But in reading emails obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, city workers agonized over the capacity problem throughout this hypothermia season. The emails swerve between desperation and confusion, from one crisis to the next. They show Department of Human Services administrators working diligently to fix the impossible: To find space for the city's too many homeless families.

On December 7, Fred Swan, a DHS administrator, wrote up his concerns over the capacity problem. He emailed then-DHS Director Clarence Carter and others:

"Based on the current pace we are housing families and the capacity issue we are facing at DC General tonight, we need to step up the pace considerably to ensure we have enough capacity as we do not want to leave any priority one families out in the cold. I know everyone is doing all they can to place families as quickly as possible and there are several barriers (i.e. availability of 3-bedroom units and families declining to take units in our inventory). However we still need to work through these issues to get where we need to be capacity wise."

Swan goes on to write about the lack of affordable housing problem—and the reason some families rejected apartments:

"In regards to the exit assistance program I know a number of families are refusing our units because of price. Can we find some other cheaper units via the dchousingsearch.org website. Also, since families will have 12-months to get prepared to be on their own financially can't they accept the units we currently have and work with case management to identify cheaper units that relocate to after 12-months? They would be able to get their security deposit back at the end of the 12-months and if needed we could provide some assistance with first months rent."

The following night, Michele Salters, another homeless services administrator with the Community Partnership for the Prevention of Homelessness, wrote Swan that two families left D.C. General instead of the planned four families. This was a problem.

D.C. General was still basically full. They might have to start using hallways and play rooms to house families, Salters noted in her email: "If we have after hours calls tonight that meet criteria for placement we will be using common areas."

Swan replied: "Hopefully we will not have to place anyone tonight."

The capacity issue was an every day issue. Weekends could be especially rough. On December 17, Swan wrote: "Just wanted to get an update on how we are set for the weekend with families. There will be alerts on Saturday and Sunday as well as today so I wanted to see where we are at with housing, shelter capacity, reserve units and DC General and apartments that we have keys for. Let me know."

In a little more than an hour, Salters replied: "We will have one vacancy today at DC General that will probably be filled by the Intake center. I have two furnished apartment units we can use over the weekend if needed. There may be other moveouts today that I am not aware of yet so I will update as I get more information."

A month later, on January 18, Scott McNeilly of the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless wrote Swan an urgent message regarding activities at the Virginia Williams Resource Center, the place families go when they need shelter.

McNeilly wrote:

"There still seems to be a problem with the message that staff at Virginia Williams is conveying to emergency shelter applicants. I just a call from a woman who called me from VWFRC. She stayed last night with her six year old son at the Motel 6 on New York Avenue but has spent all of her money. (She had to beg the bus driver to let her get on for free to get to VWFRC). [She] said that a worker came out to the waiting room where four or five families were waiting and said that because she is the only intake worker who has arrived at work it will take her a long time to get to everyone. According to Ms. (name redacted), the worker then went on to say that even if she is able to get to everyone, there are no shelter spaces so it is unlikely everyone will be placed. The worker then said that people should try to find a place with friends or family. [She] said that she has no one she can stay with which is why she's at VWFRC.

While I was writing this, I received a second call from another woman at VWFRC who confirmed that staff came out and announced that there is no space in the shelter and that applicants should call back tomorrow and the next day to see if there is any space.

This needs to be fixed."

Three minutes later, Swan forwarded the email to Salters and wrote: "FYI Are they really saying this?"

Swan labeled the email's importance as "High."

Throughout this hypothermia season, the District has managed to keep D.C. General's emergency family shelter from becoming overcrowded. The good news is there aren't families sleeping in hallways next to trash cans or enduring sleepless nights in the cafeteria (see here, here, and here). D.C. General has been held at a capacity of 150 families or so—down from last year's high of 200 families.

And yet the number of homeless families hasn't gone down. It turns out city administrators have come up with an expensive solution to D.C. General's limited space: The city has spent tens of thousands of dollars putting homeless families up at the refurbished Comfort Inn on New York Avenue.

Ashley Edwards, a sales coordinator at the Comfort Inn, estimates that at least 70 homeless families have stayed at the hotel since January. According to a mother who currently resides at the hotel and has seen her bill, the city is spending $89 per day on each family. She and her children have been staying at the hotel for more than a month. (Another mother says she was told her bill comes to $119 per day).

The number of families residing at the hotel could be a lot higher than 70. In an earlier interview, Edwards had estimated that closer to 140 homeless families had stayed there.

D.C.'s Department of Human Services, despite repeated requests, couldn't say just how many families had stayed at the Comfort Inn. "I don't know," explains Fred Swan, head of the Family Services Administration with the city's Department of Human Services. "The need could be 20 one day, 25 the next. It changes every day just about."

Swan later says the number of homeless families residing at the Comfort Inn just wasn't public information. "We don't give that information out," he says. A few days later, he says he thinks the 120 figure "seems kind of high to me." But since he wouldn't give an actual number of his own, it's hard to know what to make of that.

The Comfort Inn provides for the families like any other hotel guests. In the morning, they receive a free continental breakfast of sugar cereals and bland muffins. Families can also use the hotel chain's fitness room and free WiFi. In their rooms, they could watch free cable on flat-screen televisions.

But homeless mothers tell City Desk life at the Comfort Inn lacked the one thing they desperately needed: A good case worker to help them find housing.

Advocates had argued for two years that the city's shelter capacity wasn't enough to meet demand. This past fall, Ward 4 Councilmember Muriel Bowser quashed the city's plan to convert a building on Spring Road into a shelter. The costs would have been minimal; city officials stated the building just needed showers installed. Instead of adding capacity, the D.C. Council spent months debating a stronger residency requirement for those seeking shelter. Of course, the consequences were brutal.

At the Comfort Inn, mothers say District officials spent the majority of time telling them they weren't like other hotel guests. In a mid-February meeting at the hotel, all the families were told they could not have guests, they could only eat meals in their rooms, and they could not visit other guests.

