No easy solutions

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It, cleaning up the nation’s capital.

Last month, President Trump signed an executive order titled, “Making the District of Columbia Safe and Beautiful.” It calls on law enforcement to crack down on crime, and bans homeless encampments on federal property.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: So will clearing out tents improve the city, or just move the homeless elsewhere?

WORLD Reporter Josh Schumacher has the story.

JOSH SCHUMACHER: Stanton Park sits just a few blocks East of the U-S Supreme Court in Washington. Late on a Tuesday morning, the park features mothers watching over children on a playground, squirrels roaming to and fro, and the occasional cyclist passing through.

It also features National Park Service signs prohibiting alcohol consumption, letting pets off their leashes, and camping on park property

That no camping rule is about to be enforced a bit more rigorously throughout the city.

In March, President Donald Trump directed the National Park Service to clear homeless encampments from all its property in the city. The National Park Service told WORLD last week it was still deciding how it would enforce the directive.

Organizations helping the homeless are also considering what the order means for those it affects.

LINDSAY: Some people are just a paycheck away from becoming homeless themselves. Others have been on the street for decades.

Jim Lindsay is the executive director of Christ House, a hospital for homeless men north of Downtown D.C. Volunteers with the Point in Time Count in D.C. tallied nearly 10,000 people as homeless last May, more than triple the national average. Lindsay says he understands where the President is coming from with his order to clean up the Beltway.

LINDSAY: I mean, none of us love having the environment of having tents and trashed running across the lawn and stuff. But I think that it's not a magical solution. It might move the homeless away, but they're still here. They're still somewhere.

But where is that “somewhere?” Sidewalks in other parts of the city?… parks that aren’t run by the National Park Service?… How about homeless shelters? Many shelters hit capacity over the winter, according to the Interagency Council on Homelessness. And even with enough shelter beds, advocates say some homeless do not want to go there.

DIPETRO: The reason that some people do not want to go to shelters is 'cause they've had terrible experiences with them. That said, they can go to encampments and have bad experiences.

Barbara DiPietro, senior policy director at the National Health Care for the Homeless Council, says shelters aren’t always better than living out on the streets.

She says you can have your stuff stolen from you at a shelter or at an encampment. And depending on how shelters are run, residents are not immune from abuse either.

DIPIETRO: I'm not arguing for encampments here, but I am clarifying the fallacy that shelters are awesome.

Advocates say officials need to focus on addressing the root causes of homelessness, not just where the homeless camp out. Causes include substance abuse and mental illness,but in a city as expensive as the capital, poverty is also a driving factor. Jesse Rabinowitz works with the National Homelessness Law Center.

RABINOWITZ: In D.C., housing is so expensive that you need to work 80 hours a week, a minimum, 79 hours at minimum wage to afford a one-bedroom rental.

The City of Washington offers numerous housing voucher programs to help people pay some of their rent. But according to Christ House director Jim Lindsay, those voucher programs have a downside.

LINDSAY: Those places with the vouchers don't require people to be clean and sober, you know, so you can live there and you have a roof over your head, but there's nothing really helping them with the underlying problems of alcoholism, drug abuse, dealing with their mental illness if they have some.

Staying housed requires more than material resources. That’s why three decades ago, Christ House established a 37-apartment facility called Kairos House.

LINDSAY: It’s a very structured program. It's a spiritual recovery program…

Men in the program go to Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous meetings, as well as church services.

LINDSAY: And they can stay there for as long as they want, and we actually have people that have been there since we opened almost 30 years ago.

Lindsay says fixing homelessness will require cleaning up people’s lives—not just public parks.

LINDSAY: We're happy that we have such a place, but I think there's a greater need for even more more space than we have. And I think that removing the homeless encampments is not really solving anything.

For WORLD, I’m Josh Schumacher in Washington D.C.

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