Tick Tock Sheptock

Dearest DC Mayor Muriel Bowser: First of all, I'd like to congratulate and thank you for taking the totally non-political step of making addressing homelessness your pet project. I've never heard of another politician at any level of government doing that. Others like Bush 43 and Albuquerque Mayor Richard Berry  (both Republicans) have addressed it; but, they've not made it their pet project by any means. You, on the other hand, have set the lofty goal of making the homeless experience in DC "rare, brief and non-recurring" . You've arranged meetings that, unfortunately, were well-attended by NIMBY-ites while those who were supportive of your shelter replacement plan stayed home. You've embarked on a journey that three male mayors before you began but couldn't complete -- the first of them overseeing the creation of a 10-year plan in 2004 when DC counted 8,253 homeless people (a number that ROSE to 8,977 the following year ) and the third issuin...

In 1987 Ronald Reagan and the 100 th Congress were pressured by the aggressive tactics of the Mitch Snyder Movement into passing the McKinney-Vento Homeless Services Act. This act allows homeless service providers to obtain surplus federal real estate through its Title V provision. It also mandates that school districts be prepared to counsel and assist homeless students. In response to the act's provisions, the U.S. Dept. of Labor (DOL) performed the Job Training Homeless Demonstration Project beginning in 1988 – an effort that ended with 25% of the homeless who took advantage of the program being employed for at least 13 weeks. There are other innumerable effects of the McKinney-Vento Act which are still being felt by the homeless and their service providers today. However, it's worth noting that, while Mitch Snyder and company should be lauded for the progress they made by bringing the plight of the homeless (some of whom were eating from trashcans near the White House)...

Update on the Future of CCNV Because you have a right to know DC GOVERNMENT has asked me “NOT TO HIT THE PANIC BUTTON” – that is NOT to worry HOMELESS people with a guess of a 2017 or 2018 CCNV shelter closure. So, I made THIS INFORMATIONAL FLYER which I'm sharing in print and electronically. Please click on and share it with any and ALL of your interested contacts .   DC GOVERNMENT insists that NO DATE HAS BEEN SET for the closure of CCNV. Nonetheless, I suspect that DC Mayor Muriel Bowser MIGHT be developing plans to close the Federal City Shelter which is also known as the Community for Creative non-Violence or CCNV before the end of 2017, but probably not before the presidential inauguration following what I believe will be a Clinton/Sanders victory in November 2016. I've been asked by the administration not to speak "definitively" about the mayor's plans irrespective of what I see happening in the neighborhood. There is t...

No one who knows me can imagine me feeling a need to be validated by the system. After all, I began advocating in June 2006 -- less than two weeks before the first ever DC ICH meeting. I've been involved with this body for the entirety of its existence thus far, missing very few of the big meetings which used to be bi-monthly but are now quarterly. However, Kristy Greenwalt became its first director on April 28th, 2014 and is implementing a number of changes -- some for the purpose of bringing the ICH into compliance with new federal regulations. In February 2015 other advocates and I were informed of ICH positions that were being created or becoming open. I made it a point to apply -- which has proven to be a lengthy process. Fast-forward nine months to November 4th, 2015. On this day there was a nomination hearing in front of Council Chairman Phil Mendelson. I was one of 12 applicants who testified. While I'm not sure how many seats were open, I know that only three of the...

The following was a testimony I prepared for DC Mayor Muriel Bowser's Budget “hearing” on February 23 rd , 2015. It turns out that the event was actually a roundtable discussion with dozens of tables and hundreds of people brainstorming about what the mayor's budget priorities should be. That said, I never read my testimony to government personnel while being televised like I would at an actual hearing. No worries; as, you get to read it here and now. At the risk of evoking thoughts about my notorious love of women and/or inspiring a lesser charge of infatuation with Muriel Bowser (infatuation usually being associated with females), I'll say that the mayor has made yet another brownie point with me. Let's be clear: I came to DC on July 31 st , 2005; experienced the last 17 months of the Tony Williams administration; but, I never met the man. I met Adrian Fenty during the summer of 2006 while he was campaigning for mayor – having served as such from January 2007 t...