"We can't even go in the lobby basically," says current Comfort Inn resident Tasha Coleman, 20, who came to the hotel with a nine-month-old boy. She says she had previously slept outside a church. "When we go to breakfast, we have to show our keys. They tell us we can't go in the lobby to get a cup of coffee."

"If you do want visitors, you had to meet them off the property," recalls Teneisha Davall, 25, a mother of three and who stayed at the Inn for a month. "It just felt like they had no respect for us. We had nowhere to go. We were not a priority to [the Comfort Inn staff]. They just brushed us off."

That meeting was essentially the most attention these mother received at the Inn.The mothers say they wanted help finding apartments. Both complain they haven't gotten the help. "It's frustrating," one says. "You don't know who to talk to."

Coleman says she's been told by her case worker that "there's nothing they can do. You just have to wait to be placed in D.C. General. And then once at D.C. General, you go from there. Coleman has been living at the Comfort Inn since January 8.

A few weeks after the meeting, the mothers finally got some attention from the city. They were called and told they were being moved temporarily across New York Avenue to the Budget Motor Inn. The Comfort Inn needed to make way for some conventioneers. One mother says she was given 20 minutes notice to pack up everything she owns. Another got an hour.

Both say they woke up at the Budget Motor Inn to police making drug busts. They were shuttled back to the Comfort Inn that day. In the rush to get everyone back across the street, the hotel was still a mess. Davall says she saw bloody tissues in the hallway, alcohol in the stairwell, and black panties and black boxers stuffed between the wall and vending machine.

Davall says soon after, she and her three kids noticed the room's phone was broken. The Inn never fixed it. Later, her 1-year-old daughter dropped her sippy cup. Davall says when she reached down to pick it up, she noticed a new addition to the room: a used condom under the bed.

"It was disgusting. I don't even know if the sheets were ever changed to be perfectly honest," Davall says.

*photo of New York Ave. Comfort Inn courtesy of Comfort Inn.

Last week, the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless reported that a D.C. Child and Family Services Agency (CFSA) social worker had attempted to force a homeless mother to make a brutal choice: Either get on a bus out of town or risk having your three children put in fostercare. City Desk followed up on the story and interviewed the mother's Legal Clinic attorney who said she directly heard the ultimatum from the social worker:

Julie Broas [the Legal Clinic attorney]  recalls the social worker explaining: "Because she is not being placed in a shelter, therefore she is unable to provide a safe place for her children to stay. If she does not agree to accept the arrangement that has been made for her [the bus out of town], we will be forced to take her children away from her."

City workers put "tremendous pressure" on her to get on the bus, the lawyer explains. "The social worker was pacing saying 'we've got to go right now. She has to make this choice.'" This was at 4:30 p.m. The bus wasn't leaving until roughly 11 that night.

Broas requested an emergency hearing on the city's refusal to provide this District family shelter during hypothermic conditions. Based on the mother's original documents that she had been trying to show the intake workers for days, the Department of Human Services finally agreed that the family had a right to shelter.

The mother's plight suggested the District workers had sunk to a new low in how they treat homeless families. Last year, families suffered through massive overcrowding and horrible conditions at D.C. General. I wanted to hear from CFSA. Did they in fact offer this mother a bus ride out of town or the loss of her children?

Mindy Good, CFSA's spokesperson, sent back a lengthy reply essentially denying the Legal Clinic's overall representation of events. But Good doesn't explicitly state that the social worker never threatened to place the mother's children in fostercare.

Good writes:

"CFSA is well aware of the child abuse/neglect laws since they guide our daily work. Neither poverty nor homelessness alone is grounds for removal of children. Parents have rights. At the same time, neither poverty nor homelessness eliminates parental responsibility to protect, shelter, feed, and clothe children and to fulfill their educational and health needs. This may mean parents need to draw on whatever personal means they have while also seeking public, charitable, or other services. That’s O.K. as long as parents continue to act in the best interests of their children—for example, taking advantage of services available and doing everything necessary to receive the services.

The perspective in the blog came from someone who came into the situation after other services providers had been working with the family for many weeks and CFSA had been involved for several hours. It is our understanding that the family had gotten help from the District. Remarks attributed to CFSA are an overly strong and misleading interpretation taken out of context. In fact, our social worker discussed with the parent several options other service providers had offered. The parent needed to choose one in order to take care of her children.

Most child welfare cases involve multiple service providers, so CFSA social workers are used to collaborating with others. Finger pointing and animosity waste time better spent on working together to help children and families in need."

Do you see in this any denial that the social worker offered the bus ride out of town or the removal of the mother's children? The agency seems more rankled by the tone of the Legal Clinic—and our—blog posts.

Patricia Mullahy Fugere, Executive Director of the Legal Clinic, stands by her staff's representations, and issues her own harsh assessment of CFSA's explanation. Fugere writes via e-mail:

"While we can not speak to what other services may have been offered to our client before the Legal Clinic got involved, by the time that Julie connected with the client at VWFRC, the only option presented was to accept the bus tickets to another state, or lose her children to the CFSA worker.  Given that there was a hypothermic alert that night and the right to shelter was in effect, Julie was incredulous that this ultimatum was on the table.  She specifically repeated these options to the CFSA worker, who confirmed her understanding.

If 'taking advantage of services available and doing everything necessary to receive the services' requires getting on a bus and traveling 1,000 miles away to get into shelter, then we have a very broken child welfare system."

Photo of a Greyhound bus used with an Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported Creative Commons license

Why does the city's policy towards the homeless always seem to toggle between shitty shelters and hotels?

WaPo writes that hotel stays aren't something the District wants to readily admit:

"For its part, though, Human Services played down the hotel placements, apparently intent on keeping them a tool of last resort.

