Open the Reeves Center as a Hypothermia Shelter

January 26, 2002                                               info: Harold Moss, Jill Blankespoor

As the Mayor struggles to develop the business sector, he is forgetting his most vulnerable constituents.

Members of the Olive Branch Community continue to demonstrate at the Reeves Center tonight to focus on the need to reopen it as a hypothermia shelter.

It was opened last year after 3 froze to death.

The Reeves Center is in the heart of Ward 1 and very close to the only bilingual shelter in the city.

There is a constant struggle for beds or “seats” in this routinely overcrowded facility.

The "Latinos" and others who live in Ward 1 are generally afraid and unwilling to travel to other shelters in other parts of the city that are overcrowded.

Tensions and violent confrontations exist not only with other “Latinos” but also with a large population of Afro-American men who are homeless but from the same neighborhood.

There is a rally with civil disobedience at the Reeves Center at 14th/U Sts. NW tonight.

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