One homeless mother, Dawn Austen, was overcome by emotion as she spoke about her desperate search for shelter. “Where my son is forced to sleep, it makes me feel like a bad mother,” she said before breaking down. Another, Chakonyone Lee, managed to get through her entire statement without crying.
“There are really people out here who have no place to go,” Lee testified. “When I leave out of here to pick up my children, I don’t know where we will go. Maybe to a hospital or a train station.”
The women were two of more than twenty witnesses who spoke at an October 6 roundtable meeting called by D.C. City Council Human Services Chairman Tommy Wells to explore the status of the District’s plan to shelter the homeless during the upcoming winter. The shortage of housing for families was a continuing refrain.
City officials are anxious to avoid a repeat of last winter’s debacle, where 200 families were crowded into the aging D.C. General Hospital, occupying space designed to house 135 individuals. But finding additional space for a growing number of homeless families has proven a challenge.
Some who testified suggested that political maneuvering may have led to a failure to move forward with a plan to make use of an 80-unit building on Spring Road NE in Ward 4. Wells, whose Ward 6 district includes D.C. General Hospital firmly rejected a plan, at least temporarily advanced by Department of Human Services, to renovate space for 100 more families in the facility in time for winter. The winter plan under discussion would also place 75 additional single men in the cafeteria of the former hospital.
“You are creating a homeless encampment at D.C. General,” Wells said to Department of Human Services Director Clarence Carter. But Carter defended the city’s plan for coping with family homelessness, which also includes efforts to move the families currently staying at D.C. General into apartments to free up space for additional families this winter.
“I think it represents a strong effort to serve the needs of our homeless neighbors,” Carter said.
The city’s annual homeless enumeration found a total of 800 homeless families, an increase of nearly 14 percent over last year. And between April and June, 517 families applied to the city for shelter, according to figures compiled by the Interagency Council on Homelessness. An estimated 10 percent of homeless families are now coming to the District from other jurisdictions, according to intake data from the Virginia Williams Family Resource Center, the office where families go to seek emergency shelter.
Local schools are also trying to cope. As of Sept. 17, there were 1,024 homeless children enrolled in the city school system.
“We do not believe this represents the total number of homeless students in our schools,” said D.C. school spokesman Frederick Lewis. The number actually represents a decrease from last year’s count of 1,900 students, Lewis said, but new enrollment forms may have caused some confusion in classifying students.
“We believe this number will grow over the next few months,” he added. “Based on our conversations with city officials, shelter providers and our community partners, we know the need in the city has not abated. Many family shelters are full and even families in permanent housing now are in vulnerable situations.”
Lewis did not testify at the roundtable on the winter plan.
But back in city hall, Chakonyone Lee glanced anxiously at the clock on the wall of the hearing room, gathered her things and left to pick up her children, still not knowing where they would spend the night.
