In Record Cold Snap, Homeless Families Lack Heat and Warm Water at Shelter As DC Homelessness Skyroc

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http://www.alternet.org/hard-times-usa/record-cold-snap-homeless-families-lack-heat-and-warm-water-shelter-dc-homelessness

In Record Cold Snap, Homeless Families Lack Heat and Warm Water at Shelter As DC Homelessness Skyrockets


Washington DC's Department of Human Services has a really big problem. The city's population of homeless families has skyrocketed this winter, filling up every one of the 285 shelter rooms at the former DC General Hospital and forcing officials to place hundreds of families in hotels around the city and in Maryland.

"It sounds bad, but it's worse than it sounds," David Berns, director of the Department of Human Services, said at a hearing held Monday, testifying that the city expected to provide shelter for 509 newly homeless families all winter; that number has already shot up to over 700, and is expected to top 1,000 before April, said Berns.

At this deeply inopportune time, two counties in Maryland—perhaps mindful of upcoming tourist season—are demanding that the city remove homeless families from their hotels, where DC has been paying to put them up. The city has reached an agreement with the counties of Prince George and Montgomery to relocate the homeless families taking up residence in their hotels. One hundred and ten homeless families have to be out as soon as space opens in DC, the Washington Post reported. The city has committed to moving the others by spring, the Post added.

They will likely be funneled into emergency shelters recently set up by the city in recreation centers as a short-term solution to the increase in homelessness—the kind of emergency shelter used when a flood or hurricane wipes out a town. The shelters lack partitions, according to Stern's testimony, but so far that's not such a big problem, since only nine families came to that shelter the first night it was opened, and no families were staying there as of Sunday night. But that might change when hundreds of families who previously stayed in motels are forced out and have no other option.