WAMU: What’s Happening With Mayor Bowser’s Plan To Close The D.C. General Homeless Shelter?
At Children’s Law Center, we support closing DC General, but only if it improves the conditions that families live in and if there’s enough shelter for all children and families who need it. Kathy Zeisel chats with WAMU’s Martin Austermuhle about the situation.
Homeless advocates across the city were the first to demand that D.C. General be closed, but they are now in the strange place of advocating that Bowser not rush to close it in 2018.
“There was always a plan to close D.C. General, but that plan was always to close it when we had the replacement shelters in place for families to go where they would have a stable and a safe place to live,” said Kathy Zeisel, a supervising attorney at the Children’s Law Center. “So advocates are asking for that pause button to be pushed.”
The advocates have expressed two main concerns with the current plan: that not enough replacement shelters will be ready to handle any of the families currently at D.C. General (roughly 155 as of last week), and that Bowser wants demolition work to start on portions of the campus before all the families are moved out.