at a failing school is very low compared with a school like Stoddert where there are many opportunities and examples to excel. Please, please, please, Ward 3, welcome these women and give this a chance to work.[/quote]

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