Many are not even aware that this block hosts Arlington's emergency winter homeless shelter. (Photo: TBD Staff)

For the past several years, Arlington’s homelessness advocates have eagerly awaited a time when they have a permanent, year-round space to offer shelter, food, health and other social services to the county’s most vulnerable community.

In 2010, hardly a County Board meeting went by without comments from members of the public on the need for a 12-month facility. In December, a troop of Boy Scouts even got involved, telling board members that they were fighting homelessness in the county as part of a special community service project.

Now, the Arlington County Board is pledging to make strides on a site for a new shelter in 2011. "I can tell you it is my top priority personally for next year. We will make progress,” board member Barbara Favola says. “I believe we will have a site identified in 2011."

Currently, the county runs a "low barrier" Emergency Winter Shelter with the Arlington Street People’s Assistance Network — which operates as a less restrictive drop-in facility — from Nov. 1 to March 31.

A 2010 count estimated that there were 531 homeless people in Arlington at any given time; so far this winter, the EWS has been housing an average of 60 to 65 of them per night.

The county’s Department of Human Services also offers placements for homeless families, and Volunteers of America Chesapeake runs the Residential Program Center on Columbia Pike. That facility requires certain commitments on the part of clients, including sobriety, adherence to curfews, and requirements to meet with social services personnel.

For the past several years, converting the EWS to a year-round, full-service facility was always on the horizon. So far, though, circumstances have gotten in the way.

A-SPAN recently expanded the shelter's capacity from 40 to 73 beds, but there still isn’t enough space there for the kinds of services the county and advocacy groups would like to offer in conjunction with a year-round facility.

"It was never intended to be a permanent spot," says Anita Friedman, economic independence division chief in Arlington’s Department of Human Services. "It was built for an office purpose, not a shelter purpose. It was retooled to the extent you can retool a 1950s building. But we’d like to have a proper facility that is not just a shelter, that is a center where we can bring in all kinds of services that this population needs."

But where to locate a shelter in an area with some of the highest real estate values in the country?

The EWS in Courthouse could easily escape notice. Sandwiched between offices of nonprofits in a nondescript 1950s-era county office building near Jerry’s Subs and Pizza on North 15th Street, the only signs that a shelter operates there are the lines of people that sometimes start forming in the afternoon on cold days.

In fact, this same site was where the county had always hoped to place a full-time, broader services center through the property’s eventual redevelopment; but the economy has thwarted redevelopment of the site for the time being.

"This has been on the agenda for a long time, but with the downturn, who knows when that development might actually come to be," says Dave Liebson, co-chair of the county’s 10 Year Plan to End Homelessness initiative. “County staff has been working with the manager, and the board, and now I think they’re convinced that this really can't wait.”

The county is looking around the same neighborhood for another site, Liebson says. Keeping the shelter in the same area would have a number of benefits. Courthouse is centrally located near transit and commercial areas. And since a homeless services program is already part of the neighborhood, any community resistance to the plan would theoretically be lessened.

"They are in negotiations — I can’t tell you where in the neighborhood — but certainly in the vicinity," Liebson says. "The stars seem to be lining up."

Favola demurs on possible locations for the shelter, saying there’s little she can share about the county’s efforts at this point, but does say it will have to look outside of its current stock of buildings. "We don’t have any space. The county is basically looking to purchase something new," she says. "We’re currently working through those details."

"The key is that there be easy access to employment and transportation, like you have in places like Courthouse," Liebson says. Leonard Chari, operations director at A-SPAN, agrees. The organization runs the majority of its support services out of its headquarters in Shirlington, and one thing that comes up again and again is its accessibility.

"If people want to come and have services here, it takes almost 45 minutes to come from the Pentagon, and you have to have the money to ride the bus," he says. "If you’re planning on putting a shelter anywhere, accessibility has to be considered. It doesn’t make sense if it’s off the beaten path."

Chari says A-SPAN could reach even more people with comprehensive services if they were incorporated into a larger, more centrally located center. And Liebson adds that the benefit of having a year-round shelter is that social services providers can gain the long-term trust of a population that may initially be hesitant to accept help.

"When people are in any of our places, we can reach out to them with the kinds of services and help they need to move on to a more permanent situation,” Liebson says. “When you only have them for the night, or for part of the year, and they go off and about the rest of the time, it’s harder to establish the relationships with them.”

All involved agree, however, that wherever the new center becomes, it should remain a “low barrier” facility, meaning one that lets people come and go as they please, and doesn’t require sobriety or other stipulations for entry.

"The way we kind of put it, is that it would be low barrier, but high expectations," Liebson says. "By having a place for people to go, we’d hope to be able to reach them and more quickly be able to help them find a permanent place.”