Are NIMBYs who want to stop a new homeless shelter from locating on Anacostia’s main street justified?

It’s a tough question. One of the greatest lessons learned from America’s urban ghetto period in the late 20th Century was that if too many poor people are clustered together in a single area, that area becomes almost impossible for any of them to escape. Upward social mobility requires a mix of incomes. The line between providing services where they’re needed most and sending a neighborhood spiraling down towards becoming a ghetto is a difficult one to place.

And so, I think GGW contributor Veronica Davis is justified when she says “plans to put a homeless shelter in the middle of the business district, especially one without any ground-floor retail component, would impede Historic Anacostia’s progress.”

Historic Anactosia has been one of the city’s worst ghettos for decades, but these days it is improving, and if those improvements are to continue it’s important that key locations along the commercial main street (Good Hope Road) be allowed to become storefronts. If they aren’t, Anacostia might backslide into a difficult-to-escape poor enclave.

But even if all that is true, the shelter has got to go someplace, and should be convenient for its users, which are in Historic Anacostia. Therefore it isn’t good enough for opponents of the plan to just say “no.” They’re obligated to propose a reasonable alternative.

So what is the alternative? I think Veronica Davis has struck on a great idea:

“Locate a restaurant or retail business on the street level where the residents of the homeless shelter could have employment and gain some skills. The residences could be on the upper floor. This would allow for provision of social services and create jobs, while energizing the street level.”

The street needs a storefront, and homeless people need jobs. Why not kill two birds with one stone? Of course, adding retail increases the complexity of the project. The developer (Calvary Women’s Services) would need something to sell, and they might have to enlarge the building in order to accommodate both a store and a shelter. It would cost more up front, and charities don’t often have extra cash sitting around.

But including a store is such an improvement! It’s such a win-win, for both neighborhood residents and shelter users! If we can’t find a way to make it happen, or to make some other equally good alternative happen, then we are failing. Failing both to provide for the needs of the neighborhood, and failing to provide adequate services to the homeless users of the shelter.

It may not be justifiable to deny the shelter a home, but I think it is reasonable to ask that the homeless shelter be added in a way that doesn’t contribute to a neighborhood backslide. Ground floor retail may be a way to satisfy both needs.