Volunteers from the Homeless Children’s Playtime Project testified twice before City Council in 2005 about the need for more services for families in shelters and an increase in affordable housing. Here is an excerpt from our testimony:

The traumatizing effect of homelessness on children could be dramatically reduced by the introduction of therapeutic programs in the family shelters. The services provided by volunteers are often the only services children living in emergency family shelters receive. They do not substitute for professional mental health and family support services. More services are needed to ensure that children are protected from the harmful effects of poverty and homelessness and that they are prepared to succeed in school. While we try to do what we can as private citizens, as volunteers we can only do so much in the face of out-of-control housing costs and city priorities that render homeless children invisible. As residents of the District of Columbia, we have some questions we would like answers to:

• What is the city’s plan to provide more support services to children in shelters? Every shelter needs sufficient play spaces, homework spaces, daily access to books and toys and trained staff and volunteers providing daily therapeutic and educational  activities  for  the  children.  The  Greentree  Shelter in Bethesda  and  the  Community  of  Hope in D.C.  are  examples  of local shelters with paid staff providing daily therapeutic and educational programming to children in shelters. The months and years that children spend living in shelters are a prime opportunity to provide therapeutic support services while families are a “captive audience” in the shelter system.

• What is the city’s plan to eliminate the waiting list for emergency family shelter? Children are waiting six months or more for emergency shelter. Most of these families live in crowded, unsafe situations doubled up with relatives, sleeping in cars, hotels, or bus stations while waiting for shelter. The city has a waiting list of six months to access emergency family shelter and needs to make good on its promise to provide 300 additional family shelter units in D.C. immediately.

• What will the D.C. City Council do to end homelessness among families? Homelessness among families has tripled in the last five years. In 2004 alone, nearly 12,000 units of affordable housing were lost due to policy decisions like the conversion of once affordable housing into luxury developments. Forty thousand people including 8,400 families are on the city’s waiting list for public housing. What is the plan of action to reverse this devastating trend before more children and their families become victims of the growing storm of poverty?

While local politicians tragically fail to respond to the growing housing emergency in our city, precious children are celebrating more than one birthday while living stuck in dirty and dangerous shelters. We all witnessed how quickly the city can mobilize in response to a national tragedy. In order to help the survivors of hurricane Katrina displaced several states away, the city organized comprehensive, wrap-around assistance resulting in more help than was needed. Dozens of cribs mysteriously appeared in the armory in days while many babies at D.C. Village went without cribs for years. As a result of the city’s commitment, each family that came to the D.C. Armory secured housing within a month. The city must likewise respond to the tragic hurricane of poverty displacing thousands of our own children each year in our own backyard.

Testimony By T’roya Jackson,

Ten-year-old DC Village Resident and Participant in HCPP Weekly Activities at the Shelter
December 22, 2005, DC City Council Hearing

My name is T’roya Jackson and when I arrived at DC Village I began to get sick more and I was scared because one of the old residents was mean and yells a lot and her daughter showed me bad pictures and because of that I started to pull out my hair and wet the bed and if you can help us please do. When we became homeless I started to worry about where we are going to live and how. And I worry about my mom because she gets sick a lot and she has a tumor and I worry about everybody. And when I see the kids at DC Village I get scared that they will hurt each other because they seem like they have a lot of anger and stress. Please help us but you do not have to worry because I will survive because God has me. When I grow up I want to be the mayor of DC and I know I will make it and my plan for the city is for it not to have to be a shelter and everybody will be in housing especially the children. And when I get my house I am going to thank the Lord for placing me there and I will dance. Please help the homeless. Thank you.

For more information on advocacy efforts to benefit homeless children and families, contact the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless at www.legalclinic.org.