Lynn C. French is the senior policy advisor for Homelessness and Special Needs Housing in the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Children, Youth, Families and Elders.
She sat down with Street Sense reporter Amy Orndorf to discuss changes in the Community for Creative Non-Violence (CCNV) and Franklin School shelters as well as Washington’s futured plans for addressing homelessness.
D.C. announced earlier this year a ten-year plan to end homelessness. Can you tell me more about that plan?
The plan has three basic underlying principles. The first is to prevent homelessness by closing the front door to homelessness. In terms of spending, our fiscal years goes from October 1st to September 30th. Each new fiscal year we will be able to see more money put into prevention. The second underlying principal is that we recognize the lack of affordable housing, and we know that plays a major role in homelessness. We plan to build 6,000 units of affordable housing over the next 10 years. The third is we also recognize that we need to mainstream supportive services, so people can help (the homeless) work their way back to self-sufficiency.
About housing, where will these units be located?
This is money we are making available to people who want to partner with the city [and] who want to build affordable housing. We don’t want them to all be built in one place. We want them to be throughout the city. We just need people to come to us with deals.
Have you had anyone come to you interested?
Yes, we have. But you will have to wait for that to unfold. It takes a while to put together a development deal, and we will have some very good announcements as the deals are packaged.
Art there any milestones along the way that will make progress?
As we develop units, we certainly will announce them. We have subcommittees who have been working on discharge policies because we have found [people leaving shelters] don’t have the next place to live. So, we have a group that is finding places. We have a subcommittee on … addressing the very special needs of homeless families. We want to create environments that will allow [homeless young people] to be safe and secure and to grow into healthy adults.
When were these subcommittees created?
[They have] been working for about six months.
Is D.C. going to build more shelter space and transitional housing for families?
We are committed to maintaining shelter beds … [However] our focus really is on building places for people to live so that people can transition out of homelessness into self-sufficiency. I don’t think many people choose to be homeless.
What are the specific needs of homeless families?
I am a mother and I know that kids need safe and secure homes. They need to be in a secure environment. They need to feel secure in their homes. You don’t want a kid to have to go from school to school to school.
The federal city shelter was not designed for families and children should not be living [there]. We need to find a better place for families to live.
When will families be completely moved out of the Community for Creative Non-Violence Shelter?
By the end of the month … CCNV will not be admitting more families because we all agree that that is not a healthy environment for children.
Will there be a new shelter in Southwest anytime soon, now that the Randall School Shelter is gone?
I don’t believe that there will be a shelter per se in Southwest, because we are getting away from building more shelters. What there will be are probably SROs [Single Room Occupancies] and/or apartment units.
We announced several weeks ago that we will not close [Franklin school Shelter at 13th and K Northwest] until [Gales School Shelter] opens. We understand that there are a number of people who are oriented to downtown and we understand that there needs to be a presence in downtown.
