DELINQUENT IN ITS DUTY

The District is supposed to shelter the homeless -- but it isn't happening. "In the interest of preventing human suffering and reducing the costs of providing medical care and police protection, and in recognition of the right of all persons to adequate overnight shelter, it is by the Electors declared the public policy of the District of Columbia to provide adequate overnight shelter to all homeless persons in the District of Columbia." With those words District voters overwhelmingly endorsed Initiative 17 and forged this city's commitment to sheltering the homeless. Unfortunately, Mayor Marion Barry, a vehement opponent of the law, and his administration have largely ignored the initiative, as well as legislation mandating services and shelter for homeless families. Advocates for the homeless have been forced to turn to the courts to force the mayor and other city officials to comply with the law.

Now the mayor and D.C. Council member Nadine Winter have convinced other members of the council to consider two pieces of legislation that would place limitations on the right to shelter, effectively repealing Initiative 17.

Those seeking to abrogate the right to shelter point to the cost, contending that expenditures for providing shelter take money away from other necessary social programs. It's true that the city spends far too much for the meager shelter and services it does provide to the homeless. But that is a result of mismanagement on the part of the administration and dereliction in oversight on the part of the D.C. Council. The taxpayers pay roughly $90 per day to feed and house a homeless mother and two children in a tiny room without a stove or refrigerator in the Pitts Hotel, for example. The D.C. government has a similar arrangement with other hotels in the city. In early 1988, the D.C. Council ordered the mayor to phase out these hotels and place families in small apartment-like units. The mayor has not complied, and the chairman of the Human Services Committee, H. R. Crawford, has refused to schedule a hearing on this.

The city government is also delinquent in obtaining federal matching funds. According to a report by D.C. auditor Otis Troupe, the federal government has withheld millions because of the Barry government's failure to adequately document its expenditures.

Those who want to repeal Initiative 17 talk about the homeless as if they were lazy, shiftless people taking advantage of the city's obligation to shelter by spending their days lounging in hotels and other shelters.

Actually, many of the homeless work at minimum-wage jobs that do not provide them with sufficient income to afford an apartment in the District's expensive housing market. Many others are disabled. Many cannot work because they have no one to care for their infants or sick children. Many spend their days trying to obtain job training, food stamps and other aid to which they're entitled.

The District is not being flooded with homeless, as some who would like to repeal Initiative 17 contend. Why would anyone want to come to the city's squalid and dangerous shelters? A study of the homeless, commissioned by the Barry administration, found that 80 percent of those interviewed were long-term D.C. residents. Of those homeless who recently moved here, the majority came looking for jobs, not handouts.

It is an abuse of home rule for the 13 members of the D.C. Council to attempt to overturn an initiative that was passed by 114,698 District voters. By seeking to overturn the right to shelter, rather than putting the question to the people, the Council disenfranchises the residents of the city far more than anything Congress has done.

What the council should do is force the city to renovate thousands of vacant public housing units in the District and pursue aggressively all federal monies available to address the homeless crisis. This will cost money, but it will be a small price compared with the pain suffered by those cut off from shelter altogether. -- Susanne Sinclair-Smith is director of the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless. She writes on behalf of the Housing Action Coalition, which comprises 28 providers of services to the District's homeless.

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