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BID Programs > Homeless Services > A Short History of Downtown Homeless Services Short History of Homeless Services in Downtown
Mitch Snyder was a hardcore homeless advocate in Washington, DC, during the 1970s and ‘80s, who established homeless shelters and focused international attention on homelessness. Back then, street homelessness was becoming rampant, brought on by a lack of jobs, a dearth of affordable housing and institutionalized patients being systematically released from state hospitals. In the early ‘70s, Snyder joined the Community for Creative Non-Violence (CCNV), a homelessness activist group. He and other CCNV activists entered and occupied the abandoned old Federal City building on Second Street NW, between D and E Streets, on a temporary basis. However, to keep from losing the building, they refused to leave. After a protracted battle, the Reagan Administration conceded to the homeless advocates and Snyder received city support to renovate the building. CCNV, which is run by volunteers, evolved into a 1,350-bed shelter, the largest in the country, and now is the home of the DC
Central Kitchen, Clean and Sober Streets, Unity Health Care and two separate shelter programs - Open Door and John Young.
In addition to Federal City/CCNV, other shelters, designed as temporary places of refuge, sprang up throughout the city in church basements and community centers. Homeless people with short-term financial or personal problems managed to work their way into permanent housing, but those with physical disabilities, mental health, substance abuse or multiple problems became stuck.
In 1987, Father Ed Guinan, the founder of 15-year-old Zacchaeus Community Kitchen, moved the well-patronized soup kitchen from near 14th and Q Streets NW to First Congregational United Church of Christ at 10th and G Streets NW. John Mack, the church’s pastor, openly welcomed the kitchen, which served a morning breakfast to all and dinner to women only.
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Eleven years later, the Downtown BID set up and funded the Downtown Services Center at the church. The Center brought together various DC nonprofits to assist the 300 to 400 homeless individuals who already gathered at the church for breakfast. The Center also provided showers and laundry facilities. In 2000, the Fannie Mae Foundation bestowed its Good Neighbor Award on the Downtown BID, recognizing its exemplary work with the homeless population through the Downtown Services Center. The Center closed seven years later when First Congregational Church began demolishing its building as part of a project to build a new church, homeless services facility and 140,000 square feet of office space. At that time, the Downtown BID shifted its homeless services focus toward a pragmatic, street-to-independence outreach program to move the chronically homeless into Housing First.
Thus, Housing First, a progressive approach to end chronic homelessness, became the Downtown BID’s blueprint for addressing a persistent problem. The US Interagency Council on Homelessness endorses Housing First as a best practice for governments and social services to use as a tool to end homeless. The model, gaining popularity across the country, recognizes that the solution to homelessness is, essentially, housing. So the most urgent step is to reintegrate the most hard-to-serve homeless population into stable housing and connect them to supportive services that can help them remain housed. To date, the Downtown BID has moved 125 homeless persons into permanent supportive housing, with 97% still residing in those homes.
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