PRIVATE HOMELESS AID MAY LOSE D.C. FUNDS

2 PROGRAMS' DIRECTORS CRITICIZE CITY'S EMPHASIS ON PROVIDING EMERGENCY SHELTER

Two programs designed to help the homeless move out of city shelters and into permanent housing face extinction because the District government says funds must go toward emergency housing needs, officials of the privately run projects said yesterday.

If their city funding is canceled, the officials warned, the homeless problem will be exacerbated because there will be fewer ways for the homeless to break their dependence on emergency housing, and their numbers in city shelters will increase.

"They would be stuck in a system that doesn't allow people to escape," said Ann Ryan, executive director of one of the programs, New Endeavors for Women.

"It's a giant step backwards," said Tony Russo, executive director of the other program, ConServe.

"One of the things we do is we get people out," he said. "We release a bit of the steam off the valve, if you will, and if there is no one . . . getting out of emergency shelters, then you will have the whole system back up, and it will become a crisis and it will operate perpetually as a crisis."

A spokesman for the D.C. Social Services Commission said last night that he had no information about the fate of New Endeavors for Women and ConServe, but he said the city had not given up on seeking ways to move the homeless out of emergency shelters and into long-term housing.

"The city government is committed to providing emergency shelter for families and stabilizing those families by way of permanent housing," said the spokesman, Edward Sargent.

Ryan and Russo said city officials told them the programs were in jeopardy because a 1984 referendum and a recent consent decree have forced the District to concentrate on emergency shelter, not on two programs geared to long-range solutions.

Under the terms of Initiative 17, every homeless person in the District who seeks it is entitled to overnight shelter, while the April consent decree set standards for emergency shelters that include limitations on crowding. The consent decree resulted from legal action taken by activists for the homeless.

"They said they were being sued by all these advocates to provide emergency shelter, and if that was the case, that's all they would be able to provide," Russo said.

"Kind of in an almost spiteful way, the city's saying, 'Well, if you're going to sue us, we're not going to provide anything but emergency shelter,' " Ryan said.

Ryan and Russo said their programs are intended to provide guidance and counseling to residents in emergency shelters, so they can find permanent housing and jobs. As of last month, 3,415 people were being housed in emergency shelters, most of them in motels at city expense.

ConServe, which receives $300,000 from the city, does not operate a shelter itself but instead works with the homeless to enable them to move from emergency housing into permanent housing. Since it began in February 1987, Russo said, it has placed 100 families.

The city funding provides rent subsidies to each family of up to $350 a month for a year, and it pays for a ConServe staff of six that helps the families find day care, health care, employment training and other services.

On Aug. 17, Russo said, the city told ConServe to stop finding housing for new families, and said it would cut off existing rent subsidies and might end support for ConServe's staff. The organization has few other sources of revenue, Russo said, and probably could not continue without city funds.

If subsidies are cut off, the families might have to return to emergency shelters, such as the Capitol City Inn, he said.

In the long run, this would be more expensive to the city because it costs approximately $55 a day to house families in motels, compared with the $30 a day per family that the city pays ConServe in the form of the rent subsidies and funding for staff.

"I don't think it's logical at all," Russo said.

New Endeavors for Women, which began a year ago and receives $300,000 from the city, provides beds, meals and support to 39 women in a city-owned building at 611 N St. NW, Ryan said. Seventy percent of the women have come from emergency shelters.

Using a staff of 13, the program helps the women find jobs and housing, plan budgets and open savings accounts, with most women staying an average of four to five months. Since it began, Ryan said, 140 women have used the facility and 80 percent of them are now in permanent housing.

But city officials told Ryan on Aug. 30 that they needed the building for emergency shelter, and there appear to be no plans to fund New Endeavors at a different location, she said.

Because this means the women who are now in the program will have no place to go, they might have to use emergency housing, which means the District will not have gained any space and will have ended a program that was finding permanent solutions, she said.

"It doesn't make sense," Ryan said.

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