Tick Tock Sheptock

The following is a testimony that I, Eric Jonathan Sheptock, plan to read at multiple hearings during the budget season for FY18. Dear Chairperson, In late 2012 I was one of several people who met with Chapman Todd to discuss the future of the then-1,350-bed CCNV Shelter. On January 13th, 2013 I sent a FOIA request to the feds in order to obtain information about the property transfer from the feds and the accompanying covenant. That led to the 6/27/13 CCNV hearing and a nine-month long task force from October 2013 to July 2014. Other advocates were part of the effort and dozens of well-paid city officials as well as non-profit employees attended the many task force meetings. In July 2014 the DC Council (which Muriel Bowser was part of) passed a law that set forth the 17 guiding principles that a mayor would have to adhere to if he or she were to close the current site of the CCNV/Federal City Shelter. Congress passed it in December 2014. This law, while it ALLOWS the sittin...

A Howard University Sociology professor whose Marxist study group I was part of (though I'v never been a university student) used to say: "There are 20 years that don't make a day ; then, there's that day that makes 20 years  [worth of effort]". When about a dozen men -- including myself -- began advocating against the closure of the Franklin School Shelter in June 2006, one of our arguments was that Franklin's location in downtown and near many public transportation options made it a perfect location for the working homeless to get to and from work. Additionally, my personal efforts to get city officials to address the employment challenges of homeless people are well-documented on-line as far back as mid-2009 -- with similarly documented efforts by my advocacy colleagues going back about that far as well. I now have some great news: DC Government has heard our cries and is beginning to take action!!! As you may well know by now, Obama signed the Wo...

If we're going to get there anyway, we may as well get there in a GOOD way. All of us can relate to this scenario: Someone asks that another do something for them; gets turned down; gets upset and gets what they originally asked for. It's enough to make you wonder: Why didn't the latter person grant the request BEFORE the temper tantrum ??? Sadly, this scenario plays itself out time and time again in the relationship between government and the public they are supposed to be serving. Advocates for various causes have, in times past, developed detailed agendas that included stepping up the pressure on government if and when government failed to make good on the requests of the people immediately following the first time that a request was made. They then transition from making a request at a calm meeting with a few advocates and politicians present into staging large rallies or protests at which the advocates make demands to the politicians and might create bad pr...

It's wonderful that DC now has a mayor who is fully committed to making homelessness “rare, brief and non-recurring” . In 2003 and 2004 Tony Williams oversaw the creation of a 10-year plan to end homelessness – a plan that was discarded after three years. Adrian Fenty oversaw the creation of Permanent Supportive Housing for the elderly and disabled homeless. Vince Gray committed to addressing homelessness in the waning months of his administration, following the abduction of 8-year old Relisha Rudd from the family Shelter in March of 2014. In the meantime, the city has gone from having 5,757 homeless people in January of 2007 to having approximately 8,000 homeless people in DC proper now -- which shouldn't be confused with the 12,000 in DC Metro. (The foot count of DC's homeless wasn't done this year due to Snowstorm Jonas “Snowzilla”.) Howbeit, Mayor Muriel Bowser might just be the one to reverse the trend – though not without the help of the DC Council. Mayor...

Last updated on 2/5/16 Since I originally wrote the following blog post, DC Government has promised to meet with the homeless residents of the CCNV Shelter so as to discuss both its and their futures. See THIS ANNOUNCEMENT which I've begun to circulate at the shelter.   ************************* Some time ago a certain DAVID who works for The Community Partnership for the Prevention of Homelessness (TCP) which oversees some of the city's shelters and homeless services gave a presentation about Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH). I Noticed that David only spoke of the money that the city would save and said nothing about caring for his homeless clients and I politely confronted David during public comments. Some time later I spoke to Inter-agency Council on Homelessness director KRISTY GREENWALT about it. KRISTY GREENWALT said: “Ya gotta meet people where they're at.....whatever brings them to the table” . Let's hold her to HER STATED PRINCIPLE as it pe...

This blog post will go to DC Government's Dept. of Employment Services (DOES). I will try and schedule a meeting with them so that I can adequately represent their newest efforts when I speak to the homeless and as my colleagues and I gather information from them about their employment challenges. The following represents a somewhat coincidental coming together of the advocacy efforts of myself and my colleagues on the one hand and DC Government on the other hand – a closing of the gap.  FAIR WARNING: Some of the initiatives are occasion for gut-wrenching laughter..... On January 12 th , 2016 I attended an ICH (Inter-agency Council on Homelessness) Executive Committee meeting where a presentation was given by Candace Nelson of DOES about what the department is doing to assist homeless people. She started out by indicating that in 2015 there were 191 people who identified as homeless who were served by DOES' American Jobs Center (AJC) and that 585 homeless people w...

Washington, DC's Inter-agency Council on Homelessness (ICH) which is headed by Kristy Greenwalt issued its five-year plan (2015-2020) around June 2015 – 11 months after legislation was passed that gives Mayor Muriel Bowser carte blanche to do as she chooses with the CCNV (Community for Creative Non-Violence) Shelter and its 1,350 residents. The plan, as it turns out, says a lot of what my fellow advocates and I have been saying for many years now. This 100-page report has a number of elements that I really like; however, it's missing some very important elements – in my opinion anyway. For what it's worth to you, what IS there is good. It stands to reason that this highly redundant report would only be 30 pages or so if everything were mentioned once, though it might grow again to 40 or 50 pages if we were to add what else I believe belongs in it. In the spirit of full disclosure, I'll say that I had a particular focus when applying for my current position on t...

As recently as 2005 there were many American activists calling for class war. That obviously didn't go anywhere. Many people, like the homeless and the child laborers of the world, are too busy fighting for their daily sustenance to involve themselves in a class war where they'd fight for full systemic change. Therefore, homelessness and extreme poverty persist. Add to that the fact that the non-profit/industrial complex has evolved to a point where many of the non-profits that ostensibly are pushing for solutions to homelessness and/or extreme poverty are now receiving government funding from a capitalist system. With capitalism being a system that permeates the world, none of the people who benefit from this exploitative system are incentivized to accommodate the less fortunate – unless and until the poor arise. These beneficiaries include obvious entities such as government and the business community as well as the not-so-obvious entities like non-profits that serve th...

On December 6 th , 2015 I spoke at St. Luke's Episcopal Church in DC about the possible closure of the CCNV Shelter c. 2018 and the need to connect able-bodied homeless people to living-wage jobs. I told them about a federal effort to connect homeless people to employment in 1988. That effort ended with about half of the homeless people who took advantage of the program obtaining employment and half of THAT group remaining employed for at least 13 weeks. All in all, a quarter of the homeless people who sought employment through this program remained employed for at least a quarter of a year. 25% is a failing grade anywhere in the world (except the baseball stadium). No robust effort to get homeless people working has been made by the feds in the last 27 years – when Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik were in diapers and I was just months into my eventual six-year tenure as a tractor driver (similar to an airport luggage train but used to haul hospital freight) at Shands Hospit...