Anonymous wrote:
I don't know why I keep reading this site. You bitches make urbanbaby moms look like socialist class warriors. I am actually somewhat conservative. But I'm not a fucking moron who thinks that "bootstraps" and "consequences" are what you do to a single-parent family, because otherwise "she" will keep "popping out" more kids. You know the funny thing? You probably hire someone just like her to scrub your toilets and watch your own little precious darlings.

Nope, I do it all by myself. Clean, cook, and watch my kids. People who advocate no responsibility for one's actions and believe in heavy parental attention from the wealthy and the government are socialist class warriors. It teaches the disadvantaged people nothing of value and does them no long term favors.


Uh huh. And what does your husband do? I'm sure you have one, right? Because women who don't are sluts?

I don't care how promiscuous they are but having children out of wedlock is obtuse and self-destructing.

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Before we open more shelter doors I hope they first look at whether those to whom we open doors are even from DC in the first place.

I'm fine with taking care of DC's existing homeless, but do we need to take care of the homeless for the entire eastern seaboard?

It's enough of an issue that we have well meaning but underfunded organizations that want to bring people here in order to take care of them.

It's enough of an issue that we fall victim to some other communities that bus their homeless here (and yes, it's common practice for police to round up homeless and put them on a bus with a one way ticket to the next biggest city).

Existing DC homeless families should have first crack.

I also think that the city needs to work on finding more ways to get people self sufficient and functional.

Yes, because we have a preponderance of people cashing in their frequent flyer miles to come to DC and spend the night in a homeless shelter....

LOL. Maybe the Wisconsin Ave. shelter will be listed in Airbnb?

Anonymous wrote:

I don't know why I keep reading this site. You bitches make urbanbaby moms look like socialist class warriors. I am actually somewhat conservative. But I'm not a fucking moron who thinks that "bootstraps" and "consequences" are what you do to a single-parent family, because otherwise "she" will keep "popping out" more kids. You know the funny thing? You probably hire someone just like her to scrub your toilets and watch your own little precious darlings.

Nope, I do it all by myself. Clean, cook, and watch my kids. People who advocate no responsibility for one's actions and believe in heavy parental attention from the wealthy and the government are socialist class warriors. It teaches the disadvantaged people nothing of value and does them no long term favors.

Uh huh. And what does your husband do? I'm sure you have one, right? Because women who don't are sluts?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

I live in Glover Park, very close to Guy Mason, and I suspect that you don't.

This is a shelter for homeless families. Providing temporary safe housing for 40 homeless families won't destroy our neighborhood, our schools, or our parks and playgrounds.

Can Stoddert handle this?

Panties bunching and pearls clutching. Too funny.

Stoddert is very OOB already so it probably won't make much of a difference.

And Hardy is close by.

It may indeed put a burden on Stoddert if it has an influx of challenged, at-risk kids. I'm sure DCPS is on top of it already and budgeting to provide additional faculty and other resource positions to the school.

Anonymous wrote:You people should stop squirming. Put your money where your mouth is.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Before we open more shelter doors I hope they first look at whether those to whom we open doors are even from DC in the first place.

I'm fine with taking care of DC's existing homeless, but do we need to take care of the homeless for the entire eastern seaboard?

It's enough of an issue that we have well meaning but underfunded organizations that want to bring people here in order to take care of them.

It's enough of an issue that we fall victim to some other communities that bus their homeless here (and yes, it's common practice for police to round up homeless and put them on a bus with a one way ticket to the next biggest city).

Existing DC homeless families should have first crack.

I also think that the city needs to work on finding more ways to get people self sufficient and functional.

Yes, because we have a preponderance of people cashing in their frequent flyer miles to come to DC and spend the night in a homeless shelter....

Anonymous wrote:Before we open more shelter doors I hope they first look at whether those to whom we open doors are even from DC in the first place.

I'm fine with taking care of DC's existing homeless, but do we need to take care of the homeless for the entire eastern seaboard?

It's enough of an issue that we have well meaning but underfunded organizations that want to bring people here in order to take care of them.

It's enough of an issue that we fall victim to some other communities that bus their homeless here (and yes, it's common practice for police to round up homeless and put them on a bus with a one way ticket to the next biggest city).

Existing DC homeless families should have first crack.

I also think that the city needs to work on finding more ways to get people self sufficient and functional.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

I live in Glover Park, very close to Guy Mason, and I suspect that you don't.

This is a shelter for homeless families. Providing temporary safe housing for 40 homeless families won't destroy our neighborhood, our schools, or our parks and playgrounds.

Can Stoddert handle this?

Panties bunching and pearls clutching. Too funny.

Stoddert is very OOB already so it probably won't make much of a difference.

And Hardy is close by.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Folks, you better get to Mary Cheh and express your wishes for job training, supports, etc. She is committed to making this happen in Ward 3, so find a way to make your peace. I have already spoken to her office to express my support for the plan.

How close to the proposed shelter do you live. Or are you a "YIYBY"? That means, "Yes, in your back yard!"

Anonymous wrote:The shelter in Ward 3 will have its own playground, recreation space, computer lab, wraparound services and programming for those 38 families. I am sickened but not surprised at the NIMBYism. How many of you were anguishing over Relisha Rudd's sad story and now are turning around and calling Wisconsin Avenue too fancy for these struggling families? Wisconsin Avenue, of all places.

The mayor ran on a platform that included addressing homelessness. She is now taking action to address it in a way that is being praised by homeless advocates and has already been endorsed by many members of the Council, including Mary Cheh. I think it's brilliant to put one shelter in each ward.

Anonymous wrote:Folks, you better get to Mary Cheh and express your wishes for job training, supports, etc. She is committed to making this happen in Ward 3, so find a way to make your peace. I have already spoken to her office to express my support for the plan.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wonder if any of you supporting this live within a city block of one of the proposed shelters, in a strictly residential zoned neighborhood, having chosen the neighborhood as a safe alternative to raise young children. In one fell swoop, both the safety and value of our homes will decrease significantly. I would love to support a shelter in Ward 3 as well, and if it wasn't so close to my young family, I'd be criticizing all the NIMBYs trying to make it go away, too. But when it so significantly has a negative effect on my family's well-being, then it is a serious problem. The Wisconsin Avenue site is unacceptable.

Imagine if you lived near one of the proposed sites that already had concentrations of poverty and public housing nearby. Sorry if I don't have pity for you.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

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.

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

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. 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.

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.

If it is true that many of the homeless are "from SE, from Brookland, from Trinidad," that's where they should be taken care of. That's what community-based services means -- you serve people within their community. You don't just take them and spread them to random places.

This is especially relevant when talking about temporary housing.

I don't disagree, but we're not talking about "random places." We're talking about building shelters in various parts of the city so that not all services are clustered in one neighborhood. We're not talking about sending them away to other cities - we're talking about spreading services around to multiple parts of one city.

There are already plenty of services in those neighborhoods. That's why the Ward 5 council member is objecting. The proposed location for his ward already has a lot of such services clustered around it.

But it is equally uprooting people from their communities, their comfort zones, the places they know, their networks, and placing them in completely new surroundings to them. They are not going to spend the whole day in the shelter, correct?

This is the opposite of community-based work.

Good God Woman or Man. I don't care. Don't you get it. The people are homeless. They don't have a community. They don't have a comfort zone. The don't have networks. What is it that you don't understand. They are HOMELESS.