D.C.-FUNDED TRIPS FOR SENIORS IN PUBLIC HOUSING RAISE EYEBROWS

Most Friday mornings during the summer, tour buses carry about 90 senior citizens from District public housing to the Pennsylvania Dutch country for a day of sightseeing and dining, part of a travel program costing taxpayers $58,936 this year.

The out-of-town excursions are provided by the troubled D.C. Department of Public and Assisted Housing and paid for with funds that could be used to improve the city's dilapidated public housing.

The trips run from June 24 to Aug. 26 and include day visits to Baltimore Harbor, where residents are served lunch on a two-hour boat cruise. The agency also offers tenants a separate night out at a dinner theater in Columbia. The theater and harbor cruises alone cost the department $26,487, city records show.

All 3,600 residents 62 or older who live in the city's 19 senior public housing complexes are eligible for the trips, and residents may go on each of the three different kinds of trips once each summer. The housing department began paying for the annual travel in the late 1980s, during the administration of Mayor Marion Barry.

But a public housing advocate and at least one resident have complained that the money allocated for the trips should be used more prudently. Disrepair of units, rampant crime and high unemployment have steadily eroded the quality of life for many of the 30,000 residents in the District's 60 public housing complexes and 317 scattered sites. The housing department is rated the worst in the nation by the federal government.

City housing officials said the activities are designed to uplift the elderly residents. Many tenants, they said, suffer from loneliness, boredom and alcoholism. "A wholesome environment is fostered by several factors, very important ones being recreational and cultural experiences," acting housing Director Jasper F. Burnette said in a statement.

Other large public housing departments, such as those in Philadelphia and Baltimore, said that although they help to organize out-of-town trips for elderly residents, they require them to pay the costs. Tenants typically come up with the money by holding fund-raisers.

Housing agency officials in New York and Chicago said their agencies occasionally finance excursions for tenants but do not have programs as extensive as the District's.

"The message it sends me is that the people {in the District} who are making the decisions about these trips don't know or don't care" about what their real mission or mandate is, said Patricia Mullahy Fugere, executive director of the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless. "Their job is to provide decent, safe and sanitary affordable housing and not to be in the entertainment business."

Each year, as many as 2,000 senior citizens, including some from public housing, are taken on several out-of-town trips by the D.C. Department of Recreation and Parks, which uses a federal grant administered to it through the D.C. Office on Aging. The destinations include Baltimore, Annapolis and Chesapeake Beach in Calvert County, Md.

A city official said the funds for the public housing trips, which also are federally allocated, could be pumped into job training for residents, the hiring of more maintenance workers or the modernization and renovation of vacant units. The average cost of a routine renovation, for instance, is $1,200 to $1,500 a unit. Housing officials said that how the recreation funds are used is up to the housing director's discretion.

At least one recent housing director has looked into moving some of the funding for the summer trips to other programs but was advised by Mayor Sharon Pratt Kelly's staff not to touch it, according to a source who asked not to be identified.

Senior citizens constitute one of the largest voting blocs in the District and have among the highest voter turnout. The three leading mayoral candidates have been aggressively courting the group while campaigning for the Democratic primary next month.

Larry Smith, 26, an unemployed resident at the 158-unit Hopkins Apartments on the eastern edge of Capitol Hill, said he would like to see a job training program established at his complex instead of tenants being taken on trips courtesy of the housing department.

"It's crazy that the District is treating people to great meals and tours of the country in Pennsylvania while so many of us have no jobs or solutions to that," Smith said. "What are these trips all about? Is it an expensive way to keep people quiet about the fact that many of them live in real horrible conditions?"

The transportation costs for this summer's senior trips are $22,050, according to the housing department. The agency is paying $14,076 for the dinner theater expenses, $12,411 for the harbor cruises and $10,399 for the Pennsylvania Dutch Country excursions. Each trip has nine dates and two buses, usually carrying 45 to 47 residents each. One housing staff member is assigned to each bus.

Jemelia Redmond, 68, resident council president at James Apartments in Northwest, who has gone on the Baltimore Harbor and dinner theater trips, stressed the need for the program.

"Many of the seniors live quietly and don't do a whole lot," Redmond said. "This is just a once-a-year thing and they enjoy it immensely."

Responding to criticisms about the cost of the travel, Thelma Russell, 66, the seniors resident council president at Potomac Gardens in Southeast Washington, said, "I think we deserve the trips. We pay taxes, we worked, and now we are in the prime of our lives. But we are not monsters. Of course, we would be willing to give it up to help someone else."

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