Reagan Bars Eviction of Shelter Residents

President Reagan on Saturday rejected a plan devised by a federal agency to forcibly evict hundreds of residents of a controversial downtown Washington shelter for the homeless operated by the Community for Creative Non-Violence, according to the White House.

The decision was made a day after a top official of the Department of Health and Human Services, C. McClain Haddow, said residents of the shelter, which is operating in defiance of a court order, would be evicted “in a few days.”

The President’s decision, which capped a day of conflicting policy statements by the White House and Haddow, nullified Haddow’s plan to use agents of the Federal Protection and Safety Divison of the General Services Administration to assault the CCNV shelter. Some of those agents previously entered the shelter undercover to determine if residents were armed or otherwise preparing to fight eviction, Haddow said.

White House Position

“We do not want to provoke violence,” White House spokesman Albert R. (Rusty) Brashear said, adding that Reagan had reviewed the shelter problem Saturday afternoon in Los Angeles. “We have no plans to evict anyone at this time.”

Reagan first entered the homeless controversy on the eve of the 1984 election, when he persuaded CCNV leader Mitch Snyder to abandon his 51-day hunger strike by pledging to provide funds to refurbish the 2nd Street shelter. HHS officials later withdrew the offer, after months of bickering with Snyder. Snyder has accused the President of breaking his word.

“I’m very, very encouraged,” Snyder said Saturday. “It’s good news. . . . We’ve been living on the edge for weeks now.”

Snyder said he thinks the White House’s decision means that city officials will honor an offer to spend up to $300,000 to patch the roof and fix windows, toilets and other facilities. He said city officials offered to spend the money to “winterize” the building if federal officials indicated they would not close it immediately.

Ruled an Unfit Place

Brashear said the Administration’s policy is to persuade residents of the shelter to leave the run-down facility gradually and take up lodging at other shelters.

Haddow said Saturday that the White House has “no idea of the status of the planning” to shut down the shelter, which has been kept open by the CCNV despite an adverse U.S. District Court ruling that the building is an unfit place to live and an eviction notice that was posted by HHS.

Haddow, 35, said he was designated spokesman on the homeless issue by newly appointed HHS Secretary Otis R. Bowen.

But Thomas R. Burke, the new acting chief of staff at HHS, said Saturday that he is the department’s new shelter spokesman.

“(Closing the shelter) is not imminent, and I’m going to have to talk to Mac (Haddow),” he said.

Peril to Occupants

Informed of Reagan’s decision, Haddow said: “I’m sure there will be discussions about it. I’m sure that the President doesn’t want for those (homeless) people to be in a position where their lives are threatened (by fire) every night.”

Haddow also spelled out his department’s plan for closing the shelter, which he said involved the use of highly trained Federal Protection agents, backed up by District of Columbia police officers. He said the federal agents have been specially trained to enter the 2nd Street building and forcibly evict its residents.

“It’s not our choosing,” Haddow said, “but what do you do if you get someone in there with a Tommy gun? We have to treat this as a worst-case scenario.”

Haddow said many of the shelter residents are mentally ill Vietnam veterans who “specialized at doing one thing: killing people.”