An ambitious proposal to build seven new homeless shelters around the District of Columbia, with a price tag of $660 million, has been attacked on several fronts.
Aaron C. Davis reports on the controversies that have erupted in the background of a proposal by Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser "for a pricey new network of homeless shelters…" The problem, according to the investigative work of Davis and his Washington Post colleagues: that Mayor Bowser was too hasty in preparing the financial analysis to back up the plan.
According to a solicitation obtained by The Washington Post, a new office within Bowser’s administration issued a request on Friday for “real estate advisory services.” Interested firms had just one business day to respond. The deadline was Monday, and the winning bidder would have less than a week to produce a report analyzing the 30-year, $660 million, seven-shelter plan.
Davis also reported on the plan in February, when the Bowser Administration announced the locations targeted for new shelters. That article detailed the likely political difficulties in locating homeless shelters in new neighborhoods around the city. Back to the present day, Davis reports that the originally scheduled hearing date for the plan, April 19, is likely to be delayed.
Read the full story: Does the D.C. mayor have confidence in her plan for the homeless? She’s hiring an outsider to study it.
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