New faces of homeless in D.C.

WASHINGTON — At 6 a.m., a block from the manicured lawns of the White House, Poppy Cali starts his days.

Cali, 36, a Navy veteran, wakes up just after dawn, before security can find him sleeping on the steps of the General Services Administration building near the grate he uses to warm himself in the winter.

He carries two bags, a yellow suitcase and a small black rolling carry-on. In the yellow bag are his shoes; in the other are his clean clothes, underwear, socks, chef jackets and a tie for job interviews. Around his arm is a leather strap with two keys to a safe-deposit box where he stores his IDs. His real name he keeps to himself; in the streets he goes only by Poppy Cali.

"If you lose your ID, it's a wrap," he said. "You're lost forever."

For a year, he's slept near Rawlins Park on 18th and E streets Northwest in the shadows of the most powerful people in America.

Searching for a job

While Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Vice President Joseph Biden and President Obama drive by in their motorcades toward the White House on the left and the State Department on the right, he searches for a full-time job.

"There's a lot of vets out here on the streets," he said. "I've seen men lay right in the middle of the road and people walk by like they're not there. If that was a dog, wouldn't someone save it?"

The government buildings are like islands in a sea of struggling Americans.

As policymakers debate health-care bills and promise economic recovery, Cali tries to stay afloat, as do thousands of others in the District of Columbia and millions across the country.

About $1.5 billion from the $787 billion stimulus package was set aside to go toward preventing homelessness, but most of the money hasn't been distributed yet, advocates for the homeless say.

Some who live in the parks in the capital are mentally ill with no one to care for them. Among them are conspiracy theorists whose fantasies led them to the streets just beyond the White House.

However, more and more people like Cali — sometimes alone, sometimes with their families — are homeless as they fight to survive a spiraling descent into destitution.

They are the new faces Ken Barnum sees in his office every day. The Department of Veterans Affairs social worker used to work mostly with older veterans who suffered from mental problems and addictions. Now he sees young mothers with two or three children; he sees young, able men and couples who have nowhere else to go.

"We're used to seeing someone in their 40s or 50s who has mental illness or substance-abuse problems or both," he said. "Now, because of the change in the economy, we get lots and lots of new homeless. They were working construction, menial retail, warehousing jobs, and they get laid off. At first they can rent a room. From a room they go to a shelter, and someone says, 'Aren't you a vet?' and they come to me."

Counting homeless

According to a Washington, D.C., count of the homeless this year, Cali is one of about 6,200 homeless adults and children on the streets of the District of Columbia, an increase of nearly 7.5 percent since 2007.

The nation's capital has one of the worst homelessness problems in the U.S. and almost triple the number of homeless per 10,000 people as the national average, according to 2007 statistics from the National Alliance to End Homelessness.

In the past year, family homelessness has increased at least 15 percent in D.C., partly because of the rising cost of living and the economic downturn. Young women with children looking for places to live overwhelm city services.

"Indications are that homelessness is going up," said Nan Roman, president of the National Alliance to End Homelessness. "Largely it's because of increased unemployment, housing costs and poverty."

Even before the economy collapsed last fall, the battle against homelessness seemed to be flagging.

According to an annual report on homelessness the Department of Housing and Urban Development released last month, the number of homeless across the country barely changed from 2007 to 2008, but family homelessness and chronic homelessness rose slightly.

That was a change.

"The prior years, the numbers had been going downward. The fact that it flattened out is not promising," Roman said. Indications for this year suggest homelessness is rising. "It's a little alarming that our progress is reversing so quickly."

At the Virginia Williams Family Resource Center in Northeast D.C., the waiting room is crowded with young women holding babies and older moms weary from the search for a place to get out of the heat.

Sometimes they've come from other states for help. However, resources are decentralized and shelter space is shrinking, advocates say, and the local homeless problem is inflated by people from neighboring Maryland and Virginia.

"Everybody thinks this is the nation's capital and they should be able to come and change their lives," said Omega Butler, the director of the center.

Elaine Kargbo is a lab technician, and three years ago she moved her two teenage daughters and her niece to D.C. when she got a job with a private clinic.

No funding

The funding didn't come through for the clinic so she found herself with no job and no money. She stayed with a friend and worked temporary jobs, and then she met a man. They moved in together, but six months ago he tried to touch one of her daughters. She packed up the girls and left.

Kargbo didn't have an address so couldn't qualify for temporary aid. She asked for subsidized housing but must wait until Sept. 10 for an appointment to apply.

She recently went to the resource center for help.

"Who did you call for help when you left the house?" asked Jacqueline Leake, the intake counselor.

"I called some of my friends, but they weren't able to provide accommodations," Kargbo said. "I've been going out on interviews, and I might be getting a job soon."

Kargbo pulled out a small plastic bag and riffled through it before laying out her daughters' birth certificates, her certificate of guardianship for her niece, her ID, her daughter's college-acceptance letter and Social Security cards.

Leake photocopied the documents.

For six months, the family has lived in Kargbo's Chevy Cavalier in one of the poorest quarters of D.C.

Ann Hawkins, a social worker, brings Kargbo food, helps her pay to keep her phone on so prospective employers can call and allows Kargbo and her girls to shower at her house.

"Why in Washington, D.C., in the nation's capital, is a woman and her three children in a car?" Hawkins asked. "They refill that 'cash for clunkers' program, no problem. That money should go to her, to the homeless."