After spending more than a month in a hotel, Chanice Little returned Wednesday to the living room of her recently repainted apartment in downtown Washington. She stood next to a waterlogged twin mattress and box spring — the remnants of water damage sustained after a fire two floors above forced her from her home days after Christmas.
Wp Get the full experience.Choose your plan ArrowRight
Little came to this subsidized unit, run by the nonprofit So Others Might Eat (SOME), around 2014, looking for a new start after 18 months of homelessness. However, this latest displacement is her second in two years. She also had to vacate her apartment in 2020 after a different fire, this one in the unit immediately above hers.
The blazes spurred Little, who lives with her 8-year-old daughter, to start apartment hunting in one of the nation’s toughest real estate markets, where market-rate housing is likely to be out of her reach.
Advertisement
Story continues below advertisement
“I just want some type of stability for myself and my daughter,” she said. “This opened my eyes.”
Families like Little’s, displaced twice in two years by kitchen fires in SOME’s Weinberg Building, are raising concerns about the building’s safety as the longtime advocate for the homeless says there is only so much it can do to prevent fires or, in an economy plagued by supply chain problems, make timely repairs after blazes.
SOME was founded in 1970 when a priest started handing out sandwiches at North Capitol and K streets. Since then, the nonprofit organization has expanded to offer services including health care, employment and housing to unhoused people in downtown D.C.
On Dec. 29, a kitchen fire at the Weinberg Building, where 28 adults and more than 50 children live in transitional housing, resulted in the displacement of four adults and eight children, according to the organization’s executives.
Advertisement
Story continues below advertisement
Since the grease fire, which occurred when a resident was cooking, SOME has paid for those displaced to stay at a hotel about a mile away in downtown Washington as the building is repaired.
All those displaced are expected back at the property this month. However, even as some returned to Weinberg, those displaced complained about maintenance at the building and how often safety issues arise.
After the 2020 fire, Little said, she had to move into another unit in the building for three months and replace all of her furniture. Although the Red Cross offered some assistance, it was not enough to cover all costs.
“This is the second time,” Little said. “Now I have to replace it again. It’s just stressful.”
Story continues below advertisement
Executives at SOME said that necessary repairs to units damaged in the fire have been delayed by the coronavirus economy’s endemic supply chain disruptions.
Advertisement
“We understand from the human perspective the frustration of families who are not in their home,” SOME chief executive Ralph Boyd said in an interview. “But SOME is doing everything we reasonably can do.”
Those living at Weinberg receive case management and life-skills training on topics such as keeping their kitchens clean. But for those working with formerly homeless people, Boyd said, there is “a certain level of risk you have to be willing to absorb.”
“This is a very vulnerable population,” Boyd said. “You can do everything you can reasonably do to mitigate these kinds of risks, but there’s only so much you can do. Other than issue an edict that no one can cook in their apartment, I’m not sure what we would do.”
D.C. homeless provider at center of lawsuits over taxes, building’s structural integrity
Little said those living at Weinberg bear some responsibility for the fires. However, she said SOME has housed large families in small units with maintenance problems, including the presence of rodents.
Advertisement
Story continues below advertisement
Rachel Nicholas, SOME’s senior vice president for family housing, said the Weinberg Building passed a “pretty assiduous” city inspection in July.
“They went through every nook and cranny of the building, and we came out with zero concerns,” she said. Nicholas also said that rodent issues are endemic, given the large amount of construction in the area. “We live in D.C.,” she said. “We can’t get away from that.”
Little, who has been at Weinberg for eight years, said SOME should be working to move families to permanent housing.
“If you can’t pay market-rate rent, you’re kind of stuck in place,” Little said. “There’s just no push to help transition into affordable housing.”
Story continues below advertisement
Boyd, SOME’s CEO, said there is “no portable voucher attached to this housing,” which is subsidized by the nonprofit Community Partnership for the Prevention of Homelessness, D.C.’s main contractor for homelessness services.
Advertisement
“That’s not our choice,” he said. “Them’s the rules.”
Jasmine Copeland, who lives one floor above Little, faced a similar scene Wednesday: a disordered apartment being put back together again amid recent construction. As workers banged about in a unit above, their bootprints marked in drywall dust on the hallway floors, what sounded like a fire alarm low on batteries chirped loudly somewhere.
Since she came to the Weinberg Building in 2018, Copeland has been displaced twice. Her first apartment in the building had multiple maintenance problems, she said, including a loose window that fell from its frame in a storm in November. After she was sent to a hotel after that incident, she returned to her current apartment in December, only to be sent back to the hotel days after Christmas because of the recent fire.
Advertisement
Story continues below advertisement
The hotel stays were difficult, Copeland said. Other guests were uncomfortable around her and her 4-year-old son because they are Black, she said. She was excluded from the hotel’s free breakfast because she is unvaccinated. And each day on the walk to take her son to school, they would pass their apartment building.
He wanted to know: When were they going home?
“I don’t want my child to feel like we’re not stable,” she said.