Reply to New Ward 3 Homeless Families Shelter Site

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm curious why they didn't put it in the Lab School instead of giving them a sweetheart deal? Or charge the Lab School what the property is worth and use that $ for these sites and services? Nothing in this city's real estate dealings and expenditures makes sense for the actual citizens represented, many of whom are funding these initiatives with their hard labor and taxes.[/quote]

Politics, my dear.  And political contributions.  The Lab School and its backers clearly have some fantastic connections at the District Building.  So do the developers who are pushing the closing of DC General so that they can get the property on attractive terms.  And the neighbors in Mass. Ave. Heights obviously have more pull downtown than the schmoes in McLean Gardens.[/quote]

For like the 500th time in this thread, neighborhood opposition to the Mass Ave Heights site -- while prevalent -- [i]did not kill that proposal[/i]. Instead, Bowser's barely concealed attempt to basically hand her developer campaign donors millions to lease the land and build the shelter killed it after the Council figured out her scheme.

If Bowser wasn't such an ethically challenged dim bulb, they'd be building a homeless shelter in Mass Ave Heights right now.[/quote]

This is part of it.  The shelter scheme has ALWAYS been more about the developer campaign donors rather than serving the homeless.  The developers, first of all, are salivating to see DC General closed so that they can get a sweetheart deal to redevelop it.  Other contributors stood to gain from Bowser's "public-private partnerships" to build, lease to DC and operate new shelters across the city.  Lost in the conversation was how the DC government planned to successfully and effectively replicate services to homeless families in multiple site, when it couldn't even provide them at scale in a centralized location.  The Mass Ave. neighbors, or course, weren't stupid.  They also seized on the argument that Bowser's original plan was a gift to her cronies and that DC should look at other sites, particularly ones that it already owned.  Several helpfully proposed the police station site.  Cheh, whose visible impatience with opinions other than her own is exceeded only by her inflated notion of her own intelligence and judgment, wanted One and Done and to move on.  Having killed the Mass Ave. Heights shelter, She Who Knows Best for Us chose the Idaho site over the objections of the Department of General Services.  Without even talking to the police about how it would impact their operations, she rushed legislation approving the shelter at the Idaho site through the DC Council in about 10 days.[/quote]

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