In an interview, Fred Swann, head of DHS's Family Services Administration, stressed that hotel placements are typically made by charity groups and that the city hasn't embarked on any new policy.

Neither Swann nor DHS spokesman Reggie Sanders could say how many families have been given hotel accommodations."

Still, as of Jan. 30, the D.C. General shelter wasn't at capacity. There were 145 units for 133 families including 232 children.

Fraidin testified before the D.C. Council about his findings on Nov. 8 [PDF]. While much if not all of the debate over homeless services has concerned Wells' residency-requirement bill, which is slated for a vote today, the shelter's cruddy, crowded conditions have not gone away. Wells told the Washington Post recently that the D.C. General campus has become a dumping ground.

Fraidin says that after making those 10 visits this past summer, he has come to the conclusion that the city should stop putting families in D.C. General. "There are significant concerns that relate to food, health, safety, privacy and social development. A good communal shelter is a bad place for kids. This particular institution has significant problems," he says in an interview with City Desk.

Fraidin revealed his findings during the November hearing. He stated:

For example, a 10-year old boy, who said he likes school and that his favorite subject is math, expressed worry that there is no place for him to do his homework at D.C. General.  The same little boy said he can’t have his school friends over, because he lives in the shelter, and can’t play with other children who live in the shelter because they always have to be quiet and are not allowed to visit in each other’s rooms.

The mother of two girls said “all of the kids who live here are afraid, and they are suffering.  They have to be quiet all the time, they can’t play in the hallways, but it is not safe to play outside with all the smoking and drinking and prison discharges going on.”

Children and parents pointed out that because there is no outdoor play area, outside play is limited to bare dirt and gravel.

And here's more from Fraidin:

Another parent said “it would be better if they had at least one bathtub on each floor for children that are not old enough to get in the shower.  Right now, residents must wash younger children in the bathroom sinks.”

Many residents said they simply cannot eat the food provided at the shelter.  One woman said she and her daughters all got food poisoning during the first week they lived there.

Many children are kept in the rooms to avoid residents who are smoking, drinking, cursing, fighting, and using drugs.

Numerous people confirmed that elevators are frequently out of service.  One woman told me that she carried her baby – in his stroller — up five flights of stairs.  Her friend said “It’s lucky I was there that time, so I could carry her groceries for her.”  Another woman said a mother and child had been caught in a broken elevator for 30 or 45 minutes.

The mother of three little children said the shelter has mice, flies, and scabies, even though she is “always cleaning.”  Another mother said her “one-year old baby’s hand was caught in a snap trap.”

In one interview, I learned that a family had been separated due to conditions at the shelter.  The heat in the shelter was so severe that one woman brought her child to a grandmother’s house, where the child had been living without her mother.

Scabies? Food poisoning? Broken elevators? Fraidin concluded his testimony with a critique of Wells' homeless legislation. The bill would relax restrictions on the types of shelter options for homeless families. In other words, it could produce more D.C. Generals. Fraidin testified:

Budget pressures are hard to resist in these times. The voices of children and parents at D.C. General, however, make it clear that removing the apartment-style requirement will harm children.  We know that insufficient attention to children’s needs actually costs money in the long run, while costing the children a chance at a productive and happy life.  Many policy questions are susceptible of multiple understandings and a range of reasonable choices.  On this one, however, there is no way to argue that more communal care will be good for children.  The children and parents whom we met speak with one voice, which says that we should move toward closing D.C. General, rather than housing more and more children in institutions.

In the past two years, two infants died at D.C. General. Last year, it became known for its mismanagement and rough conditions (no air condition on certain floors, peeling paint, mold, and food that caused some kids to have to go to a working hospital). On April 2, Mayor Adrian Fenty announced that the shelter's management would be fired.

"Rather than proposing to address these causes of the current shelter crisis, Mr. Wells instead proposed—now on a permanent basis—to weaken the District’s commitment to life-saving hypothermia shelter. Eliminating the requirement for apartment-style shelter for families and imposing onerous verification requirements in order for DC residents to access life-saving shelter and services will likely have grave consequences this winter. Though we haven’t yet seen the language of the permanent bill, as we’ve heard it described the legislation still puts District residents in harm’s way…based on assumptions that are rooted in tenuous and conflicting numbers about who seeks—and who is served in—DC’s shelters."

City Desk is waiting for a call back from Wells. What I want to know is: Why is he spending all this time on this bill? What about fixing D.C. General or providing more alternatives for homeless families? The District still hasn't figured out a proper place to house homeless families.

Two years ago, Gibson, 26, lost his steady job. Ever since, he hasn't been able to find stable employment. His savings ran out. He and his family had to leave their apartment. For a time, they crashed with family and friends. But Gibson says a lot of his family were living in subsidized housing with occupant restrictions. He says his family had been warned against letting in extra tenants. So, in June, Gibson was forced to move his family into their 1996 Chevy Suburban.

Nearly a month ago, Gibson filed a request for emergency shelter at the Virginia Williams Family Resource Center. He says he arrived at the center at 9 a.m. He didn't get assistance until nearly 5 p.m. Even then, the case worker, Gibson says, informed him that the D.C. General emergency shelter for families was full. His family would just have to wait. From June 9 to June 29, Gibson says that meant sleeping in the Suburban.

Sometimes, Gibson parked the Suburban outside family members' homes. Other nights, they parked in hotel lots. When the Suburban got too hot, he'd turn on the AC for a few minutes. When the cool air dissipated, they'd all roll the windows down. "It was uncomfortable," he says. "I wasn't getting too much sleep." Sometimes, he'd wake up and find himself scanning the area for would-be carjackers.

During the day, Gibson says the family took showers at family members' homes and ate meals at his girlfriend's mother's house. He'd drive around looking for work. At sundown, they had to return to the Suburban. The kids would lay across the back seat.

"Every night was just about the same–I couldn't sleep," Gibson says. "Some nights the kids would be crying. I can't even explain it. It was just horrible."

