By Maddie Ecker, Alexandra Follman and Brandon Latham
As winter approaches, homelessness in Washington, D.C. has become a leading concern for mayoral candidates.
When the mayor-elect enters office early next year, he or she will decide if the city’s thousands of homeless citizens will have a place to sleep. Candidates Muriel Bowser, David Catania and Carol Schwartz, all current city council members, addressed their plans on homelessness and other issues in the District at a forum hosted by News4’s Tom Sherwood and The Washington Post’s Colby King at NBC on Oct. 15.
The candidates clashed on their views of keeping the D.C. General homeless shelter open. If elected, Bowser said she would look at the homeless shelter’s contract while Catania and Schwartz would cancel the contract right away and explore other options.
“The mayor walks into the office in hypothermia season,” Bowser said. “We need to know what needs to happen this winter.”
The Community Partnership for the Prevention of Homelessness reported that as of this year, 7,784 people in D.C. are currently homeless.
Last year, the District faced extreme winter weather conditions. As a result, the city government added seasonal shelters to its emergency shelter inventory for those who did not have a place to stay.
This pushed the government under Mayor Vincent Gray to provide even more space in shelters on nights when the temperature and wind chill were below 15 degrees.
Many who live, work or go to school in the District — such as Jacob Roberts, a senior at Georgetown Day School — see homeless as a top concern.
“I think [homelessness] is a huge issue,” Roberts said. “I think it’s clear that Washington, D.C. has a homelessness crisis and we need a mayor that will address [this problem].”
The administration under Mayor Gray released a multimillion-dollar plan to close D.C. General, the city’s largest homeless shelter, within a year. Gray’s plan included leasing or building six shelters to house up to 50 families each.
D.C. General would only be demolished once these shelters were up and running. His administration hopes that the shelters will be ready by fall 2015.
These plans align with the hopes of D.C. General residents, who staged a rally this past June asking for better food, cleaner facilities and more housing alternatives. The 300-room housing facility often does not have heat or hot water, a problem for the almost 600 children who reside there.
Bowser plans to expand these housing accommodations and put homeless shelters in all eight wards, which goes along with her campaign promise of uniting all wards under her administration. While she does not want to replace D.C. General entirely, she recognized that it is “not a good place to raise a family.”
Ian Ward, a junior at Georgetown Day School, believes accommodating the homeless is urgent.
“I think [we should approach] the homelessness issue from less of a matter of principle and more of a matter of pragmatics,” he said. “As long as we can [get] the homeless into shelters and out of the cold, I think geographic distribution could take a back seat.”
Catania addressed the 16 percent increase in homelessness but did not offer a plan if he were to take office. Instead he critiqued the affordable housing communities that “have been a failure.”
Additionally insufficient, Catania stated that out of the 8,000 affordable housing units in the city, 600 of them are out of commission and 40 are vacant.
Schwartz added that the issue must be addressed before it gets cold. She would not keep D.C. General open and did not offer a plan other than that homelessness needs to be addressed.
One Schwartz campaign volunteer, Jerry B. King said, “I’m sure that her approach to homelessness is more decentralized, you’re not just going to have a bunch of people in one area.”
Other issues that the candidates discussed included equality and campaign finance.
Equality has been an underlying issue throughout the election, as Catania is the first openly gay D.C. mayoral candidate. He believes Washingtonians all have shared values and goals of producing a better city.
“I thought he handled himself very well,” Ward said. “He seemed accustomed to handling that sort of criticism, and he seemed very upfront about [his sexual orientation].”
When asked her opinion about equality playing a part in the election process, Bowser said, “I reject the notion that people should be judged on their sexuality.”
All candidates agreed on the need for and perpetuation of acceptance in the District. Cheryl Wilkins, another Schwartz campaign volunteer said, “Carol is a supporter of equality, her position is everybody has a right to live.”
Though Bowser, Schwartz and Catania argued about campaign funding and the sources of their money, they showed their true stances on issues that the District citizens must confront.
The running theme of equality throughout the forum showed that all candidates seemed to agree on the growing acceptance in the District and the role it plays in their campaigns. King said, “[Catania’s] not going to win [just] on his sexual orientation…he’s not going to lose on it either.”
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