Class News

Steve Klingelhofer ’64 writes a letter to The Washington Post

Opinion: How a 1980s policy contributed to homelessness

by Stephan Klingelhofer

The Washington Post

March 11, 2021

Regarding Colbert I. King’s March 6 op-ed, “Angela Belinda Hill deserved better”:

In the 1980s, I served as a priest at Epiphany Church (13th and G Streets NW) and as rector of Grace Episcopal Church (lower Wisconsin Avenue). At that time, courts had ordered that the mentally ill should no longer be “warehoused,” and many people were discharged from St. Elizabeths Hospital and other facilities.

The key word was “warehoused.” And so, the numbers of homeless rose — veterans, men, women, children. Downtown and in Georgetown, the churches responded. Ecumenical drop-in centers were established; trailer shelters were placed on the K Street waterfront. Parishioners trucked in and served food to people living on the grates in Foggy Bottom. One man came to me and said he’d been discharged to a “group house.” But the problem was he couldn’t stand “groups.” I talked to his social worker, who agreed he should remain at St. Elizabeths but was required to outplace patients each month. Accordingly, each month my new friend dropped by, and I returned him to St. Elizabeths, where he felt safe. We’d learned to “job” the system.

So many stories of pain, illness, and anguish, and of ordinary people showing love and compassion, trying to “do better.”

Forty years later we still must do better. But doing better requires imagination, innovation, and commitment by more than just a few. It requires the commitment of society — and government — as a whole, too.