HALFWAY HOME

THE RENEWAL OF THE FEDERAL CITY SHELTER, 'TANTALIZINGLY UNFINISHED'

It is pretty much its old, ugly self on the outside -- one of the last of the 1940s temporary structures, unlovely from conception and long suffering from neglect -- but on the inside the Federal City Shelter is a heartening story of before and after.

The northern half of the building is before -- a dingy, broken, smelly, leftover place where leftout people can stay minimally dry and warm and get by somehow day to day. The southern half, though, is after -- light, clean, tidy, new.

Ordered but not exactly roomy, antiseptic but not unpleasant, efficient but far from extravagant, the southern part of the old tempo at 425 Second St. NW was rebuilt with a grudging $6.5 million grant from the federal government and timely assists from all over the place. The half-realized dream of Mitch Snyder of the Community for Creative Non-Violence, the project is "tantalizingly unfinished," in his apt words.

Work continues apace on the remaining objectives of Phase I: a third residential floor and, in the basement, medical facilities, trash compactor room, heating and air conditioning units, and electrical and plumbing systems for a fully-equipped central kitchen, main laundry room and community meeting room. Completing these, and making over the north wing in the image of the south, are the goals of Phase II. The cost will be about $5 million. So far, there is no evident source of funds.

People started moving into the new quarters late last month. At first, many did not want to leave the crummy familiarity of the north wing. By now, however, the word has got around -- clean showers, washer-dryers, more light, space and places to congregate -- and the reconditioned wing is beginning to look lived in. All of the beds (370 so far) are occupied; those still to come (204 on the third floor) will be filled right away, Snyder predicts.

There is a lot to be impressed by here, not least the architectural work by Conrad Levenson, Architects and Planners, the New York firm that undertook to design the shelter two winters ago with a tiny grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and the assistance of five advanced students at the architecture school of the City College of New York. (One of many nice touches is that two of those students, Domenick Schinco and Sergio Ghiano, graduated and were hired by Levenson, and hence were able to help build many of their own ideas.)

The initial plans were changed in two important respects. For cost reasons the idea of separate, doorless cubicles for individual guests was dropped -- "the most painful of a lot of painful choices Mitch had to make," recalls Clark Neuringer, project architect. And for philosophical reasons the notion of roomy, daytime "drop-in" centers, one each for men and women, was dismissed.

"What we are moving towards is a more normal, homelike environment," Snyder explains. "The transition from life on the streets to a traditional way of living is so tremendous, so immense, a lot of people simply can't make the leap. In this building we want to help along that process." The shelter now is open 24 hours a day; guests can remain in their beds or, in the new wing, gather in lounges strategically located on each of the residential floors.

But the initial design was strong enough to accommodate these changes, so that the results bear next to no resemblance to the snake-pit conditions of the huge, hostile warehouses for the homeless that are still the norm in some cities. The heart of the design was the concept of making each floor a "village" for about 200 guests, serviced from central facilities in the basement but each with its own bathrooms, lounges and dining rooms. This has been maintained, and the impersonality of barracks-like spaces has been significantly reduced by dividing the floors into six-bed bays.

Overall, the design is both felicitous and economical. True, in order to fit as many beds as possible the architects had to line things up in regimental rows, so that the corridors, especially, have a dry, institutional feel. But one of the better moves the Levenson team made was to take full advantage of all sources of natural light, with hallways ("avenues in the village," in Neuringer's description) running alongside all perimeter walls and interior lightwells.

And the south wing, in keeping with the idea of making this shelter a model -- or perhaps a laboratory -- for the nation, is a catalogue of ingenious details: a variety of relatively cheap walls that are sturdy and easy to maintain, vandalproof (or reasonably so) light fixtures, reinforced corners, and everywhere possible little touches of dignity that didn't cost much. The tiled bathroom floors, for instance, contain a simple, pretty, geometric pattern.

The building of this shelter seemed to take a long time, but it didn't. What took a long time was securing the federal money, which came through last summer, almost two years after President Reagan's campaign promise in the face of Snyder's hunger strike. With the money on hand last August, the architects got right to work; construction began in early September, while detailed design work was still going on. The D.C. government speeded up approval procedures way, way beyond expectations, and various private firms expedited deliveries and contributed this and that.

One hopes that the cubicles can at least be tried out when time comes to build the north wing. The dormlike six-bed bays are not objectionable and may even be preferable for many categories of guest, but the cubicles as designed contained features, such as built-in storage containers and shelves, that any human being could make use of. A prototype actually was built, with almost incredible speed -- and at a truly unbelievable projected price tag of less than $500 per unit -- by the Acme Steel Door Corp. of Brooklyn.

It's obvious that the new south wing of the Federal City Shelter is in no way a panacea. In fact, it focuses lots of unresolved issues. "Are we talking about emergency shelter? Or are we simply talking about lowering our standard of acceptability {for permanent low-income housing} ?" is a key question asked by architect Blake Chambliss (in "The Search for Shelter," a terse summation of the problem written by Nora Richter Greer and published last year by the American Institute of Architects). Others include: How much positive influence does an improved physical environment actually have upon human behavior? Which, and how extensive, are the social services necessary to help desperate people back to a "normal" existence? Where in the world is the money to come from?

Good questions all. But, on the other hand, this new shelter, even half done, is a wonderful thing, and it suggests other questions: Who said American ingenuity was a thing of the past? Who says American industry isn't up to the housing task? Who says architects don't care? Who says we can't build economically and effectively, can't humanely help and house the homeless?

Articles appear as they were originally printed in The Washington Post and may not include subsequent corrections.