Pentagon Neglects Homeless, Coalition Charges

The National Coalition for the Homeless accused the Defense Department Wednesday of severely neglecting a program to make vacant military facilities available as shelters for the homeless. The Pentagon denied the charge, calling its establishment of nine shelters “quite impressive.”

The coalition of homeless groups charged in a report that the Pentagon was “defying a three-year-old congressional mandate” since it has opened only a “handful” of shelters across the country and spent only “a fraction” of the $9 million appropriated to fix them up.

The 26-page report said that defense officials had “failed to provide virtually any notice of the program to entities that might use it” and had “failed to provide any specific guidance to the military personnel who are required to make the space available.”

Calls Program ‘Sham’

While the Defense Department has “repeatedly emphasized its ‘humanitarian commitment’ to the homeless” in public statements, the report said, “its actual administration of the program is nothing less than a sham.”

Steven N. Kleiman, the Pentagon official in charge of the program, called the attack a “public relations ploy.” Far from defying Congress, he said in an interview, the Pentagon is successfully carrying out the initiative of Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger, who obtained congressional approval of the shelter idea in 1983.

“I never would have believed three years ago that we could come up with 11 shelters (two have been closed),” Kleiman said. Citing numerous obstacles, he said that many potential facilities were located too far from inner cities or were available only overnight.

Some Commanders Resist

Moreover, he said, with the Pentagon permitted to pay only for renovating vacant barracks, halls and other facilities, many local governments and private groups cannot afford to operate shelters in them. Also, he added, some base commanders have resisted sheltering homeless people because of their high rate of mental, alcohol and drug problems.

Kleiman said that funding for the program was overestimated at the outset and, “despite beating the bushes” looking for shelter operators, the Pentagon was able to spend only $900,000 of an $8 million appropriation in fiscal 1984. The remainder was spent on Army repair projects. The next year, Congress provided $500,000, but the Pentagon, taking money from other programs, spent $1.3 million on shelters, he said. Last year, the figure was $636,000 and this year it will be about $700,000.

Additionally, the Army has donated thousands of blankets and cots to shelters across the country, he said.

Cites Series of Abuses

In its report, the National Coalition for the Homeless said that it has documented a series of abuses in the program by interviewing Kleiman and other officials and by reviewing numerous documents, some obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

One alleged abuse involved an attempt to establish a shelter at Camp Parks, an Army Reserve training facility in Alameda County, Calif. About $350,000 was spent on renovating barracks there. But the Salvation Army, which had planned to operate a shelter, backed out after it was alleged that the site had once been used for radioactive testing, that the barracks walls contained asbestos and that the water supply was contaminated by mercury, the report said.

Kleiman claimed that “political pressure” by “irresponsible activists” had killed the project, despite studies by the Pentagon and Alameda County showing that the site was “clean as a whistle.”

Shelters are being operated at Corpus Christi Naval Air Station in Texas; Kirkland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, N.M.; an annex to Walter Reed Army Hospital in Silver Spring, Md.; an Army Reserve building in Philadelphia; Seattle Naval Base in Washington state; Ft. Monmouth, N.J.; Ft. Belvoir, Va.; Ft. Meade, Md., and Camp Kilmer, N.J.

Distant Location

The Pentagon is negotiating with the city of Tacoma, Wash., over use of a building at Ft. Lewis, 15 miles away. Although the facility is far from the city’s homeless population, the Army is offering to bus people to and from the site, Kleiman said.

A shelter at Anacostia Naval Station here was closed because of neighborhood complaints, a Pentagon spokesman said, and another shelter was closed at the Naval Reserve Center in Lawrence, Mass., because the city found a “more appropriate facility.”

In a related development, actor Martin Sheen spent the night on a heating grate near the Capitol and later appeared at a press conference to promote legislation that would provide $500 million in emergency aid for the nation’s estimated 2 million to 3 million homeless people.