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

The D.C. Council gave unanimous initial approval for a drastic revision to Mayor Muriel Bowser’s homeless shelter plan amid a number of prickly moments at the Wilson Building.

Under the original plan, five of the seven shelter sites would be leased from private owners. But the Council seeks to relocate the facilities proposed in Wards 3, 5, and 6 to city-owned land, and purchase rather than lease the sites in Wards 1 and 4.

In introducing the new legislation, Chairman Phil Mendelson didn’t mince words about his dissatisfaction with the way the Bowser administration has handled the proposal. “Our consideration with regard to the sites was hampered by obfuscation and misinformation,” the chairman said, adding that he was not alone among the councilmembers in his frustration. “I learned more in past 12 hours [about the site] than in the past two months.”

In response to pointed inquiries from Councilmember Yvette Alexander about if the new plan would delay the timeline of 2018 to close D.C. General, Mendelson responded that it makes the “ambitious goal” more likely.

The administration clearly doesn’t agree, with Chief of Staff John Falcicchio tweeting “No designs for + no zoning + 2 sites not under control = a delay well beyond 2018.” Bowser herself was even more forceful, reportedly yelling to Mendelson in a hallway, “You’re a fucking liar! You know it can’t close in [2018]!” according to Washington Times’ Ryan McDermott and WAMU’s Martin Austermuhle.

While most of the Council expressed support for the revised plan—and praised the mayor for her efforts to close D.C. General—Bowser allies LaRuby May and Brandon Todd each had grievances.

Ward 8’s May attempted to introduce an amendment clarifying that each site would have no more than 50 units, saying “I want to make sure we are moving forward in an equitable way.” Ward 4’s Todd, meanwhile, expressed his vehement disapproval for the way the Council proposes paying for the plan, which involves diverting funds from a renovation project at Coolidge Senior High School. “The members of the Coolidge community have been down this road before,” Todd said. “They’ve been kicked down the list year after year.”

But Mendelson and David Grosso, the education committee chair, argued that the city isn’t far enough along on the project to spend those funds on Coolidge this year, and said some funds would remain in this year’s budget, while the rest will be dispersed in 2018 and 2019.

“This is a win win for everybody,” Grosso said. The renovation work will still happen, and “also we’ll be able to make sure we own all of these new shelters, so we’re not stuck in 20 years with what to do when the leases run out and we’ve spent all this money.”

But it wasn’t all animosity to get there. “We are very grateful to the mayor for putting out a plan to close D.C. General,” Ward 3 Councilmember Mary Cheh said. “We are unified about that, it is only a question of how to get there.”

For the wards where the shelters will be moved to city-owned land, all three councilmembers expressed support for the changes. In Ward 3, the shelter would be built on part of the land where the Second District Police Department sits, and in Ward 6, the D.C. Council proposes using a city owned lot at 2 and K Streets NW. In Ward 5, which has two possible new sites under consideration, Kenyan McDuffie expressed a strong preference for the former Metropolitan Police Department Youth Division Building at 1700 Rhode Island Avenue NE rather than the Penn Center (326 R Street NE).

Amid the day’s bickering and legislative back-and-forth, Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen said: “What I hope is not lost today is that for the first time we have more than just a desire to close D.C. General.” The Council will take a second vote on the budget at the end of the month.