When Gibson and his family finally moved into the D.C. General shelter, it wasn't much of a relief. In fact, the Suburban had one advantage over the shelter: it had working AC.

Gibson says once his family moved into a room at D.C. General, the staff installed an air conditioner. But there was just one problem: the AC plug didn't work with the room's electrical outlets. So it just sat in the window. At least on two occasions, Gibson says he had to rush his girlfriend to the hospital because her "asthma was acting up." [City Desk first reported the AC issue in June].

The AC still hasn't been fixed. "Every day, they telling me 'we're going to get your AC working today,'" Gibson says.

Instead, Gibson has two fans. "But it just circulates hot air," he says.

*photo taken by another D.C. General resident suffering with a similar non-working AC unit.

There may be a good reason why residents like McCormick haven't come close to signing a lease or even touring a rental unit with his three children. The Department of Human Services does not have the funds to house all the families currently staying at the family shelter. One DHS document suggests the department may be able to house less than 50 percent of the 124 families by the end of the fiscal year.

But Fred Swan of DHS says that families residing at D.C. General may not even qualify for the supportive housing program.  "We don't use those resources to [just] house those families at D.C. General," he says.  "It's used to house our most vulnerable families. It's based on a survey that we do. We look at families that have been homeless the longest, and health concerns, other barriers like trauma, child-welfare involvement."

Swan's advice to those D.C. General residents like McCormick:  "They should be working with their case manager."

McCormick  says that there are only four to five case workers on site. He says the case worker assigned to him has yet to provide him with any possible housing options. Nor has he seen anyone from the Community Partnership for the Prevention of Homelessness, which is supposed to take over the facility's management.

In the meantime, McCormick is trying to save money to move his family without DHS' assistance. He works as a project engineer, a job he started in late February. So far he's been able to save $1100. "I'm working on it," he says. "It's slow. But I'm working on it."

McCormick lives at the shelter with his son. He says his two daughters, ages one and two, live with a relative in Waldorf. "They're just too young," he explains; he didn't want his daughters to live at D.C. General. He is able to see his daughters once a month. He tries to talk to them every other day.

McCormick was able to see his daughters last week for 45 minutes. The relative drove them to his son's school in northwest. He played with his daughters on the swings. He jumped around with them, gave them kisses and hugs.

And then McCormick had to return with his son to D.C. General. He says the heat is still on in most floors. The shelter's version of air conditioning is a set of gigantic industrial fans strategically placed in various hallways. Only the second floor bedrooms have window units. In some areas at least, the heat is still on, McCormick says.

Thankfully, the heat never worked in his fifth-floor room. So he says it hasn't been too bad.

Swan says he has not heard about any air-conditioning problems at D.C. General. "It's something we will look into," he says.

Last Friday, Mayor Adrian Fenty announced that the city would be terminating its contract with Families Forward after P.H. had come forward raising allegations of poor case management and inappropriate contact between staff and female residents. [Families Forward had been a problem for years].

P.H. tells City Desk that although she is still living at the shelter, she has found a new home. She hopes to be leaving the shelter by the middle of next week. “I’m happy," she says. "My kids are happy. It’s just unfortunate that we had to endure the other stuff.”

Fenty and Co. assured that although Families Forward's contract runs through the end of April, the shelter would now be managed by the Community Partnership for the Prevention of Homelessness. Only thoroughly vetted Families Forward staff would be allowed to stay on until the end of the month.

P.H. had been ecstatic when she heard of Fenty's announcement. "I just pray that whoever they get to come in and takeover the contract do right by the homeless families, do what they're supposed to do," she says.

Ever since she came forward with her allegations, P.H. says that she's tried to stay away from the facility as much as possible. Now when she comes back in the evenings, she doesn't find too many Families Forward staffers.

“They changed a lot of staff," P.H. says adding that roughly 80 percent of Families Forward employees are no longer working at D.C. General.

Mayor Adrian Fenty announced today that the city is terminating Families Forward's contract to run the troubled D.C. General family shelter and its Park Road shelter. At his press conference, the mayor made sure to praise the swift actions of Attorney General Peter Nickles and Department of Human Services Director Clarence Carter.

Families Forward came under scrutiny after a resident e-mailed a letter outlining allegations of poor case management and inappropriate contact between staff and female residents. She sent the letter to Fenty on March 15. Just two weeks later came the decision to end the contract. Fenty is right—the city acted decisively.

But Families Forward has been a problem for years. And DHS, the Community Partnership for the Prevention of Homelessness, the entity that coordinates homeless services, and other city officials knew of issues with the nonprofit long before that resident's e-mail landed in the mayor's inbox.

Park Road

As early as 2003, Amber Harding, a staff attorney at the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless, says she had started picking up cases related to Families Forward's mismanagement of a its apartment-style shelter on Park Road in Columbia Heights. The problems read like today's at D.C. General: poor case management, poor facility upkeep, and inappropriate staff behavior.

The legal clinic did not keep these problems secret. They logged numerous administrative hearings to settle resident disputes with Families Forward. And sent along a series of memos. On May 10, 2004, two legal clinic staff attorneys sent a letter to Families Forward manager Sandra Vandahurst outlining several troubling issues with the Park Road facility. The letter was also sent to Sue Marshall, the executive director of the Community Partnership, which had oversight over Families Forward.

The staff attorneys listed 13 issues with the facility and Families Forward's management of it. Among them:

*Families Forward had enlisted the Guardian Angels to do security at the Park Road facility. Tenants felt that they were "unprofessional and showed favoritism to some residents." The staff attorneys write that Families Forward had fired certain Guardian Angels after concerns were raised "due to inappropriate" conduct.

*Families Forward's staff frequently aired confidential information about tenants to staff and security personnel—a violation of the law.

*Some residents who were to be evicted received only 24-hour notices—another violation of the law.

