3 AREA SITES ON HUD LIST FOR SHELTERS

FEDERAL SITES LISTED AS HOMELESS SHELTERS

The Department of Housing and Urban Development yesterday deemed 94 federal properties "suitable" as homeless shelters or soup kitchens, including three in the Washington area, paving the way for a takeover by the homeless of underused federal buildings and lots.

HUD, acting under court order, said 44 buildings and 50 land parcels nationwide -- including a 14-acre parking lot near the Pentagon, a two-story building at First and E streets NW and a 35-acre lot at Fort Meade in Anne Arundel County -- could be used to aid the homeless.

Currently, only two federally owned sites in the country house homeless people.

Not all of the 94 properties named yesterday are expected to become day or night centers for the homeless, but some could in as little as 45 days. First, local governments and homeless groups must apply to lease the individual properties for as little as a $1 a year plus operating expenses. Local and state occupancy codes then must be satisfied. In addition, a federal judge recently ruled that if any of the properties were being used by a federal agency, they would not have to be turned over.

This last condition could mean that the lot near the Pentagon, where migrant workers have been camping recently, may not become a homeless haven, federal officials said. Employees at the Navy Annex use it as a parking lot.

"We have people living in cars, at job sites," said Victoria Luna, a director of the Metropolitan Washington Union for the Homeless, who cheered HUD's action.

Luna said that if no other group applied to use the 35 acres at Fort Meade, her group would consider doing so. She also said that HUD's designation of the Pentagon lot gives her group new hope that the Navy and the General Services Administration would give at least part of the 14 acres to the homeless, who want to live there in trailers.

Other advocates for the homeless were not so delighted.

"It's really an insult given the enormity of the stock the federal government controls," said Mitch Snyder, spokesman for the region's largest homeless shelter, Community for Creative Non-Violence. "There should be 94 properties here in D.C., not 94 properties across the country.

"They have got huge places where they house inaugural equipment with nobody living in them but pigeons. And yet all they come up with in the District is a parking lot and a tiny building."

The vacant 1,500-square-foot building at First and E streets NW, near Snyder's CCNV shelter, could house at the most 50 people, according to Snyder.

Robert Hayes, New York counsel for the Coalition for the Homeless, said it was "shameful that it took a court order" to get the federal government to begin freeing unused property.

Hayes said that even after Congress passed the 1987 McKinney Act -- a law designed to make unneeded federal buildings and land available to shelter the homeless -- "the Reagan administration ground its teeth and did this in the most grudging way."

Last month, U.S. District Judge Oliver Gasch agreed with Hayes' group and other advocates for the homeless that federal agencies had been too slow in implementing the McKinney Act. Gasch ordered HUD to review at least half of the 335 federal properties listed as excess or surplus by yesterday and the rest by Jan. 12.

In response to the judge's order, HUD has reviewed 220 of those 335 properties thus far. The remaining 115 will be reviewed in the next two weeks and an additional list of properties suitable for homeless use will then be announced, according to James E. Schoenberger, HUD's general deputy assistant secretary for housing.

Gasch's order also requires HUD to press other federal agencies into making quarterly reports about their unused or underused federal properties and to review them for possible use for the homeless. Among factors HUD used to determine suitability were structural soundness of buildings, accessibility and environmental safety. Many properties listed throughout the country are in military installments or near lighthouses, dams and prisons.

"This has big implications, Schoenberger said. "Again, it depends on the homeless groups . . . . But at least it has the potential for being quite significant for the homeless population."

The Coalition for the Homeless estimates that 3 million people in the country are homeless.

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