The D.C. General Hospital building, which is now used as a homeless shelter. Photo via Google Street View.
At a small public meeting, city officials discussed a plan to move 100 homeless women from one building on the D.C. General campus to another formerly occupied by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.
The move from Building 9 to Building 27 on Reservation 13 will require a change to the zoning code to allow for a new emergency shelter to house more than four people. An assessment of the building found “various environmental hazards including elevated concentrations of airborne asbestos and the presence of lead containing materials.”
The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner vacated Building 27 in 2012 to a building in Southwest D.C. “The medical examiner’s space is a much needed upgrade over the previous facility,” Mayor Vince Gray said at the time. “There was a time when we were challenged just with the HVAC systems in that building.”
Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/oct/1/forensics-laboratory-opens-in-dc-facility-will-be-/#ixzz31F0GNaDh
Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter
While a local resident said he’d heard a negative reaction about moving homeless women into a former morgue, Harriet Tubman Shelter staffer Kenyatta Thompson said the residents are “very excited” to move out of a facility they can “barely function in.”
“Right now we’re really living in an area where we have water … coming in,” she said. “Personally, I can say I’m pregnant, and it’s a little threatening to be in an environment where you know that at any given time something could happen. So to be able to move 100 women to a safer environment, whether or not it’s a morgue, [we’re] very excited.”
A Department of General Services program manager said they’ve done a “complete remediation” of the building. The lower level is where the morgue activities took place, while the first and second floors were used for office space and laboratories. “Those areas are a smaller portion of the building, and we’re not using them,” Tony Goodman from DGS said.
Goodman also said that, while the areas of Building 9 that are vacant are in extremely poor condition, the area where the women live is in “fair” condition. Building 27 has far less vacant space, Goodman said.
Thompson said the Harriet Tubman Shelter is always full and an average of 14 women leave the a month. They sleep in communal rooms.
The idea of moving homeless women from one building on the campus to another also elicited anger of the long-delayed plan to redevelop Reservation 13. “Why hasn’t there been a permanent plan … to build an appropriate facility somewhere else that would well-house these people?” one resident asked. “You just described the conditions. They’re egregious.”
A representative from the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development’s office said Building 9 will be demolished, but not right away. It will cost roughly $1 to $2 million. Goodman said there are no plans to renovate the building, but to tear it down once funding is in place.
ANC6B Commissioner Brian Flahavan said he would support the zoning change if it’s clear and stated that Building 9 be demolished.
Only two parcels of the 67-acre site are currently tapped for redevelopment, while the Hill East Master Plan was approved by the Council in 2002.
A representative from the Department of Human Services said they will not stand in the way of DMPED’s plans: “We have asked Department of General Services to look for alternate location off of D.C. General campus. We don’t have that alternate location right now, but we are committed to work with DMPED so when a developer is ready to develop Building 27 we will have a permanent plan off of D.C. General campus.” She said the timeline is based on development plans, which will be decided by DMPED.
