Neighborhood Unites in Opposing Shelter
Residents Fear Proposal for NW Homeless Center Will Reduce Home Values

By Paul Schwartzman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 29, 2006

Cliff Valenti is part of a wave of young professionals migrating to a long-tattered stretch of Northwest Washington. Buddy Moore is among the older homeowners who eyed the newcomers warily, fretting that they would price them out.

Now they have found a common cause, one uniting blacks and whites, renters and owners, plumbers and computer experts: stopping construction of a 170-bed homeless shelter on Georgia Avenue.

After work one night, Valenti, 34, traveled from his job as a software developer to join a cluster demonstrating in front of the site on the edge of the Columbia Heights and Petworth neighborhoods, where Central Union Mission plans to relocate.

There were also longtime residents, including a librarian and a school bus monitor, who fumed that the shelter would sink property values and lure more beggars to an ever-more-pricey neighborhood still rife with poverty.

"This transcends age, race and gender," said Moore, a retired bank clerk. "We see it as someone with power and money ramming something down our throats."

The section of Georgia Avenue is lined with fast-food joints, nail salons, a pawnshop and liquor stores, including one next door to where the shelter would open. But as developers have sped eastward across the city, investors have discovered the strip.

A hip bar with dark wood walls, chandeliers and a pool table opened downstairs from a yoga studio. Granite-laden lofts were completed a few blocks south. A billboard promises 150 more condos.

With the traces of a renaissance have come new homeowners, many of them white. Their neighbors, many of them black, worried that rising home prices would jack up property taxes. But they soon discovered shared concerns: too many vagrants, too many boarded-up buildings, too many drug dealers. And what about that other fixture, the strip club with the metal doors and the sign advertising "Girls Girls"?

Yet nothing has unified them quite like the prospect of a homeless shelter.

"This neighborhood has been depressed for years," said Darren Jones, 46, holding a picket sign reading "Bad Place for a Shelter."

"This shelter is going to stunt the development coming to Georgia Avenue."

Nearby, Lauri Hafventstein, a Web producer who moved from Georgetown, agreed: "It's a neighborhood that's still fragile. This shelter, right now, could tip the balance in the wrong direction."

As developers remake neighborhoods across Washington, vagrants have fewer places where they're tolerated. Downtown still offers homeless services, even with the District selling a shelter in Southwest and planning to close another in Northwest. But with offices and condos rising, the city has been forced to open facilities in more remote areas, such as at St. Elizabeths Hospital in Southeast.

"The homeless system evolved when the city was broke and broken and unused buildings could be used as shelters," said Lynn C. French, a mayoral adviser. "But as the city has been reclaimed, there's been development. Shelters can't have unfettered access to city buildings."

Central Union Mission, which is privately run, wants to move from 14th and R streets NW because its current home is antiquated. Mission officials are undeterred by the neighborhood complaints, and they brush aside threats from D.C. Council member Jim Graham (D-Ward 1) to lobby donors to cut off contributions needed to build a shelter.

"Anywhere you go, there'll be opposition," said David Treadwell, the mission's leader, describing the criticism as "discrimination" against "poor black men."

The mission's opponents counter that the area already offers housing and services for the poor, including a Salvation Army branch. They want more along the lines of the new businesses that have opened up. Outdoor cafes. Restaurants. A CVS would do. Even a hardware store. "I want a neighborhood where I can live, work and play," said Terra Weirich, 29, a real estate analyst who paid $364,000 for a rowhouse last year.

She knew that change would take time. Her yard abuts a housing project, allowing glimpses of raging family fights and drug use. "I'm patient," she said. "But I didn't bargain for the problems being compounded by a homeless shelter."

The mission is not without supporters. Adam Wasch, 34, went on Petworth's Internet site to invite like-minded sorts to drink beer while the demonstrators assembled. A handful joined him. "If not here, where?" he said of the shelter. "We share a responsibility for what's going on in our city."

Darryl Allen runs the strip club a half-block from where the shelter would open. He stepped from behind the bar one night to inspect the mission's lot, once a carwash. "The homeless have to go somewhere," he shrugged. "What do you do? Dig a hole and put them in there?"

Central Union Mission moved into its current home in the early 1980s, when 14th Street was defined by panhandlers, porn shops and vacant buildings. Now Logan Circle is teeming with $1 million homes.

Since 1999, the mission has looked for a new spot but was limited by zoning laws, prices and opposition. The mission recently agreed to sell its home for $7 million to a builder who plans condos. As part of the deal, the mission got the Georgia Avenue parcel. Central Union's new $15 million shelter would include a drug rehabilitation center, a chapel and a cafe that would provide breakfast and dinner for the homeless. It also would serve lunch to the paying public.

In recent weeks, Treadwell has campaigned to convince opponents that Central Union minds its population. "We lock our men up at night -- we don't even allow them a smoke break," he said at a Georgia Avenue community meeting.

His audience was not reassured.

Alverda Muhammad, a nurse, stood up at the meeting and said she spent "a fortune" fixing up her house. "I'm not looking down my nose at anyone," she said, before adding to emphatic applause: "The retail value of these homes is going to plummet."

Treadwell was undaunted, saying the shelter did not stop real estate prices from soaring in Logan Circle. "You see women with baby strollers," he said.

Still, many in Logan Circle applaud the mission's plan to close. Residents associate the shelter's clients with "thefts, public drunkenness, public urination [and] public defecation," said Charles Reed, chairman of the local Advisory Neighborhood Commission.

"I don't think there would be more people than you could count on one hand who would be unhappy to see them leave."