April 2, 2008
Central Union Mission Moves, Graham Celebrates
Today Council member Jim Graham (D-Ward 1) announced that the Central Union Mission, a 170-bed men's shelter currently located along 14th Street NW, would not be moving to a new location along the fast-developing Georgia Avenue in his ward. Instead, it would re-locate to a spot near Union Station. Wrote Graham on his website:
Good news!!! Central Union Mission is not moving to Georgia Avenue in Ward One. It is moving downtown.If he seems happy, well, he is. Two years ago the men's shelter announced that it was looking at moving to a new spot along Georgia Avenue, a proposal that didn't much amuse the neighbors or their representative on the D.C. Council -- Graham. According to them, the shelter wouldn't fit in with the development plans for that stretch of Georgia Avenue, but on a number of occasions Graham also brought up the unpleasant prospect of having that many homeless men in one of his neighborhoods. So when news broke earlier this year that the shelter would instead move to another spot in another ward, well, that was just fine with Graham.We have re-defined the project to include real progress for lower Georgia Avenue. Instead of a 170-bed men’s shelter on the 3500 block of Georgia Avenue, there will now be mixed-income housing.
This is a solid victory for grassroots activism. I worked with the neighborhood, who came together to send a very effective message that a homeless shelter was not the kind of improvement we wanted.
I joined Mayor Fenty this afternoon for a press conference to announce that the Mission had signed an agreement to move to 65 Mass. Ave.
Congratulations to everyone involved, especially the Georgia Avenue residents, local ANC, Georgia Avenue Redevelopment Defense Squad and the Pleasant Plains Civic Association! And a special thanks to Mayor Fenty and his fine team.
Of course, Graham's activism on this issue presents an interesting contradiction. In early 2007, Graham authored legislation that would have allowed the strip clubs displaced by the new stadium to be moved en masse to a location in Ward 5. Predictably, Ward 5 residents and their representative on the council, Harry Thomas, didn't much like that idea. And since some of the clubs catered to a gay audience, there was grumbling that Ward 5 residents were coming down with a case of NIMBY -- not in my backyward. I confronted Graham on this issue last year and he said the two cases were different. How so? Why are strip clubs in someone else's ward OK, but not a homeless shelter in your own? I never got a good answer.
If anyone lives along Georgia Avenue and has some insights, please share them. Is this a case of NIMBYism? Or would the shelter really stand in the way of developing the area? Leave your thoughts in the comments.
Photo by katmere
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I'm confused. Isn't 65 Mass Ave. Union Station itself? Oh, I get it. It's 65 Mass Ave., NW, not NE. I assume that's the old school building that used to be a shelter until they kicked them out to renovate it. What were they planning to put there when they renovated it anyway?
Bet those companies paying those huge rents on those fancy new buildings right on that block are psyched.
there's obviously a bit of nimbyism at play here, but i think this is a good compromise. 65 mass ave. was a shelter before, so this is a pre-existing use at this site.
the other fact is that making the homeless trek a long way from downtown, where they are going to be spending most of their day looking for opportunities to panhandle or whatever, was a bad idea.
whatever your position on panhandling, or other homeless activities, i think we can all agree that making it easier for them to get to a shelter (and the various forms of aid they can receive from a shelter) is in our and their best interest.
the walk from downtown to 65 mass ave. is not too far. hoofing it up to almost petworth is a stretch.
this is a win-win.
Central Union Mission has a very unfortunate 3 letter acronym for a public entity.
It's totally NIMBY. I mean, that's why the shelter is moving from 14th Street... the Mission didn't fit in so well near the Whole Foods.
What's really amazing is that we (and our elected city council) are willing to squabble about where a shelter is placed but not come up with solutions to solve homelessness. There are some things such as better psychiatric/drug treatment that churches and charities are just unable to provide. And the Dept. of Veterans Affairs is completely ineffective in helping the scores of homeless veterans we have in the nation's capital. (Perhaps it would help if we had voting members of Congress in each chamber that could voice these issues).
These are services we are currently unable or unwilling to provide so instead we discuss where we should move our problems so we don't have to see them everyday. Sadly, we're all guilty of NIMBY, including me.
