Pray For DC General Family Shelter to Close

D.C.’s shelter for homeless families: A dead-end village that must be closed

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 You’ve probably never heard of N Street Village, but it’s a nonprofit where more than 1,400 homeless women are fed, clothed, housed, educated, healed and counseled every year.

 For more than 40 years, N Street Village has been an example of how a small, properly run homeless shelter in downtown Washington can serve the needy effectively and compassionately. The shelter continued to fulfill that mission even as Logan Circle changed around it, shifting from Prostitution Central to a neighborhood of million-dollar condos and high-priced restaurants.

 N Street Village is the polar opposite of the ghetto the city has created at D.C. General, an abandoned hospital in Southeast Washington that serves as the largest family shelter in the nation’s capital. On Sunday, three of my colleagues at The Washington Post published an investigation into the dysfunction and decay at D.C. General. The alleged sexual assaults, vermin, filthy water and lack of heat are exactly what happens when we herd hundreds of vulnerable parents and children into one huge facility hidden from the city’s upwardly mobile eyes. And not even the disappearance and presumed death of 8-year-old Relisha Rudd have made a real dent in our apathy.For years, I’ve been visiting this place, and it always takes a while to shake off the smells, the sounds and the feelings of a dead-end village. It’s not the homeless parents and their kids who give you that feeling. No. You meet bouncy girls with cute braids, a high school valedictorian or a scootering little boy, and you marvel at the optimism and light they still have in a part of the city that no one wants to see.

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Please Pray for tFamilies but Also Pray for Relisha Rudd She is Out there somewhere her kidnapper is dead he killed his wife We need to see her come home like Elizabeth Smart. Lord Please Bring her home.