-
Notifications
You must be signed in to change notification settings - Fork 6
/
Copy path4_1985-11-16.txt
51 lines (31 loc) · 5.07 KB
/
4_1985-11-16.txt
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
TITLE: HOMELESS IN CAPITAL RESISTING MOVE
DATE: 1985-11-16
GRAPHIC: Photo of Mitch Snyder, head of Community for Creative Nonviolence (NYT)
PUBLICATION: The New York Times
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
SECTION: Section 1; Page 32, Column 1; National Desk
DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Nov. 15
EDITION:
DATE: 1985-11-16
SEARCH_ID: 4
Homeless men, led by a local activist, are resisting efforts by the Reagan Administration to move them to a temporary new shelter, and today an official said the Government might respond by shutting off the old shelter's utilities.
Residents of the old shelter chanted, ''Hell no, we won't go,'' as vans arrived to pick them up Thursday night. They have fortified the shelter with boards and barricades to resist possible eviction by the Federal Government.
Mitch Snyder, the local activist who heads the Community for Creative Nonviolence, which operates the old shelter, and C. McClain Haddow, chief of staff of the Department of Health and Human Services, which set up the new shelter, have expressed concern that a violent confrontation might occur.
Mr. Haddow said today that Mr. Snyder ''has organized the homeless people and gotten them to resist going to the new facility.'' But Mr. Haddow said that ''as soon as we get a night of cold weather'' the homeless people would go to the new shelter. If they still resisted, he said, ''we will make it a little more uncomfortable for them,'' perhaps by ''terminating utility services'' to the old shelter.
Residents Defend Snyder
Residents of the old shelter, at 425 Second Street N.W., defended Mr. Snyder against criticism and said they did not want to move to the Anacostia site. ''I'll sleep in that bush before I go to Anacostia,'' said one of the residents, D. C. Harrell.
Another, David Grants, said: ''Mitch gave us shelter when we were freezing. I'll go when he does, or I'll freeze with him.''
The dispute, which has led to a lawsuit against the Government, is unlikely to be resolved any time soon and has become a source of annoyance and embarrassment to Federal officials.
The 600-bed temporary shelter opened Thursday night, but only 41 men slept there, according to Boyd Smith, director of the facility. By contrast, 603 homeless people remained at the old shelter near Capitol Hill.
Complaint About Location
Federal officials said they would shut down the old shelter in a few weeks after allowing the residents to move to the new facility in southeast Washington, across the Anacostia River. They said the new facility was cleaner and safer than the old one.
But the homeless people said the new shelter was in a remote location, and that they were frightened by the prospect of being uprooted from the place that has been their home for months.
In August, Judge Charles R. Richey ruled in Federal District Court that the Government could close the old shelter and transfer its residents to other facilities, ''but only after devising appropriate interim and long-range plans to eliminate homelessness in the nation's capital.''
Judge Richey said he expected that ''the captains of industry, commerce, banking, hospitals, skilled nursing homes and other health care providers, and the medical, psychiatric and legal professions will all be asked and urged in the strongest possible terms to find and implement a solution to this disgraceful problem.''
''No more delay can be tolerated in the face of this human misery,'' he wrote, describing the old shelter as ''dilapidated, rat- and vermin-infested.''
The Reagan Administration has asked the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to set aside Judge Richey's order.
Snyder's Hunger Strike
Last fall Mr. Snyder staged a 51-day fast to protest the Administration's policies toward the homeless. He ended the fast after Margaret M. Heckler, Secretary of Health and Human Services, issued a statement, at the request of President Reagan, saying that ''the Federal Government will rehabilitate'' the old shelter to create ''a model physical shelter'' for the homeless, with lockers, laundry room and kitchen facilities.
But now Administration officials and Justice Department attorneys say the Secretary's commitment was not legally binding or enforceable because there was no contract or statutory obligation. In addition, Administration officials said Mr. Snyder would not permit Government workers to enter the old shelter to make repairs.
Mr. Smith, the director of the new shelter, said it would be closed by April 30 and would be replaced with 5 to 10 smaller shelters around the city. The Anacostia shelter has a staff of 80 people, including employees of the Veterans Administration, the Social Security Administration and the Public Health Service, Mr. Smith said, Mr. Snyder said that a fourth to a third of the residents of the old shelter were elderly, and that roughly half were physically or mentally disabled.
If the Administration tries to evict residents of the old shelter, Mr. Snyder said, the Community for Creative Nonviolence will ask Judge Richey to block the move on the ground that the Government was flouting his order. Federal officials said no date had been set for closing the old shelter.