*"Residents suffer greatly from rodent infestations, cockroach infestations, bed bugs, and mites in the rugs...Residents have rugs, mattresses, box springs, and bedding that are vermin infested, have holes, are taped together."

*"Residents are concerned about rotting and missing floor boards" as well as faulty plumbing and appliances.

Two years later, Park Road's tenant association, formed with the legal clinic's assistance, fired off a letter outlining more problems.  The June 2, 2006, letter was sent to Sue Marshall, then-Mayor Anthony Williams, Councilmember Jim Graham, then-Councilmember Fenty, Families Forward CEO Ruby King-Gregory, and Rick Lyles from DHS.

The list of complaints about Park Road and Families Forward included rat and mice infestation, a broken front entrance door, broken kitchen cabinets, broken stoves, rotten floors, broken air conditions, broken heating units, and "a lack of professional extermination services." Also: Staff padlocked the front door at night.

The tenant association wrote: "Some residents are now turning their electric stoves on at night to keep the rats and mice out of the cooking stove or to prevent them from coming into their living areas. This is a fire hazard and safety risk."

That same day, June 2, 2006, the tenant group sent another memo to the Community Partnership's Cornell Chappelle, DHS' Lyles, King-Gregory and Sue Marshall. Mayor Williams, various D.C. councilmembers, the fire chief, and another DHS staffer were emailed the memo as well. It detailed what had been predicted: a fire inside the Park Road facility.

It happened on May 19, 2006. During the fire, the tenants noted, not every resident exited the building. Families Forward staffers did not conduct a headcount to make sure all residents escaped safely. Even more terrifying for residents: The emergency exit doors had been locked shut.

They wrote: "The security guard was not aware of a fire safety procedure. Many of the smoke detectors and fire extinguishers in the building were not and still are not functioning properly or have expired." The source of the fire, the memo notes, was a faulty water heater.

Residents also spoke up at D.C. Council hearings. Darryl Belcher, 45, lived at the Park Road facility from the end of 2006 into 2007. He says he testified at council hearings, and insists that District officials were well aware of the problems. "The will was not there," he says. "The knowledge was. There's not a councilmember that did not recognize or know the situation that took place. But the will was not there to make a change. And that's what's sad."

Belcher characterized Families Forward back in 2007 this way: "It was about making money and warehousing folks. It was not about empowering anyone to do anything. It was be quiet and stay still."

Belcher says that Families Forward's case management was all but nonexistent. Once a month, a case worker would come around, he says, and ask him to fill out a form. The nonprofit failed to provide the most rudimentary tools to residents who were seeking housing and jobs, he says. "They wouldn't give you a bus token," he recalls.

Belcher adds that there were rampant rumors of sexual misconduct on the part of Families Forward staff. "The sexual type of things, it was mainly with the males and there were females involving themselves with clients. When it came to the males, it was, 'I  can help you find an apartment if you do this kind of thing.' That did take place. That had been documented."

On July 3, 2008, Anita Brown filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court against the Community Partnership and Families Forward alleging her civil rights were violated during her stay at the Park Road building. In her complaint, she alleged that the nonprofit had discriminated against her because of her disability.

Since at least 2004, Brown lost her ability to stand, walk, and use stairs, the complaint states. Brown uses a wheelchair to get around. Because of her disability, she lost her job as a corrections officer. She and her two sons ended up homeless. After a stay at D.C. General, they eventually ended up at Park Road—they lived there from Sept. 7, 2005, to June 21, 2007. For much of that time, they lived in a fourth-floor apartment unit.

The complaint describes the unit as having "broken bathroom tiles, holes in the hallway and living room floors, broken lights, a refrigerator and freezer in disrepair, and bedbug-infested mattresses." But here's where Brown's case rose above those substandard conditions: Brown could not use her wheelchair in the unit because the hallways and doorways were too narrow. The bathroom and shower also had no grab bars.

The complaint says Families Forward refused to allow Brown access to the building's elevator. She was told she could use only the stairs:

"In order to reach the fourth floor, Ms. Brown had to climb a small flight of stairs from the front entryway and then four steep flights of stairs. Because of her disabilities, it was very difficult and painful for her to go up and down the stairs. Ms. Brown had to lean against the railings to go up and down the stairs but, because the railings were partially or completely detached from the wall at points along the stairway, the railings did not adequately support Ms. Brown. It often took Ms. Brown 45 minutes to an hour to go up and down the stairs."

Brown, according to the court document, fell "several times on the stairs and in the shower." During fire drills, she could not participate. She also missed many of her case management meetings because they were on the first floor. She apparently was not allowed to use the elevator for these appointments. And the staff did not visit her inside her apartment. "Ms. Brown often went for months without meeting with her case manager," the complaint states. Families Forward staff refused to move Brown to a first-floor unit.

According to the court records, Families Forward had received a monitoring report from the District government dated April 4, 2006, which flagged Park Road as being not handicapped accessible. The Community Partnership also received this report. This report appears to have been ignored by both.

Even after retaining a lawyer from the legal clinic, Brown was not immediately moved to a more suitable apartment. On June 15, 2006, court records show, a Families Forward manager sent Brown a letter "acknowledging that it was unsafe" for her to remain in the fourth-floor unit. The manager stated that a first-floor unit would soon be made available.

But within days, Families Forward staff gave that unit to another tenant. Finally, on July 5, the nonprofit gave Brown a first-floor unit. She was still unable to enter or exit the building using her wheelchair. The bathtub had no grab bars and the floor appeared to be rotted out.

On July 5, 2006, Brown's first night in the unit, she fell through a hole in her bedroom floor.

Brown settled with the District for an undisclosed amount prior to filing her case. She eventually settled her case with Families Forward and the Community Partnership. According to court records, Brown received $35,000.

Brown's settlement further stipulated that the city install protocols and record-keeping procedures to address resident complaints, and offer disability-sensitivity training to shelter staff.

