Outlaws are this morning's theme. First comes WJLA's stunning allegation that a D.C. Police sergeant repeatedly raped a prostitute. The rapes allegedly began in February after the woman called 911 for being illegally evicted. The officially is currently on desk duty:
"A woman says she was raped several times by a District police officer who [...]
Inside D.C. General's family shelter, the staff had a term for rooms deemed uninhabitable: "off line." This designation was reserved for the worst of the worst—rooms without working heat or overrun by mold or peeling paint or infested with roaches. The off-line label extended even to rooms that no one thought to convert to living [...]
On the early morning of Feb. 9, a newborn baby was found unconscious at D.C. General's family shelter. The baby was pronounced dead at an area hospital. D.C. Police reported that there was no signs of trauma and that the baby had been found in a bassinet.
Another city agency apparently has a different take on [...]
The contractor charged with running the city's main shelter for homeless families has been fired.
Ward 6 Councilmember Tommy Wells tells City Desk that Families Forward Inc. will lose their contract by month's end to operate the shelter, which is located on the D.C. General campus.
Wells says that Clarence Carter, director of the Department of Human [...]
Just about everyone who has entered D.C. General's family shelter has complained about the peeling paint and mold in the stairwells. The complaints are perhaps second to complaints about the food, slow case management, and bizarre staff-resident interactions. What we were wondering: Has any District agency inspected the property and attempted to abate the peeling [...]
Councilmember Tommy Wells, who chairs the Committee on Human Services, announced today that he will hold an oversight hearing to review homeless shelter operations. The hearing is set for March 31 at 10 a.m. The press release on the hearing states:
"The purpose of this Roundtable is to provide an opportunity for the Council and public [...]
Families Forward, Inc., the nonprofit that runs the D.C. General family shelter, has admitted in a letter to Mayor Adrian Fenty that it has fired employees for inappropriate contact with female residents.
The allegations first came to light yesterday when we reported the concerns of two female residents who alleged that they had been propositioned by [...]
The entity that manages the shelter at D.C. General is called Families Forward, Inc. The organization, based at 1012 14th St. NW Suite 105, boasts that it operates a full-service facility manned round-the-clock by staff. In other words, it runs the Mandarin Oriental of homeless shelters:
"Families receive 24-hour services, which include shelter, meals, case management, [...]
P.H., a resident of the shelter at D.C. General, had raised enough complaints and gotten nowhere. So yesterday morning she decided to e-mail Mayor Adrian Fenty about the living conditions there. The letter spanned six long, single-spaced paragraphs. She spared no detail.
"I wanted my voice to be heard," P.H. tells City Desk. "I could not [...]
A newborn was found unconscious at the D.C. General family shelter on the morning of Feb. 9. The baby girl was rushed to Children's Hospital where she was pronounced dead.
Beverly Fields, the spokesperson for the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, tells City Desk that the cause and manner of the child's death are still [...]
Willie Richbow Jr., 19, moved into D.C. General with his mother and his two sisters on Sept. 30. They could have been an easy case, a family that didn't need to log months in an activity room.
His family was not chronically homeless or saddled with drug and mental health issues. Richbow and his kin had [...]
In light of the overcrowded mess going on at D.C. General's emergency shelter for families, I thought I should call Robert Egger. As founder and president of DC Central Kitchen, Egger is unmatched as this city's most forward-thinking authority on homeless issues.
Years ago, Egger had approached city officials about moving away from sheltering homeless individuals [...]
D.C. General, the city's long-shuttered hospital of last resort, is one facility that's used to being overused. In its pre-gentrification heyday, its emergency room swelled with indigent residents in need of care.
Though it's no longer providing ER services, things have scarcely changed at D.C. General, which now serves as a shelter for homeless D.C. families. [...]
Last night, there were 163 families staying at the D.C. General emergency shelter. At that same night last year, there were 79 families.
On this MLK Day, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty has declared that some 30,000 residents are doing volunteer work across the District. Four hundred of those volunteers are passing out food and clothing to the neediest outside MLK Library. But one thing the city needs is affordable housing for homeless families.
The latest report on homeless families [...]
