JUDGE ORDERS D.C. FINED UNTIL SHELTERS IMPROVED

Eight months after the District agreed in court to improve its shelters for the homeless, a Superior Court judge ruled yesterday that the city has ignored its commitment in a "flagrant and inexcusable" manner, and should be fined $30,000 a day, beginning Tuesday, until deficiencies are corrected.

Judge Harriett R. Taylor signed an order agreeing on all points with advocates for the homeless that the city was in contempt of an agreement to expand its single-adult shelter system by 200 to 300 beds, to publicize shelter locations and to provide sanitary and safe conditions at the city's 12 shelters.

The judge also directed the city to stop using the District Building as a women's shelter, and to improve conditions at five men's shelters.

"The District's compliance . . . has been sporadic and tardy {and} frequently coerced under threat of contempt or other court action," Taylor said in a separate memorandum. "Strong measures are required."

Taylor, whose order came on a day that temperatures plummeted to the season's lowest yet, agreed with three separate motions submitted since August by the counsel team for the homeless, headed by attorney John W. Nields Jr.

Unlike previous orders from the judge, who ruled a year ago that the city's shelter system was "so inadequate and so inept" that the court would have to step in, no further judicial action is necessary for the fines to be levied.

The judge, in the order filed yesterday, said the fines -- ranging from $1,000 to $5,000 per violation -- must be paid beginning New Year's Eve. They would remain in effect until the city provides affidavits, from people with firsthand knowledge of the shelters, stating that the necessary changes have been made, Taylor ordered. Money collected from fines would be paid to the court to benefit single or unattached homeless people in the District, according to the order.

City officials met last night to address the new order, said Rae Parr-Moore, Department of Human Services spokeswoman, and had no immediate response.

Claude E. Bailey, special counsel to the D.C. corporation counsel, the city's legal department, said that "a lot of the things the court has ordered us to do, we've already done . . . . But there are some problem areas." He declined to elaborate on the problems.

"This is a very substantial order," Bailey added. "I guess the court is making it stiff because she considers it important."

Nields met with homeless rights advocate Mitch Snyder outside the private Community for Creative Non-Violence shelter, at Second and D streets NW, and, during a windblown news conference, said that both men hoped the fines would prompt the city to respect the agreement reached in April.

"We are hopeful, instead of continuing to violate the order, {the city} will comply," Nields said.

"The issue, it seems to me, is . . . : Is there anybody responsible for seeing the city complies with this order?"

City officials have repeatedly argued that Initiative 17, a referendum passed by D.C. voters in 1984 that mandates overnight shelter for anyone who needs it, is unworkable and too expensive.

During court hearings this summer and fall, city emergency shelter personnel said that the shelter law cost taxpayers $27 million last year, and that the cost would rise to $32 million this year.

Homeless rights advocates, including Snyder, have said that most of that cost has been related to family shelters. The city relies heavily on for-profit motels to house homeless families, accounting for about 75 percent of the expense last year.

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