It was on the night of Wednesday, Oct. 1 that Keesha Curtis found the letter on the bed in the motel room where she and her six children have stayed since last November. Sent by the city’s Department of Human Services, it was letting Curtis and other homeless parents know that they and their children were being moved from the motel to the city’s main family shelter in Southeast Washington. The words “your personal belongings should be packed and ready for transport to DC General” jumped out at Curtis.
“They said a truck would be there to take your things,” Curtis explained. The note advised her to be packed and ready to leave on Saturday, Oct. 4 at 8:00 am. “It brought tears to my eyes,” Curtis said.
Life has not been easy for Curtis and her children, sharing two beds at the Days Inn, with its view of busy New York Ave Northeast. But the place has been preferable to the car that served as a home of last resort after Curtis was laid off from her daycare job. She has been busy rebuilding her life since then. She is working steadily again now, five days a week at a Montessori school. She is also enrolled at the University of the District of Columbia where she is studying early childhood education. In between work and classes, Curtis ferries her children to school events. The note seemed to send her precarious schedule tumbling down around her ears. She was booked Saturday, just like every other day. What about her 9:30 AM class? What about her son’s football game that afternoon?
Curtis called her city caseworker, then the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless. Around her in surrounding motel rooms, other families were also trying to figure out how the news would affect them. Hundreds of families had been placed in motels last winter after the 285 rooms at DC General were full. On Oct. 1, a total of 126 families remained in motels, according to city figures. “Hotel rooms will no longer be available as an overflow shelter location and will be closed at 5:00 pm on your move out date,” the note said.
A spokesperson from the Department of Human Services offered little more information. “Families in hotels are being relocated to DC General Family Shelter today, ” wrote Dora Taylor in response to a reporter’s questions on Friday, Oct. 3.
“There was fear about the sudden move,” said Ann Marie Staudenmaier of the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless. Like Curtis, other homeless parents were worried about being uprooted with only a couple of days to prepare. How would they get to their jobs and classes? Would their children need to change schools? “Our biggest concern was the lack of adequate notice,” said Staudenmaier. “Why wouldn’t they give these families at least a couple of weeks to get their jobs situated, their kids situated, their transportation situated?”
There were also worries about conditions at the shelter, which DC Mayor Vincent Gray and other officials have said should be shut down. Concerns about the place mounted last winter after hearings highlighted problems with sanitation and maintenance at the facility, and after an 8-year-old girl vanished with a shelter janitor. The janitor was later found dead of an apparent suicide, and the child, Relisha Rudd, has never been found.
Efforts have been underway to move homeless families out of the aging hospital into safe and stable apartments but progress has been slow, with an average of 52 families exiting the shelter system each month. After making some calls, Curtis was able to win a reprieve from leaving the Days Inn, due to health concerns. One of her children suffers from asthma, another from bronchiolitis, and conditions at the shelter could make their problems worse. Early Saturday morning, Curtis stood on the balcony outside the green door of her room. She looked out at New York Avenue and pondered the day ahead. She would skip her class and go out and look for an apartment she could afford on her $2,400 a month salary. Someday she and her kids will look back on these days and laugh, she said. Someday she will open a daycare center of her own. A man in a Days Inn uniform carrying a clipboard greeted Curtis, then knocked on the door of a nearby room and found it vacant. Her neighbors were gone. “Another one bites the dust,” he hummed.
