A proposed design for the Ward 7 site.
By WAMU’s Martin Austermuhle
D.C. officials insisted on Monday that Mayor Muriel Bowser’s plan to close and demolish the D.C. General family homeless shelter this fall remains on track, despite concerns raised by some homeless advocates that the city is rushing to shutter the long-troubled shelter even while two replacement shelters have faced construction delays that could push back their opening dates.
“In working to achieve our ambitious goals, we have encountered unforeseen circumstances and some challenges, which is a normal part of significant construction projects,” said Greer Gillis, the head of the D.C. Department of General Services, at a D.C. Council hearing. “We had no doubts on the fall 2018 delivery [of the shelters].”
The concerns revolve around the planned shelters in Wards 7 and 8, two of the three that are expected to open this year in order to absorb some of the homeless families currently living at D.C. General. The third shelter scheduled to open is in Ward 4. This month the Washington City Paper reported that as early as February, some city officials and contractors were expressing concerns that both shelters would be delayed, raising the possibility that only the 45-unit shelter in Ward 4 would be ready, and that many families now at D.C. General would have to be sent to live at local motels.
Gillis told legislators on Monday that problems with a contractor and a subcontractor had delayed both shelters, pushing their completion date from Aug. 31 to Oct. 1. In a tweet, the Department of General Services said that “construction is a complicated process that is in no way linear,” but added that “adjusting the delivery schedule for any construction project does not mean the final deadline will be missed.”
There are currently around 170 families at D.C. General, and more than 340 at area motels. D.C. officials have been trying to reduce the number of homeless families it houses in motels, which are more expensive than traditional shelters and provide fewer services. If neither the Ward 7 or Ward 8 shelter are ready by the time D.C. General closes, homeless advocates worry that the number of motel rooms that will be needed will jump to above 400 — and families may have to stay there for up to a year.
“I feel misled, and I am disappointed,” said Ward 1 Councilmember Brianne Nadeau, who along with a number of homeless advocates questioned whether Bowser was moving too aggressively to close D.C. General this year.
“This plan has always been poisoned with political influence, with the idea that it was a promise of this administration. That misses the point of closing D.C. General,” said Amber Harding, an attorney at the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless.
Harding and other advocates said Bowser shouldn’t only wait for the three shelters currently under construction to be done, but instead stick to her original plan of having six replacement shelters ready before closing D.C. General.
Three other replacement shelters — in Wards 3, 5 and 6 — are set to open next year. But even with those there could be delays; the planned shelters in Wards 3 and 5 remain mired in legal challenges.
When they are all built, the six replacement shelters are expected to house up to 276 families, which is what capacity at D.C. General has been. But without all six open, homeless advocates speaking Monday worried about the fate of the families currently at D.C. General.
“Closing D.C. General only to plunge families into a new round of instability and uncertainly accomplishes little,” said Damon King, a senior policy advocate with the Legal Aid Society. “How we close D.C. General is just as important as the fact that we ultimately do.”
Other than saying that construction hiccups had occurred but were quickly addressed, D.C. officials pushed back on claims that they were not properly preparing for what they would do with the families at D.C. General once it closes.
“This is planning that has been three-and-a-half years in the making,” said Laura Zeilinger, director of the Department of Human Services. “There were some assertions today that we have not been effectively planning. We have been planning for a very long time.”
Zeilinger said that of the 169 families currently at D.C. General, 35 already had leases in hands for apartments and would be moving out of the shelter in the next few weeks. She also said that the city had seen a 40 percent decline in family homelessness over the past two years because of Bowser’s efforts to reform the homeless services system.
But those claims — and the assurances that the shelters would be ready by the fall, when Bowser plans on closing D.C. General — were met with skepticism from legislators, who said city officials had not been forthcoming with information about the status of the replacement shelters.
“When the Council has asked about the project over the past few years, again and again the response had essentially boiled down to, ‘Trust us,’” said Council member Robert White (D-At Large). “All my questions are certainly not answered.”
This story originally appeared on WAMU.
