INAUGURATION PUSHING HOMELESS FROM 'THEIR' PARK
By Lynne Duke
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 20, 1989
; Page A20
Tee Houston sat on a blanket at the northeastern edge of Lafayette Park
yesterday, a cart of her clothes, blankets and assorted other belongings
overflowing beside her.
The 34-year-old homeless woman and mother of two girls was puffing on a
Kool cigarette and chatting with a street compatriot, Wallace (Wild Bill)
Duve, 30, when an inaugural sightseer with a canvas tote bag slung over his
shoulder stopped and snapped a picture of this all-too-common sight on
Washington's streets.
Houston exploded. "What you think I am, an animal? You think I'm in a zoo?"
As the sightseer briskly went on his way, Houston said, "I hate that. That
burns me up."
Duve, who was homeless and in the park during the 1985 inauguration,
reached down to a brown paper bag on the ground. "You see this bag here?
During the inauguration, that's the way we feel, like a piece of trash in the
street. That's the way people are treating us."
The place dubbed "peace park" by demonstrators, where homeless people
recline during the day and watch the world go by, has been seized by the
inaugural machine. Its perimeter is ringed with fencing and bleachers that are
13 rows high. Miles and miles of cable snake along its brick walkways.
Its lawns are jam packed with 32 trailers for the media, the National Park
Service, U.S. Park Police, the telephone company, construction crews and a
commissary. And tourists fill the sidewalks around the park, gawking at the
sights of the nation's capital, including the men, women and children who have
no place to call home.
Homeless people flock to the park, several said, because they feel a sense
of belonging with the people there, including the perennial protesters against
such things as war, the arms race and pollution.
Their access to the park, however, has been curtailed during the last few
weeks as inaugural preparations have intensified. They have been allowed only
on the park's northeastern fringe. Today, they will be fenced in there, in an
area set aside for demonstrators.
To Duve, who carries an outdated PTL Television Network employee
identification card bearing his name and picture, it is another slap in the
face.
"They don't want the homeless out there to interfere with their
inauguration," he said.
"I finally put it in perspective," said a peace demonstrator who calls
himself Song. "We're being bleachered to death."
Lt. Hugh Irwin of the U.S. Park Police said that homeless people lying or
sitting on the sidewalks could impede the flow of traffic and block access to
one of the metal detectors through which people have to pass to gain access to
the parade.
"I've talked to a couple of them over there and I told them that I don't
want them on the sidewalk," Irwin said. "I'll move them into the demonstration
area."
Sleeping overnight in the park is banned, so Houston and other homeless
people who spend their days there go across the street to the steps of the
U.S. Court of Appeals and U.S. Court of Claims at night.
"On a good cold night, you get 20 or 30 of them, like a city," said Park
Police Officer David Mulholland.
In Lafayette Park and other areas of downtown Washington, 1,330 different
people were served between January and October of last year by a Health Care
for the Homeless mobile unit, said Dr. Janelle Goetcheus, a physician who
works with the program.
Far fewer homeless people bed down around the Capitol, where police were
facing the removal of only one homeless person yesterday. The man, in his
early seventies, is homeless by choice and has lived beneath the east steps of
the Capitol for 13 years to protest government benefits to veterans, said
Capitol Police spokesman Dan Nichols. The man was expected to submit to arrest
rather than leave, as he has done on 21 other occasions, Nichols said.
In Lafayette Park, Houston, who has been homeless eight months, and Duve,
homeless for about four years, said they plan to make the best of Inauguration
Day.
Houston said she'll watch the parade with her fiance, Vernon Parker, who
she said recently started a fast food job as a "chicken man." And she said
she'll try to send a silent message.
"I'm gonna be right there," she said. "I'm gonna look one of these
dignitaries right in the eyes because their daughter or granddaughter could be
out here with me. You never know what the future holds."
"I'm gonna be panhandling the parade," Duve said. But beyond the expected
windfall, the experience, for him, will be what he called "S.S.D.D. Same
{Stuff} , Different Day."
Articles appear as they were originally printed in The Washington
Post and may not include subsequent corrections.
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