It went on to focus on shelter staff behavior towards residents. The settlement stipulated that the Community Partnership must offer "quarterly training programs focusing on general and compassionate communication techniques and skills, conflict resolution, creative problem solving and sensitivity to resident needs." In other words, the settlement had to force the city to train its shelter staff to be nice.

And, finally, the settlement said of Families Forward's Park Road staff: "[The Community Partnership] will offer semi-annual training programs to Shelter Staff employed at the Park Road shelter which focuses on particular challenges associated with that shelter." Each Families Forward staffer would be required to attend these training sessions annually.

The Brown settlement was signed by Families Forward CEO Ruby King-Gregory on Feb. 17, 2009.

Brown's case and the cases of others got the notice of the U.S. Department of Justice. As a result, the District—in coordination with DOJ—agreed to another set of stipulations concerning residents with disabilities.

D.C. General

As we reported earlier this week, the Office of the Inspector General had launched an investigation into Families Forward's management of the family shelter at D.C. General. It was not the first time the OIG investigated the nonprofit's conduct inside that facility.

In the aftermath of the Banita Jacks case, the OIG issued an exhaustive 200-plus page investigative report on various agency failures. Jacks and her family had stayed at the emergency shelter in 2005 and 2006. The OIG found that Families Forward failed to properly handle the Jacks case.

We wrote in mid-March (see link above) that the IG flagged the nonprofit for poor case management. Among the key findings, the IG noted that the Jacks children were never interviewed "nor were their needs ever assessed" and that the Jacks family did not see a case worker for nearly a month after moving in.

It took the Families Forward staff nearly a month to have Banita Jacks fill out the basic intake forms. Even after Jacks' first meeting with a case worker, the IG noted that the worker completed only the first two pages of a nine-page assessment form. Among the topics left blank: "Medical History," "Psychosocial/Family" history, and the case worker's own "subjective observations."

The IG also reported: "Based on interviews with the team and a review of the family's shelter case file, there is no indication that Families Forward made any referrals related to the physical or mental health needs of any family member."

The IG found that Families Forward "failed to conduct a thorough needs assessment." The IG reported:

"A thorough assessment of [the parents] could have provided valuable insight into the family's needs and past challenges they faced, and that could have resulted in their being referred for further evaluation, treatment, or services."

The IG recommended:

*The D.C. Department of Human Services should consider proposing to the mayor a strategy for providing physical, mental health, and developmental screenings to all homeless children.

*The Community Partnership for the Prevention of Homelessness as well as Families Forward should "review and amend in writing where necessary, the Hypothermia Shelter's intake, needs assessment, and case management processes to ensure that they are consistent not only with Families Forward's contractual obligations to the District, but also the intent...of the District's Homeless Services Reform Act."

In testimony at Wednesday's hearing, Joi Buford, a Families Forward executive, admitted that she had never even seen the IG's report and recommendations until she read about them in the media.

Marshall, the Community Partnership's longtime executive director, has a different recollection. She told City Desk this morning that, after the IG's report was made public, her staff had multiple meetings with Families Forward to address the recommendations and findings.

On May 2, 2009, a baby girl, who lived at D.C. General with her parents, died. Buford said at the hearing that the parents did not live at the shelter after the death. Families Forward never talked to the parents.  In fact, she said the nonprofit learned of the death only when detectives showed up at D.C. General to inspect the dead child's room.

Buford could not say whether Families Forward had any reaction to the child's death—any lengthy meetings, any new training sessions. Her argument was simple: "The child did not die at the facility."

Another newborn, Princess, died at D.C. General on Feb. 9. The city's Child and Family Services Agency has since taken action against the child's mother, according to Ward 6 Councilmember Tommy Wells. The agency has taken her to court and had her other child removed from her care. The agency believes the child died from co-sleeping. In other words, Princess may have been inadvertently smothered.

Former and current staffers have told City Desk that Families Forward management had no response to Princess' death. And no grief counselors were sent in to help the other residents cope with the loss. The Community Partnership's Cornell Chappelle and Sue Marshall insist they ordered the nonprofit to bring in grief counselors. "It was a directive," Chappelle says.

But Chappelle admitted he doesn't know if Families Forward followed the directive.

Both Chappelle and Marshall could not say if more children had died at D.C. General or any other homeless facility.

But the most persistent issues raised by residents were not isolated problems but systemic ones. Residents talked of daily life at D.C. General: peeling paint, a mold-covered stairwell, and overcrowding. The Department of Human Services had checked on the building last June and found no mold, no peeling paint, no water-damaged ceilings. DHS Director Carter still insists incorrectly that the moldy stairwell had been inaccessible to residents—that it was locked.

While residents were struggling with indifferent case workers, they were also allegedly getting propositioned by staff. Although these incidents of inappropriate contact between staff and female residents may have doomed Families Forward, this particular issue was an old one.

Quinzella Jenkins testified at the Wednesday hearing that she lived at D.C. General from November 2005 to April 2006. She said that staff had sex with female residents back then. "They were going in the staircase," she told City Desk. "They were having sex. It was ridiculous."

Patricia Mullahy Fugere, the legal clinic's executive director, says today's news of the contract termination is bittersweet. She says Fenty's decision is "the right and just result." But she adds: "I think it's unfortunate that it took too long. For far too long there had been very clear indicators brought to the powers that be that Families Forward had been failing homeless families in the District."

Fugere faults the city's oversight—and, in particular, the Community Partnership's oversight—over Families Forward. "The Partnership has a contractual responsibility to do oversight and monitoring of its subcontracts....They failed in that regard."

Marshall insisted her Community Partnership did not fail:  "In hindsight, you can always see things. I don't really see anything we could have predicted."

