The D.C. General Hospital building, which is now used as a homeless shelter. Photo via Google Street View.

More than 60 families will be moved from a hotel to the D.C. General family homeless shelter this weekend after being given notice on Wednesday evening.

There are currently 112 homeless families at D.C. General and 126 families in hotels, according to Thursday’s census. About 65 families will be moved from the Quality Inn on New York Avenue and other hotels to the shelter this weekend.

According to a Department of Human Services representative who spoke at a Council roundtable today, a notice was provided to families on Wednesday evening. But according to Ann Marie Staudenmaier, a staff attorney at the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless, at least one of her clients only received notice last night.

Staudenmaier said the Legal Clinic opposes moving families with such short notice because it does not provide adequate time for people with reasonable accommodations to apply for exemptions. The Virginia Williams Family Resource Center, which connects homeless families with integrated services, is closed today.

A move on such short noticed is very “disruptive,” according to Staudenmaier, to families whose “whole lives are in hotel rooms.”

There’s also concern about moving children enrolled through D.C. Public Schools to a new area. The city is required to transport these children to the school they are enrolled in.

“It was not well thought out at all,” she said.

Naila Goodwin, a homeless mother who testified at today’s Council roundtable, said families who live at the Quality Inn will be “out on the streets.”

“They have nowhere to go, no one to call,” she said. “This is not a humane thing.”

When asked by Councilmember Jim Graham if Goodwin’s testimony was true, interim DHS Director Deborah Carroll said “it’s absolutely not accurate.”

“They’ve been given a schedule, in order to make it orderly,” Carroll said, adding that families have been given moving supplies. “We provide transportation. We let them know in the letter the date and time when they will be moved.”

Staudenmaier said clients have said they are being moved on Saturday and Sunday, while a DHS spokesperson said families are being moved today.

Carroll said families with other options can “certainly take advantage of those.” The staff at Virginia Williams is assisting with the move, according to Carroll.

Families who are scheduled to be moved into apartments with vouchers or because of reasonable accommodations are not going to D.C. General, according to Carroll. But Staudenmaier said one of her clients — a mother of six with a rapid re-housing voucher who has been “diligently” looking for an apartment — was given notice.