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...

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...

Let's start with a little word smithing. “Administrato-prudence” (as opposed to “Jurisprudence”): The pragmatic sum or totality of the efforts of an administration as indicated by empirical evidence. How a combination of laws, policies and administrative efforts actually improve or worsen the lives of that administration's constituents. OK. Now that we have a working definition for "administrato-prudence", we can proceed with a discourse on DC's efforts to end homelessness, efforts that began [in earnest?] in 2004 and were supposed to end homelessness in the Capital by December 31 st , 2014. We had 7,298 homeless people onJanuary 28th, 2015 – a drop of 450 or 5.8% from the previous year. The city didn't end homelessness by the set date; however, the story doesn't end there – fortunately. During the quarterly meeting of the DC Inter-agency Council on Homelessness (ICH) on June 2 nd , 2015 Tom Fredericksen of The Community Part...

It's clear to anyone that's paying attention that DC mayor Muriel Bowser and her administration are Hell- (or shall I say “Heaven”???) bent on ending homelessness in the capital of the most poerful (though no longer the wealthiest) nation on Earth. I won't bother speculating (here and now, anyway) as to whether it's a “girl power” issue (which I'm not adverse to), a genuine concern for the homeless, a matter of bowing to public and media pressure or a matter of competing with the DC Council to deal with a clossal failure that has become the scourge of DC Government (with them having “tried” for over 10 years to end homelessness while it only increased). However, I will address my gravest concern and present a real solution. “Homeless Czar(ina)” and ICH Director Kristy Greenwalt has gone on the record multiple times as realizing that there are systems that fall outside of the homeless services continuum and create homelessness. She realizes that her purview and ...

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 '...