Creative Storage Solutions

In a backpack? That’s where I store my computer and other treasured posessions when I’m out and about. And I keep it with me so nobody else takes it. Backpacks are pretty easy to carry around all day. Anything I decided to leave in a newspaper stand wouldn’t mean too much to me, and I wouldn’t necessarily expect it to be there when I returned.

The City Paper stopped delivering to the NW corner of 9th & E for months, I thought because of the bags of homeless belongings crammed in the box. But they said it was just a distribution error, and are supposed to start again this week. I would assume they take out the homeless belongings and leave them in the street when they deliver the paper (as they should). No big deal, as long as the homeless aren’t taking out the papers and trashing them so they can get storage space back.

seems like a security issue… we are talking about washington, dc here folks! just ask ‘excuse me, is that your blanket?’

My favorite one is the shopping cart “hidden” behind the group of tall bushes next to the YWCA. If only I had an immediate use for construction cones and painter’s buckets.

Interesting post. I ahve not seen this. However, I wonder if there is a tone of genuine concern in this post or only sarcasm?

Being homeless would suck.

#4, my post contain no sarcasm, I’m seriously wondering what people do with all their stuff when they have no home. The newspaper boxes seem to be one of the most popular places to store items during the day.

As you say, being homeless would suck.

This post verges on being bizarre.

Why do the homeless need storage space, to store their change of clothes when they go for a run? I agree with #1 that a backpack or even a suitcase would be a good option.

#6, I’m not homeless, so I dont’ know for sure, but:

1. When you want to use a public bathroom, but not carry all your belongings.

2. When you want to go to a public building (library, museum, etc).

3. Trying to get off the streets? What if you go to a job interview, do you bring all your stuff with you?

That’s off the top of my head, I would think there are many parts of the day when a person wouldn’t want to have to carry everything they own around with them in a backpack. Assuming they could afford a backpack.

Maybe shelters could provide a place to leave belongings for a certain amount of time.

I am going to look out for this.

#2 Does everything have to be about terrorism? We create our own prison with walls, fences and threat levels.

FYI at the Franklin school shelter, they provide foot lockers where people can store belongings. Not sure about the one on 2nd st. The semi permanent establishments have storage for personal belongings for the residents.

something stuffed in a newspaper box might actually be discarded but the city has weird rules for removing homeless refuse. As in they dont do it. Check out the NW corner of 9th & K.

I will never understand why DC residents put up with the homeless here. The problem is not intractable — DC needs its own Guiliani to enforce (or pass) vagrancy laws, institutionalize and treat those who are severly mentally ill (like those who scream at no one in particular), and enforce (or pass) laws against panhandling. A good reason there are so many homeless is kind-hearted people give them money (see earlier post about the scam artist), which works as an incentive. The homeless population in this town makes just about every open space in this city unusable. It is too bad — DC could learn a lesson from NYC.

Ted thank you for taking the time to write about what I have been saying all along. While people are very quick to defend the homeless in the town, not a single person has been able to tell me why there are more homeless in this City per capita than NYC. In fact, forget per capita, there may be more homeless people in DC gross.

It’s my understanding that loitering/vagrancy laws were repealed a few years back for being unconstitutional. Councilperson Schwartz, a Republican, told us at a DNA meeting that DC loves our homeless because we are a liberal city. She made it clear she wasn’t willing lift a finger on the issue. I brought up the fact that the homeless downtown seem to be given a pass on committing a number of crimes, seemingly BECAUSE they are homeless (which to me is an incentive for them to do whatever they feel without fear of any punishment, and probably attracts more homeless downtown). In response Schwartz cited NYC, and said something to the effect of how terrible what NYC did was – seeming to say we need to give our homeless population free reign, and asking for solid enforcement of quality of life related infractions is in her mind coming too close to what NYC did, so she’s against it.

The MPD constantly dodges these questions with statements like, “being homeless is not illegal”. The previous 3D Commander Pendergrass told me at an ANC SMD meeting that she wouldn’t have her officers cite homeless for deficating in our yards or alleys, because she said the homeless had nowhere else to go, and it also took too much time and trouble to process them on quality of life issues. The MPD use more professional language in meetings today (like the last DNA meeting), but the response on the street appears to be the same. I would say this is a major point they learned from our previous Chief Ramsey, whose main assett was telling the public the right thing at the right time, even if it wasn’t true or didn’t match what was actually taking place in practice.

Apparently our government has said that we can’t even close the Franklin shelter at 13th & K (and closing it is recommended by the Catholic group that runs it), until there is an equivalent amount of beds in other spaces WITHIN the PQ Neighborhood. Of course that is difficult to achieve because of the cost of space in Penn Quarter, so charitable organization have troube meeting that demand. But hundreds of homeless have decided PQ is their neighborhood, and our government has backed them up. No matter if they could have better, safer, cleaner living conditions in a nearby neighborhood – they’ve chosen the PQ, and our government has said to the chartities that we need to keep the homeless in their neighborhood of choice.

