Offering a Roof to More in Need
Rebuilding of House Will Help Serve Additional Homeless People

By Leef Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 17, 2006

For 17 years, the colonial in Arlington's Lyon Park neighborhood has sheltered the abandoned, the broke and the abused, thousands of mothers and their children who were in crisis and felt they had nowhere else to turn.

They might have gone on living in the temporary suburban shelter were it not for its condition, which officials feared had begun to deteriorate beyond repair. A sagging deck, water-damaged ceiling and children's playroom that periodically smelled like sewage were among officials' most pressing concerns.

Then a major solution was found.

Yesterday, Arlington County planners and advocates for the homeless gathered outside the modest white-and-orange home to announce the remedy, a $2.4 million extreme home makeover that they say will rebuild the house and help staunch the growing problem of homelessness in the Washington suburbs.

"We have been turning away hundreds of families every year," said Linda Dunphy, executive director of Doorways for Women and Families, Arlington's leading shelter provider and advocate for the homeless. "This [new] home is very complex and very expensive, but it will be well worth it."

The makeover is being made possible in large part by a $500,000 grant from the Freddie Mac Foundation, which will help transform the house into a two-story, three-level home able to shelter 21 residents, five more than it can accommodate now.

Children make up 31 percent of the area's homeless population and about 49 percent of the homeless whom Arlington shelters. So, local and state officials said yesterday, it is increasingly important to provide better housing and more intensive support services to the growing at-risk community.

"This service is absolutely essential to our county," said Del. Albert C. Eisenberg (D-Arlington), who lives a little more than a block from the shelter. "We're going to look back on this day and know we did the right thing."

Funds to rebuild the house are being provided by the county, the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development and the project builder, NV Homes, which officials said is supplying up to $400,000 worth of in-kind labor and materials. HomeAid Northern Virginia, a nonprofit charity that builds and renovates shelters, is also involved.

Before Doorways' founding 25 years ago, the only shelter for battered or homeless women and their children in Arlington was a night in a motel.

After the shelter is renovated, the Doorways for Women and Families Shelter will be renamed the Freddie Mac Foundation Family Home.

Gathered yesterday outside the shelter, officials used crowbars to pry a bright orange shutter off the house, a ceremonial step in the demolition, which will begin as soon as next week, when bulldozers roll in. Officials said the new shelter is expected to be completed in summer 2007.

The shelter's clients will be housed in other facilities during the construction, shelter officials said.

"I'm looking forward to the day when I can say 'Move that bus!' and see a beautiful facility here," said Maxine B. Baker, president and chief executive of the Freddie Mac Foundation, alluding to the big reveal at the end of each "Extreme Home Makeover" television show. "It is a bright day for the children and families who will live in this home."