Sometimes it seems that the homeless have no place to go. First of all, they have no home to go to. Then, they are often chased away from storefronts or told not to sleep in certain parks.
The Fenty administration is still reeling from the closure of the Franklin School Shelter and the backlash that it has caused. They are still being dragged through the courts in the case of SHEPTOCK, et al v. FENTY, et al, which is now in federal court to try to grant a restraining order to keep the Franklin shelter open. Rumors have been circulated for years saying that the Community for Creative Non-Violence (CCNV) Shelter is on the chopping block, too.
While Congress has lauded the mayor’s efforts to move from shelters to Permanent Supportive Housing, they seem to be uninformed about the present shortage of shelter space, the lack of affordable housing, the shortcomings of the program that they praise or the fact that it has already been scaled back considerably.
With the shelter closures and dwindling funding for social services, the remaining shelters are full to capacity and operating under substandard conditions. The Homelessness Emergency Response Workgroup, a coalition of homeless service providers, advocates and homeless people, has been formed to address the shortage of shelter space. Shelter capacity must be addressed now, as it is bound to increase during the hypothermia season. Otherwise, homeless people will have no place to go, come winter.
As if all of this isn’t enough, the homeless are now being told not to hang out in front of the CCNV shelter, where I stay, even after they might’ve just gotten off from work. Following the death of a homeless woman on a bench in front of CCNV, the city Department of Human Services reminded the shelter administration that the service contract stated that people would not be allowed to loiter in front of the building.
The city threatened to end the contract this term were it not adhered to. This is a prime example of backwards logic. In order to make sure that no more homeless people die on a bench outside of a shelter, the benches have been removed and the homeless forbidden to congregate in front of the shelter, rather than providing sufficient shelter or housing.
There are now volunteer security personnel keeping the sidewalk in front of the shelter clear. The homeless then began congregating on the wall in front of the U.S. Dept. of Labor, which is in the next block. One would think they might be given jobs by DOL. On the contrary, they have been chased away by DOL security.
Few, if any, people would want to be pushed around because they are underprivileged. Even those who have no sympathy for the homeless shouldn’t push off on another neighborhood those whom they wouldn’t want near their own home. In any case, shuffling the homeless around town doesn’t move them forward. It only serves to set them back.
As it turns out, wisdom sometimes comes in the guise of simplicity. That said, the first thing that a homeless person needs in order to rise above homelessness is a stable residence, be it a shelter or housing.
Some of the homeless who have no place to go might be solving their problem by squatting in the now vacant Franklin School Shelter building. The fire alarm has gone off at least twice since the shelter was closed abruptly by Mayor Fenty on September 26th of last year, in an effort to appease the business community. A homeless man told me that he has witnessed others entering and exiting the building in recent days. This would explain why the fire alarm keeps going off. The fire department actually had to break into the building on July 5th in order to shut off the alarm, badly damaging one of the doors on this 140-year-old historic landmark.
I guess Franklin is the gift that just keeps on giving and the school that just keeps on teaching. It is still giving shelter to the homeless and teaching us that desperate situations call for desperate measures. The homeless are possibly squatting in the building because they have no place to go. Let’s hope that the police understand and don’t house the homeless in jail. Fat chance.
