Mitch Snyder insisted the auto theft charge was a bum rap.
But it was while he was serving a two-year sentence in the federal prison in Danbury Connecticut that Snyder was baptized into radical faith.
Performing the sacrament was a fellow prisoner, a Catholic priest named Daniel Berrigan, locked up for burning draft cards to protest the Vietnam War. Snyder spent the rest of his time behind bars leading other prisoners in strikes and fasts. And when he was free he came to Washington to join a group of peace activists who called themselves the Community for Creative Non-Violence. They shackled themselves to federal buildings and occupied ballrooms full of dignitaries demanding an end to the bombing of North Vietnam and Cambodia.
They also ran a soup kitchen. And as the war wound down, with plenty of fierce energy left among them, they shifted to fighting homelessness.
Snyder brought his dramatic flair and his gift for street theater to the new cause. His personality was difficult yet magnetic. Fellow activist and CCNV spokeswoman Carol Fennelly fell in love with him. Jerry Jones dropped out of college to help him. Michael Stoops slept on the cold city sidewalks with him for months.
They and many others managed to make the fight against homelessness romantic. The movement grew. The nation was captivated. When they marched, they were joined by Hollywood stars. When they opened their makeshift shelters, idealistic students came to volunteer.
But as they fasted and marched, sang and served soup, the ranks of the indigent continued to swell. Vietnam war vets. Deinstitutionalized mental patients. Broken addicts. Laid off workers and their children.
By then it was the 1980s and President Ronald Reagan was in the White House.
“Government is not a solution to our problem. Government IS the problem,” Reagan famously said. His mission was to reduce the size of the government and with it, federal spending. Reagan preached individual responsibility while cutting public assistance, public housing. His actions stung the advocates for the poor. So did his talk about welfare cheats and welfare queens. Reagan insisted the homeless wanted to be on the streets.
“They make their own choice for staying out there,” the president said.
It seemed highly unlikely that Reagan’s administration would end up turning over a decrepit federal college building on Second and D Streets to Snyder and his anarchic band of squatters. It seemed beyond imagination that same administration would agree to spend millions to transform the decaying structure into a model shelter for more than a thousand hungry and ragged men and women. But after a series of dramatic protests and desperate fasts, that is what happened.
The renovated Federal City shelter formally opened in 1987. Along the way, the advocates successfully fought for local and federal laws to help protect the homeless.
Then in 1990, to the shock of those who loved him, Snyder hung himself in the shelter he had fought so hard to win.
The place, often called simply CCNV, has endured.
With more than 1,300 beds and offices for programs that offer sobriety, health care, job training and nourishment, it remains among the the nation’s largest shelters.
It has had its share of money and management troubles over the years.
Mitch Snyder’s unique style of radical witness died with him. Nationally and locally, programs geared toward addressing homelessness, and advocacy itself have become in many ways professionalized since those early days.
Yet grassroots activism remains alive and well within the walls of CCNV. A grassroots group called SHARC (for Shelter Housing and Respectful Change) led by shelter resident Eric Sheptock and made up of dozens of homeless men and women and their ”housed allies” meets there weekly.
They march on city hall. They testify at hearings. But do they, or the wider community of advocates, have the clout, the numbers, the power it may take to keep CCNV alive?
Real estate values in the city have soared. The vast building is again crumbling. And the federal agreement that helped make it a shelter is scheduled to expire in 2016.
Members of a city task force charged with pondering the fate of the shelter are scheduled to be named this month. Some say the shelter should be renovated. Others envision a future where the building is sold and a new homeless shelter rises, perhaps on an adjacent parking lot, owned by CCNV.
With the famous shelter at a turning point, Street Sense writer and vendor Reginald Black, intern Carla Yengo-Kahn and volunteer Harry Frey spent recent days seeking out some of the people who know CCNV best. They visited Jerry Jones and Michael Stoops at the National Coalition for the Homeless where they continue their advocacy work.
They caught up with Carol Fennelly by telephone and found her deeply immersed in a program she created after leaving CCNV. It’s called Hope House and it helps the families of prisoners stay connected with their loved ones.
They attended SHARC meetings, spoke with current shelter residents and compiled testimony from a recent city council hearing called to discuss the future of the shelter.
