Tick Tock Sheptock

I said late last year and earlier this year that, with 2016 being a seventh year, it would be a "Year of JOB-ilee" for the homeless; and, this is just what it is turning out to be. DC Government is hard at work implementing the piece of federal legislation known as the "Workforce Innovations and Opportunities Act" or "WIOA" which basically mandates that municipalities connect hard-to-employ people to jobs. That group, of course, includes the homeless. The website that bears my name and another website that my colleagues and I worked on with American University both speak to issues surrounding homeless employment. With the CCNV Shelter's future in limbo , much is being said about the need to connect its residents to employment -- a need that can be met even now and does not need to be connected to a shelter closure . But, while much is being said and done about homeless employment issues, there is at least one very important thing that is NOT being...

I maintain my assertion that BENEVOLENT DICTATORSHIP is the only form of governance that effectively helps the working poor . (Maybe after Bernie Sanders becomes Hillary Clinton's vice president , he'll spend his last two years on the planet creating Wall Street regulations and social reforms that eliminate the need for the working poor to obtain food stamps and rental assistance.) The extreme NIMBY -ism that is reaching a boiling point in reaction to DC Mayor Muriel Bowser's plan to replace the DC General Family Shelter stands as a testament to my first point. The NIMBY-ists have gotten downright ugly, going so far as to do a mass walk-out on the mayor's administration as the admin held one of its many meetings since 2/11 about he mayor's plan. (These people went so far as to attend a March 17th hearing about the family shelter plan which was held at City Hall and complained while there about having not been given the opportunity to voice their concerns. Go figur...

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...

DC Mayor Muriel Bowser has made dealing with homelessness her pet project. She and her administration have said thousands of times collectively both verbally and in print that she will make homelessness "rare, brief and non-recurring" . To be clear, I really, really, really want her to succeed. Only the high-five and the six-figure earning homeless service providers gain anything from the mayor failing in this respect. Neither homeless people nor government officials who can be held accountable for such failures stand to gain from another failed plan . So, I'm putting it on the public record even now that I will do everything within my power to help her succeed -- everything from publicizing and attending meetings where homeless people can give input as to how city officials can assist us at exiting homelessness to pointing out any and all perceived holes in the mayor's five-year plan to end homelessness . Mayor Bowser, whether she knows it or not, has created...

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...

(See SOLUTION below: SNOW STORM MOTORCADE) It's Monday, January 25 th , 2016 and the nation's capital is digging out from Winter Storm Jonas . I'm writing from Starbucks and was elated to find them open today. That brings me to what I knew would be one of the biggest problems for the homeless during the blizzard: lack of access to food . Though I don't have very much money, I have enough to buy a little bit of food if and when I can't make it to a place where free food is served or when such places are closed due to inclement weather. That said, I was able to purchase a cup of coffee, charge my phone and use the wi-fi this morning. Things are getting back to "normal" for Yours Truly, being as I don't ride the transit on most days. (Things still aren't back to normal for those who use the transit system daily.) In past years I've attended DC Government's winter plan meetings. As far as I know, it is only the homeless service prov...

Last edited on 1/20/16 Martin Luther King, Jr. whose work we celebrated on January 18th fought for the rights of Blacks and poor people from 1955 to 1968. Mitch Snyder (1943-1990) fought for the homeless (the poorest of the poor) from 1974 to 1990. I've been fighting for the homeless since mid-June 2006. Were you to compare our lives, you wouldn't find that we have a lot in common – probably nothing more than the fact that we all have fought for the poor – MLK, Jr and Mitch having died doing so. Though I make no effort to emulate either man , I see yet another thing that we all seem to have in common. In all three cases we seem to have a moment of clarity after about 10 years of advocacy and/or activism. Between 1963 and his assassination MLK, Jr. made multiple speeches in which he talked about the lack of progress in terms of how Black Americans are treated . During this same time he was at odds with Malcolm X and other movement leaders about the way forward – nam...