CITY CAN'T MEET DEADLINE FOR CLOSING MOTEL FOR THE HOMELESS

The Capitol City Inn, the District's largest motel shelter for the homeless, will not meet Sunday's closing deadline and will continue to house homeless families -- now totaling 176 -- for another four to six weeks, city officials said yesterday.

Deputy Mayor Wylie Williams acknowledged that the city could not fulfill a promise made three months ago by Mayor Marion Barry to empty the private motel, which has sheltered homeless families for six years. Wylie said workers from the Department of Human Services tried in March to stop referring homeless people to the motel, which once housed 200 families. Those efforts were thwarted, he said, by an increase in the number of families needing shelter and a dearth of affordable permanent housing.

According to city figures, 337 homeless families sought housing in January, February and March of this year, compared with 315 during the same time last year. The city has been able to find housing for 390 families, more than in previous months but not enough to make a dent in the population at the Capitol City Inn, Williams said. A total of 436 families now live in motel shelters around the city.

"As long as you have Initiative 17," said Williams, referring to a four-year-old law guaranteeing overnight shelter to everyone who wants it, "you're going to have a problem. Because there's no bottom to it."

He added that Barry "is very frustrated by . . . the circumstances that prevented us from getting people out of this shelter."

Advocates for the homeless and community groups that offered help in closing the Capitol City Inn said yesterday that they were not surprised by the city's failure. They accused the Barry administration of a lack of planning on how to relocate the families. The city has yet to produce a comprehensive plan to close the motel, one of several that have cost the city $14.2 million for shelter in the past two years.

"Considering the slow movement I've seen, I'd be surprised if they moved them out by May," said Susanne Sinclair-Smith, director of the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless, which recently protested that the city, in order to close the Capitol City Inn, was turning away homeless families or forcing them to spend nights sitting in hallways of other shelters.

D.C. Council member Harry Thomas Sr. (D-Ward 5) expressed frustration with the delay and complained that the city is spending far too much money for too little care in motel shelters. "This is the worst facility in the city for anybody to house anybody," he said of the Capitol City Inn.

City officials acknowledged yesterday that another motel, the Hospitality House on Georgia Avenue NW across from Walter Reed Army Medical Center, has recently decided to end its role as a homeless shelter. That, they said, further jeopardized the city's efforts to close the Capitol City Inn.

Hospitality House, which has provided room for as many as 52 homeless families, this week housed 10 families, hotel manager Leroy Bowen said. As a result, the city has come to depend on the Budget Inn, a 52-room hotel on New York Avenue NE that is now fully rented to homeless families placed by the city.

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