Most of the truly “homeless” are mentally ill. The so-called “liberals” in DC are too myopic to see that by “letting them be” we are actually condemning them to a miserable life.
The help-the-homeless agencies in DC are poorly staffed and run. The people I know who are involved in these agencies are uncaring & incompetent.
Nothing will change until the politicians feel enough heat from the citizenry that they decide to do something. How was Ms. Schwartz able to be so blase about the problem? I know she doesn’t care a whit, but didn’t the whole DNA meeting erupt in anger & disbelief?

The homeless topic had been beaten to death and I believe she had already said she had to go by the time she got to the part about NYC. I don’t really know the details of what happened in NYC, but she made it sound inhumane, and obviously had strong feelings about it. Then it was on to the next speaker, so there was no further discussion on the matter. Plus, it appears there are a wide range of positions on the issue among the residents. Some may believe we should move out the homeless, even in an inhumane fashion. Others believe the government should deal with it in different ways. I think that are a wide range of opinions on what the ‘right’ way is or what a ‘better’ way is. And there are probably others that agree with any position, as long as you say that’s the position thats respectful to the homeless.

It would be nice if there were a way to lay out the issues, lay out some of the solutions different groups have in mind and what’s being done today, and lay out pros and cons for each. Then we might have some meaningful discussion that could result in pressure to have officials act on something specific. Unfortunately, I think that’s when most peoples’ attention span on the issue runs out.

My main issues are around crime and safety, and agree that it is mostly the mentally ill segment of the homeless population that create the majority of the issues. In reponse to homeless complaints, I sometimes here people talk about homeless folks that are working 2 jobs and are trying to get off the street. I don’t think most people have concerns with regard to that segment of the homeless community when they talk about the homeless causing problems on the streets. I’ve heard good things about this program, which deals with mentally ill homeless folks. Who knows what we can do to get something like this going here?

http://www.urbanpathways.org/about.asp

It is good to see reasoned discussion about this issue — something that was sorely missing in NYC.

I’m a transplanted New Yorker and witnessed first-hand the turnaround that Giuliani accomplished with his (admittedly) “tough-love” policies on the homeless. He did several things: 1. He arrested or cited the homeless for breaking laws on the books — panhandling restrictions, blocking sidewalks, harrassment, littering, vagrancy, etc. 2. He placed a 90-day limit on the services provided to able-body and able-minded homeless individuals (a plan not unlike 90s welfare reform). 3. He diagnosed the mentally ill, then required them to be treated.

He was pilloried in the press about it, but the problem was, for the most part, solved. Homelessness just isn’t a huge problem in NYC anymore. The city stopped providing incentives for continued homelessness and–like welfare reform–people responded to the incentives and got themselves off the street.

The “terrible” thing that “happened to the homeless” in NY is conventional wisdom among those on the political left, and it is wrong. When NYers were polled whether they liked Giuliani’s policies or not, he consistently scored very low approval ratings, only to win re-election. Absent term limits, he would have won a third term. People secretly loved what he did to save my city, regardless of how they talked when they went to their friends’ parties on the UWS.

San Francisco has a similar homeless problem and the more they make things easy for the homeless, the more the city attracts homeless. It reminds me of that famous NY Times headline: “Crime Rate Drops, But the Number in Jail is at an All-time High” It just doesn’t occur to kind-hearted (but mis-guided) do-gooders that sometimes what’s needed is not coddling, but a kick in the pants. It may sound harsh, but in the end, it is the best way for all concerned — even the homeless.

I’m feeling a little less for the homeless on the streets these days for a numbers of reasons:

1) I took a tour setup by Miles Groves (who leads the Downtown Neighborhood Association) and Chapman Todd of Catholic Charities. We toured 3 homeless facilites in or near the PQ, including the emergency shelter at Franklin Park (13th & K). I learned that there are many programs for homeless in our area (though we definitely can use more) that actually give housing in smaller numbers, counceling, and help homeless to get jobs and get on their feet. However, most of the chronically homeless causing trouble on the street CHOOSE not to participate in those programs because they don’t want to follow the rules in those programs (staying off drugs, doing house chores, searching for a job, etc.), or they are mentally ill. The mentally ill are a special problem that I think needs more focus. But the mentally ill aside, I have trouble feeling sorry for people on the streets that simply are refusing help VIA one of these programs (although we need more).

2) Most of the people that use the “emergency” shelter at 13th & K use it as their permanent home, and they do this because again, it doesn’t have the rules that other non-gov’t shelters and programs have.

3) One of the guys who sleeps in the doorways of Weschler’s every night (right by where the above picture was taken) has tried twice last Monday night to attack women at the Artisan (on E between 9th & 10th) because they believe they stole their blankets (fat chance). Of course the police have yet to respond.

4) After again talking to the City Paper distributor yesterday, he said they delivered the papers at about 11PM Wednesday Night, and they all disappeared before 8AM on Thursday, as has been happening for many weeks. I don’t think the readers are picking them up that fast. It would appear those same homeless guys are removing the papers to regain the storage space in the box, because they choose not to use 13th & K where there are lockers, and choose not to get into a program that will help them and give them a place for their stuff. I talked to a guy at the BID this morning, because they do outreach to try to convince these guys to get into a program. They said that because these guys don’t hang out during the day in the same spot, they don’t think they’ve developed the relationship with them. I’m thinking about approaching them myself, but then again, I might become a target for their anger.