Tick Tock Sheptock

Before homeless advocate Michael Stoops had his debilitating stroke, He would introduce me to the college and university groups that had come to learn about homelessness by swaying and moving his hands from side to side as if he were playing a six-foot tall keybord as he said the following: “I've been doing this work for forty years. And, if we don't start doing more than feeding and sheltering the homeless, then in forty more years when all of you are MY age, you'll still be talking about wanting to end homelessness.” That succinct spiel had come to replace an earlier and shorter one in which he would say, “We here at the National Coalition for the Homeless (NCH) are trying to work ourselves out of a job”. As it turns out, he did just that on June 7 th ,2015, though not in the way that he had hoped. With the CCNV organization having begun in 1970; Mitch Snyder having joined them in 1974; NCH having been established in 1982 and a host of other advocacy organizati...

Occupy DC: Franklin School (Shelter) Takeover Well Washington, DC's Franklin School Shelter is in the headlines again. It's the issue that won't go away -- with good reason -- and may very well be the most read-about building in the nation. It is on the fast track toward becoming the centerpiece of the Occupy DC Movement. On Saturday, November 19th, 2011 13 people re-entered the former homeless shelter which has sat vacant for over 3 years now -- closed by former DC Mayor Adrian Fenty after he claimed to care too much for the homeless to allow them to be warehoused in the "old building" (built in 1869) which was "unfit for human habitation". Ironically, several homeless people have frozen to death outside since the closure on September 26th, 2008. "Caring" was used as a pretext for closing the Franklin School Shelter and is now being used as a pretext for raiding the Occupy Movement's camps. That's not to speak of the fact that many...

It is with great sadness that I say that Mary Ann Luby -- the woman who gave me my start as a homeless advocate -- passed away on November 29th, 2010 after a short battle with cancer (less than 2 weeks). While it stands to reason that she might've had cancer long before it was detected, I can definitely appreciate the fact that her suffering was cut short. She is greatly missed by myself and others nonetheless. Mary Ann was one of two women who entered the Franklin School Shelter in mid-June 2006 to tell its 240 residents about the plans of former DC mayor Anthony Williams to close the shelter and to re-open the Gales School as a shelter with 120 beds, leaving half of us with nowhere to go. Mary Ann was a nun of the Dominican Order who did outreach work for the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless. The other woman was a community activist named Becky Sambol who fought for several different causes. They called a meeting amongst the shelter residents and about a dozen att...

Many groups and organizations are advocating for Washington, DC's homeless community, with some of them consisting mainly of homeless and formerly homeless people. There's Street Sense, DC's newspaper about homelessness and poverty. Homeless people write for and sell the paper. Then there is STREATS (Striving To Reach, Educate And Transform Society)'s views on homelessness. Through STREATS the homeless have educated the public about their issue on DCTV and the internet and have done extensive correspondence with the local and federal governments on behalf of the homeless. A group of homeless people calling themselves the People For Fairness Coalition meets every Tuesday at Miriam's Kitchen to plan how they will assist the weaker among them who often don't use shelters. They take to the streets 3 times per week to deliver supplies. Let's not forget the Committee to Save Franklin Shelter (CSFS) which won its fight against former DC mayor Anthony Williams, only...

I first posted this article on March 19th, 2009. New information came out in the headlines this morning stating that Catholic charities might stop doing business with the city of Washington, DC if the gay marriage bill is passed. This would lead to the loss of about 2,000 shelter beds in shelters that are run by Catholic Charities. The homeless have become pawns and bargaining chips in the game of local (and "loco") politics. As I type up my blog post pertaining to this latest development, you can read about why people thought that all DC homeless shelters were threatened in March. I believe that there may be a correlation between what happened in March and what is happening now. I'll explain in my next blog post later today. Read on..... Several homeless people have told me that they read a newspaper article which stated that DC Mayor Adrian Fenty (a man) plans to close ALL DC homeless shelters by 2011. Unfortunately, I didn't read that article myself and h...

Dear President Barack Hussein Obama, I would like to remind you of a former effort of yours that you seem to have all but forgotten. On October 25th 2006, you sent two (2) men from your senatorial office in the Hart Building to the Franklin School Shelter so that they could tour the facility and be informed on the issue of homelessness. Their names were Ian Solomon and Nicholas Colvin . The tour was led by the Committee To Save Franklin Shelter (CSFS), a group that was later incorporated as Until We're Home, inc ( www.untilwerehome.org ), a non-profit that spoke up for the rights of homeless people and advocated for solutions to homelessness. I was the field marshal/public relations specialist for the group, which has now been dissolved. After the tour, we never heard back from either man. We were left to assume that they were just part of an exploratory mission to see what platform you would run your campaign on. Nonetheless, homelessness remains a major problem in thi...

Page 54 of the October 2008 issue of Hill Rag contains an article about DC Mayor Adrian Fenty which aptly describes what I know to be true about him. As he indicated during a meeting that he held with ONE DC ( a grassroots organizer)on October 8th, 2008, he can be headstrong and assertive. (I attended that meeting as a collaborator, though I am not a member of ONE DC.)However, what stood out to me was a certain consistency that I see in how one can get a meeting with the mayor. In order to help you to better understand what I am about to explain, I must take you back about 6 weeks and explain an earlier attempt to meet with the mayor. On August 19th, 2008, approximately 30 people -- homeless people, homeless advocates and supporters from local churches and the DC community at large -- did a walk-around at the Wilson Building (City Hall). It consisted of us going to the offices of the various city council members to present our cause: keeping Franklin Shelter open for the homeless ...

I am sorry to say that the Franklin situation has taken a turn for the worse in that 2 employees, James Rolle and Garland Caraway, have begun to perpetrate some bold-faced lies which are designed to create emnity between myself and the other Franklin residents and could lead to anyone who might believe them turning violent against me. I have published this post so as to let people know, just in case anything goes down. You can also help to correct their lies. This morning as I was leaving Franklin Shelter, Franklin staffer and Catholic Charities employee James Rolle started in on me by saying,"You know that you're the reason that they're closing this place?" Sitting beside him was the 500 lb. employee named Garland Caraway. (Garland was the one who tried to prevent Councilwoman Yvette Alexander from entering a government-owned building on 9/11 so as to see first-hand that the building is not nearly as decrepit as Mayor Fenty makes it out to be. He also told me th...