New Watergate Vista: Trailers for the Homeless : Indigents: Watergate dwellers and the District of Columbia are battling over the location of a shelter compound. So far, the Watergate elite are losing.

A shelter compound of trailer-type buildings for the homeless is going up across the street from the pricey Watergate apartments, and the high and mighty Watergate tenants are telling the district government: “Not in my front yard!”

The object of their dismay is a cluster of seven white-enameled aluminum units tucked into a small triangle that is visible from some of the loftiest apartments in the capital. Sen. Bob Dole (R.-Kan.) and his wife, Labor Secretary Elizabeth Hanford Dole, live at the Watergate. So do authors, high-ranking military officers and journalists with famous bylines.

The three apartment houses and one condominium building flank the Watergate Office Building, which gained fame in 1972 when agents of President Richard M. Nixon’s Committee to Reelect the President (CREEP) broke into Democratic Party headquarters there and were caught red-handed.

The Watergate residents filed a suit seeking to block the shelter for people who now roam the streets below their windows and sometimes panhandle from motorists and patrons of the nearby Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

The seven trailer units, which are hooked up to sewer and power lines, are behind the Howard Johnson’s Motel on Virginia Avenue (where Nixon’s burglars stationed a lookout with the recording equipment for the listening devices they planted in the Democrats’ offices).

The trailers are ready to be occupied by a maximum of 108 men and women, many of whom now sleep on steam grates, patches of grass, benches and doorways.

Their 680 Watergate neighbors don’t come straight out and say, “We don’t want to house the homeless.”

Their lawsuit against the District of Columbia is based on a claim that the district did not clear the shelter idea with the Fine Arts Commission, which in certain parts of the capital decides whether a structure is appropriate for its proposed location.

Federal Judge Oliver Gasch handed the residents a setback earlier this month, when he refused to block work on the site. He said the Fine Arts Commission argument doesn’t wash, because the site is outside the commission’s jurisdiction. The plaintiffs were expected to appeal.

“What I would like to know is exactly what neighborhood they would like to send these folks to,” Lois Williams, an attorney for the homeless, said.

The shelter’s taxpaying opponents answered through their lawyer, Vernon W. Johnson III: A softball field four blocks away would be an ideal location.

In truth, many of the Watergate residences don’t have much of a view, anyway. The trailers sit on a small patch of ground between the motel and a highway on-ramp. Beyond that is a less-than-scenic pretzel of road ramps and overpasses and a few grates that vent heat from a nearby power plant.

“It don’t make a damn to me whether they open that shelter; I got my grate,” said Mohawk, a tall, blue-eyed man who has been living al fresco for 10 years in the neighborhood. Still, the 62-year-old Mohawk said, being able to take a shower sounded good to him. There are no bathing facilities under the overpass where a dozen mounds of blankets and sleeping bags lie in a circle.

Yes, said Tony Gatling, 26, he knew about the efforts to put the shelters elsewhere.

“I think it’s pretty selfish to do something like that,” he said. “We don’t bother anybody over there; we don’t do anything but ask for money once in a while. We don’t harass anybody.”

Leroy Brown, 59, said he had a job changing truck tires until three months ago, when a car careening down the exit ramp hit him. (He said the driver stopped just long enough to assess the damage to the car, then sped off.)

Brown said he was looking forward to the shelter’s opening. “I’m glad it is there. It will be a lot better than standing out here in the cold.”

All the controversy is rooted in an agreement between the district and advocates for the homeless, that shelter will be provided for everyone who needs it. While it has been unable to meet that condition, the district government has been paying fines, now totaling $115,000, to a fund for the homeless.

The people who will use the shelters have “a simple idea of neighborhood,” said Williams said. “It’s very hard to get them to move to other shelters. There are at least 100 people right now who live within walking distance. It’s not as though hordes of new people want to move (into the area).”

Ruby Barnhard, whose small home is between the trailers and the Watergate complex, complains about the “opportunists” who sit on the grates and ask passing motorists for money.

“These are the people we’d like to get rid of,” she told the Washington Post. “We don’t need more here.”

The Watergate residents don’t say that openly. In fact, their lawyer, Johnson, said they had been cautioned not to discuss the matter with reporters. He denied that a not-in-my-backyard syndrome lay behind the lawsuit..

“You can characterize it that way, but I don’t think that’s fair. It’s not a question of ‘you can’t put it in my neighborhood,’ but a question of where. These people months ago accepted the fact it would happen in their neighborhood. The residents have every right to invoke all the protections of applicable law.”

Barnhard, who sells real estate, is one of two plaintiffs named in the suit. It claims that the homeless facility would have “a dramatic and negative impact” on the neighborhood and that the residents “are entitled to no less consideration than the homeless.”

The group hired a real estate appraiser, Harry Horstman, to assess the project’s impact on surrounding property values. His affidavit states that the Watergate residents live there “for convenience and security, and because it is one of the most desirable addresses in the district. A low vacancy rate and comparatively high rents indicate that residents don’t mind paying extra to live in this close-in neighborhood.”

On the other hand, Horstman said: “The homeless compound is unsightly. . . . The impact on value is likely to be considerable.” His argument was dismissed by the judge as “highly speculative.”

Gatling, from his camp under the elevated highway, said he is willing to share the neighborhood even if others are not.

“One day, they might be out on the street,” he said. “They would be more than welcome over here.”