For more than two years, Brian Marr has slept on a tattered bunk bed in a shelter at the former Randall Junior High School in Southwest as he struggles to conquer a crack cocaine habit.
But as the cold season begins next month, Marr and dozens of men who regularly frequent the shelter will have to find new accommodations. The city is completing plans to sell Randall to the Corcoran Museum of Art and College of Art and Design, and the 130-bed emergency shelter is scheduled to close Nov. 3.
Brian Marr, 32, waits in line at 130-bed emergency shelter at the former Randall Junior High School in Southwest. The city is closing the shelter Nov. 3.
(Michael Temchine - For The Washington Post)
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"It's ugly. They're going to displace more than 100 brothers," said Marr, 32, as a handful of men lounged on a recent morning in the bedraggled plaza outside the school building at 65 I Street SW. "You don't know where you're going to be. You don't know where you're going to take that next step."
Advocates for the homeless criticized the timing of Randall's closing, saying it would force the homeless to seek new shelter in unfamiliar neighborhoods as much as three miles away at a time when temperatures are falling. But the advocates also glean a larger message from the closing, saying that it reflects what they characterized as the District's continuing effort to push the needy away from downtown as real estate values in the central part of the city rise.
"There's a trend to put the homeless on the fringes of the city. It's part of the plan to remove the people from the landscape of a city on the rise," said Mary Ann Luby, an organizer for the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless. "It's the clash between culture and people, the clash between economic and human development."
But to Lynn French, a senior adviser on homeless policy to Mayor Anthony Williams (D), Randall is not a solution. She described the shelter's physical condition as "deplorable" and said a new 150-bed shelter on the campus of St. Elizabeths Hospital in Southeast will provide mental heath and drug abuse counseling. District officials said they plan to have the new shelter open by the time Randall closes. The city is also expanding an existing New York Avenue NE shelter by 120 beds.
As for the timing of the closing, French said the city would face criticism no matter what date it chose. As it is, she said, in early November the weather is still relatively warm.
"Change is difficult for everyone," French said.
District officials began using Randall as a shelter during a bitter cold spell in January 1988, after the D.C. Council passed emergency legislation authorizing the use of certain public buildings for the homeless, including the ground floor of the District Building. At the time, Randall was being used to house government offices.
In addition to being an emergency shelter, Randall has designated 40 beds for homeless men enrolled in a program that provides counseling and help in finding jobs and new homes. Several men in the program said that they are apprehensive over the uncertainty, adding that they don't want to have to move to shelters in neighborhoods that are farther away from downtown.
"This is tough for people like us, who are trying to get our lives together," said William Murphy, 37, who came to the shelter after arriving from the Bronx a month ago, fighting a cocaine addiction. "Where are we going? What's next?"
The proposal to sell Randall to the Corcoran for $6.2 million, a sale that needs council approval, came as the museum unveiled plans this year to build a new wing at 17th Street and New York Avenue NW. The D.C. Council voted over the summer to grant the museum a $40 million subsidy for the construction, which would be paid back with tax revenue from hotels, restaurants and other downtown attractions.
Corcoran officials say they will start using Randall as a temporary home for the museum's administrators while the new building is under construction, beginning in June 2006. Randall would also become the new location for the Corcoran's college. "We consider this a permanent investment for the Corcoran institution and a cultural investment in the community," said Margaret Bergen, the Corcoran's chief communications officer. "We want to reach out to the community of Southwest."
Randall has also been the headquarters of the Millennium Arts Center, a home for studio artists and nonprofit organizations that has leased the site since 2000. After a legal dispute with the District over back rent, the center's founder, Bill Wooby, moved Millennium from the property at the end of July, although some of the 34 artists who maintain studios there hope to remain once the Corcoran takes over.
