GRAVY TRAIN NOT EASY TO BOARD

Entering the Office of Emergency Shelter and Support Services in Southwest Washington yesterday, I had to cancel my plans to apply for a welfare grant -- and not just because office workers kicked me out after discovering that I was interviewing clients for a story.

After reading an article by Washington Post reporter Sharon LaFraniere on Sunday about District residents who received rent and mortgage assistance even though some of them had incomes of as much as $77,000 a year, a few of my middle-class friends laughingly wondered how they could get in on the deal.

I wondered, too.

But let me tell you, it takes more chutzpah than I've got to elbow past a klatch of poor people, even to pretend to apply for this money, as I was doing. As for those who actually took the money to make payments on their $200,000 homes, one word that comes to mind is greedy.

The sign on the wall of the Emergency Assistance Program room said I was entitled to apply. "You have the right . . . ," it read. But there were people who obviously had a greater need, and casual inquiries about their problems revealed that the program was not working as well for them as it had for some of those people with big bucks and political connections.

There were women and children in desperate search of a few dollars to stave off eviction complaining that the emergency assistance office had put them on hold so long that they could wait no longer.

"We're being set out today," one mother was heard pleading.

There were elderly people who said they were literally dying for money to buy a window air conditioner.

Yet a former D.C. Superior Court judge was able to receive $9,000 to make back mortgage payments on a $198,000 house. One of Mayor Marion Barry's campaign workers received more than $6,000 to make back mortgage payments on a $160,000 house.

Why these people could not qualify for bank loans -- not to mention bankruptcy -- was beyond me.

The woman with the two children certainly did not have those options.

D.C. Council member H.R. Crawford (D-Ward 7), who oversees the city's Department of Human Services, told me that it was perfectly acceptable for middle-class people to get in on the deal.

"Remember that it was the city, not the city council, that passed Initiative 17, guaranteeing everybody -- regardless of income -- the right to shelter," Crawford said. "This legislation does not discriminate against persons who hold titles because, as you know, titles don't necessarily mean money. There are a lot of people wearing three-piece suits who are having serious financial difficulty."

Crawford said that "99 percent" of the people who received money from the emergency assistance program had incomes below the poverty line. However, according to proposed legislation that would put a ceiling on the incomes of those eligible for the program, about 17 percent of the people who received grants had incomes above 150 percent of the poverty line.

Crawford also said it was not true that middle-class beneficiaries of the program either worked for politicians or had contributed to their campaigns.

"The majority are just your average hard-working citizens," he said.

Nevertheless, some of those average hard-working citizens were not faring so well at the assistance office yesterday.

One woman, who lives in a one-bedroom apartment with her two children ("It's a big bed," she said, smiling), said she has been trying for five years to get the government to grant her a security deposit on a two-bedroom apartment.

She said she was a clerical worker and single parent who had been treated like a "nobody" by emergency assistance personnel. She was just about to give details of what she called "rude treatment" when my identity as a reporter was discovered and I was asked to leave.

Perhaps it was my sneakers and blue jeans that worked against me. Next time, I'll wear a suit to ensure that I am treated like other middle-class people so favored by this program.

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