What are they going to do with the old Central Union Mission building? Turn it into condos? Who in their right mind would want to live there anyway? That place is going to be filled to the roof with really pissed off, mean ghosts!
I think this is a good thing, that stretch of 14th is kind of blah - some empty storefronts and such.
How about a strip club that hires the homeless as dancers? Economic development, welfare to work, and drink specials in one convenient location.
Oh this one's easy. Grahamzilla is ok with strip clubs because they cater to white gays. Homeless shelters on the other hand attract poor black people.
The use of 65 Mass Ave NW as a homeless shelter is a stunningly stupid use of resources.
That piece of land is worth tens of millions primarily because of it's proximity to the US Capitol.
It really offers very little for the homeless. They aren't going to get office jobs in the federal buildings or law firms there. There is very little chance to aggressively panhandle, since the Feds are less keen on allowing that then the local authorities are. Plus, they'd have to fight for turf with the Mitch Snyder shelter folks, who have probably staked out all the good spots already.
Why not sell that parcel, or renovate and rent it as very expensive office space, and use the proceeds to fund a ton of real, comprehensive homeless programs in an area that isn't nearly as expensive? You could provide many times over the same services for that kind of $$.
Or is giving the homeless a Capitol dome view and proximity to Senate bean soup more important?
Graham is such a hypocrite. His disdain for new condos, homeless shelters - whatever HE feels is undesirable - in our ward really contrasts with him trying to move the clubs to Ward 5.
There are lots of gays in Ward 1, including myself, that would never want those clubs in our neighborhood. Or any other new clubs gay/straight, black/white, new commer/long time resident. I cannot fault Ward 5 for not wanting them either. And then Graham and others plays the gay card and cries homophobia to boot.
But, god forbid, if eggs are not labeled to his narrow desire, Jim takes action!
There's a lot of available housing in Prince William County these days...
hillman: that's an old historic building though, and it couldn't be torn down to make a huge office tower on that triangle lot, so you're stuck with a small footprint. i doubt you can maximize the value as much as you think there...
Hi, the photo has a creative commons license that kindly requests attribution.
From http://creativecommons.org: "Attribution. You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your copyrighted work — and derivative works based upon it — but only if they give credit the way you request."
Thanks!
Will the "Come Unto Me" sign be moving to the new location too? If not, will it stay a the current location when the condos, or whatever is going in there, are completed?
True, it's an old building that doesn't maximize the space on the lot. But even using the existing footprint it'd command very high office space rents, enough to fund a damn nice shelter program elsewhere.
And other historic buildings downtown are seeing the rest of the lot built up. For instance, many of the entire blocks in Chinatown (three blocks from this building) are now just facades, with massive office space behind.
The city owns a butt ton of buildings on less expensive land. They could easily renovate one of those and use the funds from renting out (or selling) 65 Mass Ave to fund quite the shelter program pretty much for eternity.
Central Union Mission, "Come Unto Me". That CUM acronym just keeps poppin up.
Those socalled christians should be ashamed, sticking subliminal messages in where godfearing people can see them in all their nakidity.
Having lived within two blocks of the mission for over eight years now I can't say I'm going to be sad seeing them go.
While I have no statistical proof that the smell of urine, petty crime, random acts of menacing oddness and aggressive panhandling are attributable to the people accessing the mission. I'd still be willing to make a larger than normal wager that all of the above will trend downward once the mission has gone.
To ward 5 residents, I'd simply say "Thank you for taking your turn in hosting DC's most needy."
Maybe they can relocate all of those displaced strip clubs in the soon-to-be-vacated Central Union Mission building. The sign could be changed to "Cum Onto Me."
Was the NoMa BID in on this? I bet they're not too happy.
Also, Penn Quarter residents are going to be livid since the nearest (even though it's 7 blocks away) panhandling spot is going to be their neighborhood.
Has anyone ever noticed the number of time CM Graham uses the work "I" in his messages? I realize as a politician you gotta take credit where credit is due, but come on...this man is out of controll.
This article does a good job giving more context to the shelter move, and how it is supposed to fit into a wider effort.