Flanked by Attorney General Peter Nickles and Department of Human Services Director Clarence Carter, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty announced at an 11 a.m. press conference that the city is terminating Families Forward's contract to run D.C. General's family shelter at the end of the month. Families Forward was notified by DHS this morning.

Allegations of terrible shelter conditions and mismanagement and inappropriate contact between staffers and residents first came to light on City Desk. There were also the deaths of two newborns which you can read about here and here and here.

For the remainder of the month, the Community Partnership for the Prevention of Homelessness, which coordinates homeless services throughout the city, will directly manage D.C. General with the help of a few vetted Families Forward staffers. Beginning May 1, the Community Partnership will be charged with overseeing the shelter and will coordinate the transition as the city seeks a new provider.

Fenty provided a brief narrative of what led to the termination. It started with a letter from a resident known as P.H. The letter was forwarded to DHS, which investigated the allegations. DHS was able to substantiate many of them. Carter said his agency didn't just confirm previously reported instances of staffers having sex with employees, but uncovered two more. He described the allegations of sexual misconduct as possibly involving "coercion" or a "quid pro quo." In an interview, he said he was troubled that Families Forward didn't notify the city—he believes there was a real intent not to.

"The potential coercive nature of the allegations really curdles my milk," he said.

Two Families Forward employees were fired, as was a private security guard.

Fenty said the old days of D.C. government, when agencies weren't held responsible, are over. When the city does an investigation, he said, "we will also do so in a public way."

Nickles praised Carter, saying, "I'm very proud of Clarence Carter here. ... This was a model of how to treat serious allegations of impropriety." When DHS got the letter, Nickles said, Carter didn't put it "in a file cabinet." On March 24, he said, the Community Partnership established a hotline so shelter residents could report complaints. On March 29, Carter submitted a preliminary investigatory report to the AG's office; the same day, the findings were transferred to the office of the inspector general.

The OIG has since recommended the case be transferred to the D.C. Police Department for investigation. It's now in police hands.

Carter said: "We have a responsibility to act, and act decisively."

Nickles said of P.H.'s whistleblowing letter: "That's what you need. If there's an issue, tell us, we will do something about it."

Fenty also stated that Families Forward will not be considered for any city contracts again, that it will be put on the District's "ban" list. The nonprofit will also lose its contract to run a transitional housing complex in Columbia Heights.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

At 10 a.m. tomorrow, Councilmember Tommy Wells will hold an oversight hearing focusing mainly on the allegations surrounding D.C. General's family shelter. The hearing may do nothing to save the nonprofit, Families Forward Inc., from losing its contract to manage the shelter. Wells has already stated that its contract will be terminated.

At the very least, the hearing will be the most public airing of the mismanagement found at D.C. General: Families Forward's firing of abusive workers, the slow case management services, the sexual harassment, the death of two newborns in the past two years, along with the mold and over-crowded conditions. City Desk has learned that the hearing is only going to be the first step towards a more intensive look at the shelter and its nonprofit provider.

Attorney General Peter Nickles is investigating the allegations that staff had sex with female residents. Today, the Department of Human Services' Fred Swan says that the Office of the Inspector General is also investigating the family shelter.

"We're looking at all this stuff," Swan says. "It's been handed off to the Inspection General"

Swan refused to comment about the investigation. When we asked about the two newborn deaths, Swan replied: "Of course that concerns us. The fact that anybody died at one of our shelter sites concerns us."

Swan refused to comment about the Department of Human Services' oversight into the family shelter. No one else connected with running D.C. General wanted to talk much either.

The Community Partnership for the Prevention of Homelessness, the organization that coordinates city services, refused to comment about its own oversight role.

Sanjor Reed, CEO of Nutrition Inc., the company contracted with providing meals at the shelter, also refused to comment. "They don't want me talking about anything," Reed said. She did add that she had not heard a single complaint about the shelter's food.

City Desk had interviewed two families that stated that they had to rush their children to the hospital due to food poisoning.

And finally, Families Forward Inc., refused comment. Orlando Harper, a program assistant scheduled to speak at tomorrow's hearing, expressed total ignorance concerning the two newborn deaths. Had he even heard about the deaths? "No sir, I didn't."

There may be a reason no one in authority feels compelled to discuss their oversight of D.C. General. There seems to have been no real oversight until now. The OIG had investigated Families Forward's conduct during the Banita Jacks case and found huge gaps in its case management services.

But last June, according to District records, the Department of Human Services not only gave Families Forward high marks for its case management but lauded the facility as well. The department's shelter monitoring unit wrote: "the condition of the facility was very clean, organized and well maintained."

DHS must have missed the mold and peeling paint. Or the mold and peeling paint suddenly became a problem a few months later:

The DHS monitor was just as thorough with residents. It only interviewed six families, according to the report.

The monitor also noted that Families Forward Inc. had conducted criminal background checks and drug testing of its employees. And that the staff had completed CPR training. There's no indication whether or not the monitor actually fact-checked the staff's assertions.

Not only did DHS not find mold or peeling paint, they noted that there was no evidence of rodent or insect infestation. The monitor did report that residents had complained of mice in their rooms.

The DHS monitor's conclusion: "The DC General Family Hypothermia/Emergency Shelter has adequately complied with the Common Standards and applicable additional standards by providing a temporary facility with meals, clean bedding, working showers, toilets and case management services."

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 quarters, like utility closets.

Residents were forced to sleep on deflated air-mattresses in a cafeteria, bed down shoulder-to-shoulder in activity rooms and lay on their own coats in hallways (see picture above). But for a time at least, Families Forward Inc., the nonprofit charged with running the shelter, kept residents out of the off-line rooms. Until the February snowstorms hit and the already over-crowded shelter became overwhelmed.

According to two former staffers and two residents, the off-line rooms were eventually filled. In one case, a supply closet became a bedroom. Families Forward tried to pressure two pregnant women to share that particular closet. There were holes in the walls, recalls one staffer. "You could tell that the rats or mice had ate through it," the staffer says. "It was big enough to put a single bed and maybe a crib. It was a tad bigger than a walk-in closet."

