When Christopher Feaster and his mother were evicted from their home, the then-high school senior’s life not only physically unraveled; he found himself emotionally upended, too. Navigating 12th grade amid the chaos of life at D.C. General, the onetime-hospital turned dilapidated family homeless shelter, took a heavy toll. One of the few places he found some solace and support was in the teen program—a mix of tutoring, mentoring, and activities—run by The Homeless Children’s Playtime Project that roved throughout the sprawling building, without a place to call home either.

That changed on Wednesday night, when Playtime Project Director Jamila Larson cut the ribbon on a new space dedicated to both teens and pre-teens. Director of Human Services Laura Zeilinger and Councilmember LaRuby May joined the celebration.

Once a reception area for the former hospital, the space had been home to a collection of worn waiting room chairs covered in a film of dust, not having seen a patient in many years. After lobbying for permission to utilize the area and winning it, the Playtime Project set about making the D.C. General Preteen & Teen Space a reality with the help of a $30,000 grant from Loews and pro-bono design from Gabe Peyton. Today, pops of purple and gradiated greens enliven the room. After the desktop computers and books and projector arrive and get settled in to their respective places over the next few weeks, teens and pre-teens will begin streaming in to their respective sides.

Trying to make it through high school while enduring the challenges of homelessness, “I was emotionally and physically exhausted,” the now-20-year-old Feaster told the crowd at the opening, saying that teens like him didn’t have space to simply be themselves in the cramped facility. “But now these kids know they can come here.”

Even with a modest decrease last year, family homelessness in D.C. is still up by 29 percent from four years ago, according to the annual point-in-time count.

Playtime Project’s new space within D.C. General is a “place for teens to dream, to heal, to connect, to plan, to do,” Larson said. But they also hope—and planned—for it to be a temporary one. The city has long pledged to close the crumbling facility and replace it with smaller shelters.

The stacked wooden cubbies, which separate the large room into different spaces for teens and tweens, are on casters—allowing them to modify the room for different uses, and one day be moved out of there entirely. Pretty much every other element of the space was designed with the uncertain future in mind.

“We think very carefully about ‘do we want to be creating all these new spaces in this place that’s going to be demolished,'” said Micah Bales, a spokesman for the Homeless Children’s Playtime Project. “On a basic level, the timeline for closing D.C. General is not months, but years. It could be two, three, five years. We think even if it was going to be closed in one year, we should do this because one year in the life of a child is worth it.”

It is the fourth space that Playtime Project has worked to carve out at D.C. General specifically for children. After years of fighting for a new playground, cutting the ribbon on the brightly colored jungle gym last year represented a hard-won victory for the group. They also offer programming in a designated area for babies and a second space for children ages three to seven.

“We understand how important it is to have a space [for teens and tweens] that is different from the kind of play that young kids engage in,” Zeilinger said, praising Larson and her team for their latest victory and relentless focus on children’s needs.

But it isn’t clear at this point what kinds of spaces, if any, will exist specifically for children in the new, smaller shelters that the city has promised to build.

“It will be a very different kind of service and environment than what we have [at D.C. General],” Zeilinger tells DCist abut the new facilities. But in terms of including recreational areas for children, “we won’t be able to replicate what we have here,” she said in reference to the scale of the Playtime Project’s programs at D.C. General, which is home to hundreds of children. “We would like to [include those kinds of spaces], and we’re working with clients and stakeholders. But we’re trying to balance a lot of different interests.”

Most recently, the D.C. Council debated the merits of closing the shelter more quickly at the cost of having private bathrooms for families.

Whatever happens, the Playtime Project will keep its focus on the kids. “We think its important to recognize that human beings do more than eat sleep and go to the restroom, and we’re taking that into account as we move forward,” Bales says. “It is priority for us—whatever the scale—that there are appropriate spaces for different developmental stages. Babies, grade schoolers, pre-teens, and teens—they all have different needs.”