Signs of Change

In the past month, I have witnessed a number of changes, some of which are on a personal level but not all. At CCNV, the internal exile finally ended; I was able to leave my temporary quarters that I had assumed since June 1 and was able to move back up to the floor where the staff members reside. As it turned out, I was eligible to enter into one of the available rooms, so I consider myself most fortunate.

The month of September was also the month for the Democratic primaries. As the results showed, Adrian Fenty was elected as the Democratic candidate for mayor. For the homeless, this choice certainly comes as good news, as he has repeatedly been a figure who has shown concern for the plight of the homeless in the District of Columbia as evidenced through the Public Roundtable Committees and through his activity in authoring the Homeless Services Reform Act.

At the same time, there are some grim realities that the homeless must face, and that is the fact that hypothermia this year will leave many persons with no alternatives for shelter, as the ongoing renovations at CCNV will keep the drop-in closed to intake for hypothermia there. Because of the renovations at CCNV, many of the male residents have been issued exit notices and have been transferred to the Franklin School shelter, thereby filling that facility. The Gales School shelter will not be ready for occupancy in the coming year, so those persons who do not find available bed space during hypothermia season will simply be out of luck; it’s as simple as that. No alternative shelters are being opened. There’s nothing pretty about that reality.

Clearly while some changes are taking place, more changes are needed. The lack of available shelters during hypothermia season should be regarded as a crisis, but so far, no signs of any action being taken are on the horizon. It is only October now; the question is if some alternatives can or will be found in the interim. By the time the November elections are held, it will be too late to implement any significant changes; action is needed now to be effective.

Repeatedly I have heard the refrain uttered that under the current city administration, homelessness is not a priority. I still remember in the years before my becoming homeless that a friend of mine told me that there was no need for anybody to be on the street in the District of Columbia, that the city government would provide shelter for anybody in need. Once his words would have been true back in the Eighties when the Right to Shelter Act was in force, but those days are ancient history by now.

The words of my friend still ring in my ears; he also believed that a resident in the District could not be evicted. Apparently he was living in Fools’ Paradise while he was living here and I shudder to think what became of him. He truly believed that homelessness was not possible in the District of Columbia; how he could have believed that with the largest shelter for the homeless in the nation existing in the District is beyond me.

I know that he left the area to go to a job in San Francisco, and he complained that there he had to relocate every so often so as to avoid establishing residence there. In the last communication before I lost contact with him, he said that he was “about to give up,” but he did not indicate where he would go from there. If he truly believed that the District of Columbia was a Shangri-La where homelessness was impossible, would logic not dictate that he would have returned? If he had, he would have discovered just how wrong he was for sure.