One of the women refused, the staffer says. But the other pregnant woman took the room. Another staffer recalls that there weren't just holes but mold. Aaron McCormick, 42, a single father who resides at the shelter, says the space had been "storage for emergency food." He describes it as "more like a jail cell."

The supply closet conversion, and the moving of other residents into off-line rooms, was just another sign that Families Forward Inc. could not manage D.C. General. By then, residents had complained about the bad food, and the long waits to see case workers, and of course, the gaping holes in the walls:

And the cramped sleeping arrangements in the activity rooms:

On Feb. 9, a newborn died after being found unconscious in her shelter room. Two former Families Forward workers and one current employee say this wasn't the first newborn death at the shelter. The previous year, another newborn was found dead.

The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner says a baby died on May 2, 2009; it had the same last name as the baby identified by former staffers. The cause of death was determined as "Sudden unexpected death in infancy associated with sleeping in prone position and inappropriate bedding."

"It was kind of scary," says one former staffer. Both former staffers say that Families Forward Inc. did not provide grief counselors to shelter employees or residents. Management just gave them a warning: Do not talk about the dead baby.

"When we had the incident with the first baby that passed, the only thing they said was not to speak about it to anyone," the former staffer recalls. "They said 'that's your job' if you talk. No one knows how the first baby died. It was on the hush-hush."

When asked about the 2009 newborn death, Joi Buford, Families Forward's shelter programs manager, refused to comment.

The staffers point to another long-standing issue within the shelter. This year, security guards found that the unused sixth floor had been converted into something of a bachelor pad. On their rounds, according to current and former staffers, the guards discovered used condoms, condom wrappers, and blunt papers. Garbage bags had been spread out on the floor for "bedding."

Residents have complained about staff offering to trade extra blankets and juice for sexual favors. Families Forward Inc. recently fired several staffers for inappropriate contact with residents. Helen Hare, a spokesperson in Mayor Adrian Fenty's office, said that the Attorney General is looking into the allegations and refused further comment.

But current and former staffers say the sexual activities between staff and residents had been going on for some time. Staff and residents complained to management "plenty of times," says one former staffer.

"We had meetings about it," the former staffer says. "That was it. Even when they had names—names were given to them several times—nothing would ever be done. The thing that got me: We have cameras. But a lot of times they were breaking the cameras down, pulling the cameras down.”

At least one meeting took place last year to discuss an allegation that a staffer had gotten a resident pregnant. Says one former Families Forward employee:

"The staffer didn’t get fired. He was going around with a cellphone showing off pictures of the baby. He got her pregnant last year. I remember the rumors. It was last year, end of hypothermia. I remember the resident, she was on the fifth floor. She got pregnant. This resident had complained. After she got pregnant, they got her out there. I was very disappointed by it. Why is he still here? You had a meeting about it but you didn’t do anything to him about it. He wasn’t fired. We kept constantly getting complaints about this same guy with the residents."

One current D.C. General resident says that the employee's alleged harassment of residents was well known. As soon as she moved into the shelter, she says other residents warned her about him.

The two former staffers say that, along with the sex-for-blankets allegation, they heard complaints about co-workers trading cigarettes and small bills for blowjobs with female residents in the shelter bathrooms.

Again, one staffer says, management was aware of the problem but the activities continued. The staffer says they counseled a woman who had traded money for blowjobs. "She stated that she needed the money," the staffer says. "She seemed like she was doing what she had to do to survive."

The former Families Forward employee says that it was difficult to work at the shelter under CEO Ruby King-Gregory.

"I prayed that their contract be taken from them, that [the city] get someone who really cares, that really has the residents’ best interest at heart," the former employee says. "I would stop and talk to each and every resident. I could spend a whole day just comforting, listening to the residents, telling them that it will be all right. I took it home. I took it with me. I carried that burden with me. It broke my heart to know what they were going through, what they were dealing with. It was very disconcerting for me. And it starts with the head Ruby Gregory.”

Gregory did not return calls seeking comment.

Councilmember Tommy Wells has scheduled a hearing on D.C. General for Wednesday morning. Wells told City Desk last week that Families Forward's contract to run the shelter will be terminated.

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 Services, "gave me the message that their contract will be terminated at the end of the month."

Calls for comment to Families Forward and DHS have not been returned. The nonprofit had been under scrutiny since the Banita Jacks scandal. In recent weeks, the nonprofit's shelter management has faced a series of allegations ranging from staff offering blankets for sexual favors, the suspicious death of a newborn on Feb. 9, poor case management, and crummy living conditions within D.C. General.

Families Forward's only public comment on the shelter has come in the form of a letter to Mayor Adrian Fenty. In the letter, the nonprofit admits that staff did have inappropriate contact with residents and that its case management has been slow in assisting families.

During the snow storms in early Feb., Councilmember Tommy Wells toured the facility and spotted issues with the facility. A few weeks ago, he told City Desk:  "I saw mold and ceiling damage was in the stairwells." He also said residents complained about plumbing problems, and concerns over cleanliness.

Wells' staff followed up by interviewing residents and doing their own mini-inspections at D.C. General. The staff even pitched in with some case management services.

But that was three, four weeks ago. So why is the District Department of the Environment only now inspecting D.C. General? The agency is apparently inspecting the shelter today.

We are waiting for answers from DDOE on that one.

Wells' office does report that the District's Department of Real Estate Services inspected the shelter last year.

The Department of Health reports it has not inspected D.C. General. The Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs says it has also not inspected the former hospital. "We haven't inspected this property and nobody has brought any issues with this property to our attention," says DCRA spokesperson Mike Rupert.

Whether the DDOE abates the mold or not may be a moot point. The shelter had drastically reduced its population–from a record capacity of 200 families to 109 families on Monday.