Tick Tock Sheptock

on April 29 th (my late father's 83 rd birthday) Street Sense did a screening of three short films it made about DC homelessness. There will be a second screening on August 26 th (my living mother's 78 th birthday). I was in the third film giving my critical view of DC Government's ostensible efforts to end homelessness in the nation's capital. I mentioned the failed 10-year plan as well as the reluctance of mayors Fenty and Gray to assist able-bodied homeless people at acquiring living-wage jobs – the latter point having also been reiterated by others in the film. During the Q & A that followed, I gave a slightly wordy lead-in before asking my question. I told people that I like to ask the hard, challenging questions and that I have a little bit of a mean streak. Some indiscernible mumbles followed. I'm guessing some people disagreed with my use of the phrase “a little bit”. If so, they have a point. I referenced a DC preacher who quoted Frederic...

The fact of the matter is that, if we can't have conversation about contentious but important issues, then we can't come to agreement on those issues and they'll always be contentious. So I'll touch on a few of those issues here with a focus on police shootings of unarmed Black men. I hope this blog post gets people talking more productively about these issues and brings us closer to resolving them. I hope that our governments will begin to proactively reverse the damage done to poor people in general and to Blacks in particular or that poor people will start a revolution which ends with them taking more than they would have gotten through civil reparation “RAP-arations”. Simply put, anyone who tells those who are reacting to the violent police shootings and deadly beatings of unarmed people that they should remain calm and just vent on social media is not only out of touch with reality but also grossly illogical. When the police who have sworn to “serve and pro...

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 ...

     Once again the administration of DC Mayor Muriel Elizabeth Bowser has impressed me. My fear is that, if they continue along their current trajectory of doing what poor and homeless DC residents need done in order to rejoin the work force and obtain housing, I might lose my touch when it comes to being confrontational with government officials. For eight and a half years (June 2006 thru December 2014) I found myself knocking heads with city officials from three administrations and with two mayors (having never met Tony Williams when he was mayor -- January 1999 to January 2007).      I'm left to wonder if "Mayor M.E." is somehow on the receiving end of a telepathic connection between her and myself, with me unwittingly feeding her my thoughts. Make no mistake: I've spoken and written to her on a few occasions. However, her administration is doing more of what I hoped for than I've even articulated to this latest turn...

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...

Quite frankly, I think that the Bowser administration is doing better than the council (headed by Phil Mendelson) when it comes to addressing homelessness. Muriel Bowser hit the ground running when she took office. She used Miriams's Kitchen as a backdrop when announcing her cabinet appointments for positions that are related to homelessness. (Oddly enough, “Homeless Czar(ina)” Kristy Greenwalt wasn't present.) Since taking office, the mayor has moved Deborah Carroll from being interim director of the Department of Human Services (DHS) to being director of the Department Of Employment Services (DOES). I'm holding out hope that Ms. Carroll, who has already responded well to my request for a meeting about homeless employment, will continue to please me by forcing a continuous and robust public conversation around this topic and will impress me with what she actually “DOES”. While I won't completely rehash all of the compliments that I gave Mayor Bowser in the prev...

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 '...