I live in his ward and am not a fan, but i also live on Georgia Ave and there is more to it than NIMBY. The reality is that lower Georgia is struggling and half the storefronts are empty. If the shelter had opened it would have been one more reason for businesses not to open there. The new location isn't going to stop businesses from locating nearby and its not going to hurt the economics of Penn Quarter.
It really would have hurt us, and if you don't believe me you need to walk from Howard to Petworth and realize 40 years later it still hasn't recovered.
Graham's position on this is a bit odd. For someone supposedly so sympathetic to the plight of the less fortunate he sure was quick to dump the Union Mission in some part of town other than his own, or that of his constituents.
Why isn't there a link or attribution for that photo?
That chunk of land on Mass Ave is really too small for much of any sort of commercial building. It's also been the same chunk of decaying building for quite some time (roof? who needs a roof?). Next door is a commercial office building (the cable lobbyists are in there) and across the street is a federal building. I'm not sure if the Mass Ave building makes sense in the scheme of trying to develop that NoMa (hate that term!) area, but the building that will house the homeless is a wreck and will need a ton of money to fix it up.
But this does pretty much exemplify Graham's solution to things: I don't want this in MY ward, so make it go somewhere else. Voila! Problem solved. Love me!
muckraker -- Just a mistake, should appear in a second.
I have lived a block from the mission for more than nine years. The guys who go there are NOT violent and I do not fear them. I feel very badly for most of them. It's sad.
Having said this, the mission is located across the street from a block of Section 8/low-income apartment buildings that is home to way too many drug dealers. The police bust them, but they come back or are replaced by new entrepreneurs. The problem of open drug sales and wandering-zombie-drug-users has actually gotten worse in the last couple of years in our neighborhood. No small number of these poor souls are from the mission.
No one in our area -- including me -- has ever made an attempt to drive the mission out or have the apartment buildings' Section 8 status revoked (in fact, it was just renewed a year ago).
However, you simply cannot put all of the institutions -- and missions and Public 8 housing are essentially institutions -- together in one neighborhood. It doesn't do the poor or homeless any favors and it doesn't do the other neighbors any favors either. You cannot put such institutions together in clumps. It doesn't work.
I will make a bold prediction that we will see a decrease in drug dealing -- and resident drug dealers -- when the mission leaves. I know we will have fewer people smoking crack in our alleys and defecating in our walkways.
The answers are more drug treatment centers and the dispersal of low-income housing around the city. In the meantime, I imagine our neighborhood will gain a little bit of peace when the mission leaves.
Having the Central Mission relocate to Georgia Ave NW from 14th St was a disaster waiting to happen. My reasons, let me show you them:
1. The stretch of the proposed site is filled with liquor stores, a strip club, and drug dealers at every corner. No matter how strong their will power and how much treatment these guys have been through, I doubt they would have the strength to resist such temptations.
2. The location on Georgia Ave was WAY TO FAR from downtown to serve the core service base. The new location is better served by metro and buses.
KTHXBAI!
MonkeyErotica, I just have to direct this at you:
"Central Union Mission, "Come Unto Me". That CUM acronym just keeps poppin up.
Those socalled christians should be ashamed, sticking subliminal messages in where godfearing people can see them in all their nakidity."
The Mission has been around since 1884, and I have the strong suspicion that times and minds have changed since then. It's society that should be ashamed of it's interpretation of the acronym, not the Mission.
alewis wrote: "It's totally NIMBY. I mean, that's why the shelter is moving from 14th Street... the Mission didn't fit in so well near the Whole Foods."
That is categorically false. I have lived in this neighborhood for nearly twenty years, I'm very active in neighborhood issues, and I have never seen nor heard any effort by neighbors to move the Mission out of the neighborhood--not even in the wake of notable crime surges did I hear of any such rumblings, not even after a lesbian resident was viciously attacked and raped in the alley next to the Mission entrance. If you have information to the contrary, rather than false assumptions and accusations, alewis, please provide.
The reality behind the move is the obvious windfall for the Mission if it sells the property, and relocates its services to a still-transitional area, using the balance from the windfall to expand their services. That was the plan for the Georgia Avenue facility (more beds, clinic services, and the like), and I'm sure it will be the intent at the new substitute location.