In recent weeks many people have asked my thoughts on DC Mayor Muriel Bowser who took office on January 2 nd , 2015. I tell them that, while I believe that she really wants to end homelessness, I worry that she doesn't have the right people informing the process. Like I told Mayor Bowser at the January 28 th homeless point-in-time count (one of at least five homeless/affordable housing events that I know she's attended since December 29 th , 2014), I like her appointment of Laura Zeilinger as director of the Dept. of Human Services (DHS) and a few other cabinet appointments – kristy Greenwalt as director of the Inter-agency Council on homelessness (ICH), Brenda Donald as deputy mayor of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Polly Donaldson as director of the Dept. of Housing and Community Development (DHCD). I also told her that, after the results of the 2014 count indicated that there had been a 13% increase in DC homelessness in a single year (going from 6,859 in '...

On November 18th, 2014 the DC Council presented me with a resolution declaring December 31st, 2014 to be Eric Jonathan Sheptock Day in the District of Columbia. During the presentation , people were all smiles as we exchanged pleasantries. However, I used the occasion to address some serious business too by letting mayor-elect Muriel Bowser know that I'd like to work with her to address homelessness -- through the creation of affordable housing and living-wage jobs for the homeless. I also made it clear that we have at least time-and-a-half as many homeless people as we had when city officials "committed" themselves to decreasing homelessness and that we, therefore, have our work cut out for us. I'm not sure what drove the DC Council to pick December 31st as Eric Jonathan Sheptock Day but that date is significant in several ways. It is 46 days before my 46th birthday which falls on 2/15 of 2(0)15. So there is a little numerical symmetry going on there. But more im...

So the republicans took the senate and kept the house, though they aren't veto-proof. President Obama is in for a lot of headaches during his final two years in office. But he brought in on himself with weak leadership and his non-agenda which consisted largely of reversing Bush-era policies: closing Guantanamo Prison, reversing middle- and upper-class tax cuts, ending war-mongering etc. While the repubs are indeed "the party of 'No'", the latest president and vice president to come from their numbers had an agenda -- right, wrong or indifferent. Outside of reversing Bush-era policies, Obama dreamed that he might eliminate partisan bickering and congressional dysfunction. While I won't discuss what I think are the reasons for his failure in this blog post, it is clear that he failed. I foresee Obama spending most or all of 2015 whining about the cards he's been dealt and most or all of 2016 putting down a literal American revolution. He'll feel li...

 I began blogging on June 21st, 2008 . Below is my 4th entry from July 11th of that year. It has to do with the then-disputed disposition of the historic Gales School by DC Government to a religious organization to be used as a homeless shelter and a July 10th, 2008 DC Council hearing to address the matter. To see video of the hearing (as I've become more tech savvy in the past 6 years) CLICK HERE and follow the instructions below: INSTRUCTIONS: 1 -- Scroll down to the last hearing for July 10th, 2008 and click "View meeting". 2 -- Go to 34 minutes and 40 seconds in the video. 3 -- Watch the next 3 testifiers: a snobbish, NIMBYistic ANC commissioner (my reason for resurrecting this post from 6 years ago) , myself and a local activist who supports the poor. HERE it is again. As it turns out, there is much tension between the Advisory Neighborhood Commissions , the business community and well-to-do people on the one hand and the poor and homeless on the...

BEHOLD: CCNV Shelter Historical Documents and "Promises to Keep" (a film of the direct action against Ron Reagan that created the shelter) . CCNV: Past, Present and Future (a website that was put together by my colleagues and I) Well, the CCNV (Community for Creative Non-Violence) Shelter Task Force has completed its mission. It was convened on October 8th, 2013 to compile data and come up with recommendations for the mayor and city council concerning the future of the shelter; and, it held its final meeting on July 8th, 2014. The task force came up with a list of 17 principles that should be adhered to as we consider the future of the property and the one-sixth of DC's homeless people which it holds. On July 14th, 2014 the DC Council held its final hearing before a two-month recess and presented a bill which contains those 17 principles and requires the mayor to develop a comprehensive plan for CCNV. (That bill is pasted at the end of this post.) But the wo...