ARLINGTON, Va.–Arlington, Virginia’s Court House neighborhood is getting a major new addition in the form of a 24-hour, state-of-the-art homeless center, part of the suburban county’s strategy to combat homelessness.
Kathy Sibert, president and chief executive of Arlington Street People’s Assistance Network, known as A-SPAN, said the center will serve as a model for other facilities in a nation seeking to serve the more than 3.5 million people experiencing homelessness yearly. It’s the first of its kind in the Greater Washington, D.C. area.
“I absolutely think it will become a prototype to expand nationally,” Sibert said in an interview. “What happens in the homeless service provider space is everybody wants to do the best thing, the thing that will end homelessness the quickest. So everyone is very interested in this and I am speaking to a lot of groups and giving a lot of tours.”
Sibert said A-SPAN toured an updated homeless services facility in Bergen County, New Jersey earlier this year, using that shelter as a model for the center in Arlington.
The new space, occupying the second and third floors of a seven-story county building, offers a variety of important services, including five medical respite beds and an on-site nurse practitioner.
Ayana Bellamy, housing program manager for the non-profit A-SPAN, said the facility’s “one-stop-shop” component will provide more efficient assistance, with a 30-day turnaround goal of providing Arlington’s homeless population with permanent housing.
“Now that we have the walk-in center, the shelter and the medical respite all in one building,” Bellamy said, “I think it’s going to serve as many individuals as we can.”
The new center, located a block away from the outdated shelter, features an up-to-date classroom that Bellamy said will offer homeless clients the opportunity to learn job skills and improve their future employment outlook.
At this point, there are 36 beds for men and 14 for women. Bellamy said the disparity is driven by several factors, including that women are more likely to be taken in by friends and family in times of need, and that men tend to feel more comfortable staying at a community shelter.
Bellamy thinks potential clients will feel comfortable at the new center.
This building is awesome,” Bellamy said. “If anything, we’re going to have to convince the clients of leaving now because it’s so beautiful.”
The space features a modern, full-production kitchen.
Kurt Larrick, communications manager for Arlington County, said the two-floor facility is part of a broader ten-year redevelopment plan aiming to making the Court House neighborhood a “destination place” for residents of Northern Virginia.
As for the old shelter, Larrick said the county plans to host community discussions to consider how the outdated facility will fit into the neighborhood’s ten-year redevelopment. In the short term, he said it will be used as a hypothermia center during the winter.
The new center came with a more than $9 million price tag. Larrick acknowledged the expensiveness of the project, but said the community supports the changes.
“It is a lot of money,” Larrick said, “but the community values are such that everybody in Arlington is important and the people who are most vulnerable – the homeless – the county, the residents really want to be able to take care of them and help move them on the path to housing and self-sufficiency.”
Sibert said 60 percent of the budget for the program is funded by government sources, with the largest chunk coming from the federal government. The other 40 percent comes from private donations, with community members, businesses and grant foundations contributing.
Neighborhood residents expressed concern with security regarding the new center, Sibert said, so A-SPAN will employ a security guard from 4 p.m. to midnight nightly and add surveillance cameras to monitor the building in an effort to calm community apprehensions.
Homeless people in the neighborhood gave the center and its aims mixed reviews.
David Denny, in his 60s, said his experiences at homeless shelters leave him skeptical.
“A lot of people who are in shelters, they burn all their bridges,” Denny said. “They don’t have nowhere else to go, so they go to the shelters. So as a result, the shelters are being ran pretty much like prisons are ran.”
Ron Dudley, 41, said he prefers to “couch-surf,” staying with friends who can accommodate him. However, he said any homeless facility that offers 24-hour service is a step in the right direction.
“It’ll help a lot of people out,” Dudley said.”Some people got to go from here to there just to take a shower, so if they had a 24-hour one close by where everybody could use it, it’d be good.”
The Arlington center opened on Oct. 1, 2015.