Homeless Could Face Cold Reality: Loss of Blankets

Bernard Hamilton trudged back to the homeless shelter that had turned him away moments before because it was filled. He had his heart set on one of those heavy military blankets that can keep out the cold.

“I knew I was going to need one, and I prayed and hoped they’d have one,” said Hamilton, 40, who has been homeless in Washington for seven years. “And sure enough the blanket was there for me, and I appreciated that.”

With luck, Hamilton’s blanket will see him through the long winter ahead. And he’d better hang on to it because the military will run out of blankets to give to shelters, perhaps before Christmas, according to the Defense Personnel Support Center. Defense cutbacks could end the program for good.

The Defense Department program to provide the blankets was almost eliminated during negotiations for this year’s defense authorization bill, and the military expects that it could face the budget knife next year.

Since 1987, the program has contributed about 4 million blankets to about 500 shelters nationwide at a cost of $30 million.

In proposing the cutback, the Senate Armed Services Committee said providing $3.5 million annually to the blanket program qualified as interference with military preparedness and requirements.

“That’s going to be a terrible mistake,” said Kenneth Johnson, 36, homeless for about a year. “Blankets to some of those people out there is like a shelter. . . . A blanket to some of those people is life.”

Homeless men who were huddled around a television in one of Washington’s largest and oldest shelters said the cutback would hurt.

“If you take a walk through the metropolitan area and go downtown and look and view the homeless people, I guarantee you 80% on those grates out there have military blankets,” said James Jones, 34, who has used the blankets in the past.

“What are these people going to do?” he asked, gesturing at a group of about 70 men in the basement of the Central Union Mission and noting that they can’t always find room in shelters when temperatures plunge.

The Rev. Billy Fox, the new executive director of the shelter, said the blankets are of great importance to the people he tries to help.

“They sure meet the need when the cold weather kicks in. I’ve been handing out blankets all day,” he said.

Even worse, the homeless soon stand to lose more than blankets.

For more than three years, the Central Union Mission has received thousands of blankets, pajamas, smocks, operating gowns, slipper socks and sheets.

While the blanket program is in danger, the program providing the other surplus items will continue. But the military no longer will pay to transport the goods to shelters.

LeAnn Gregory Boyd, director of development at the Washington shelter that shares its supplies with other shelters in the nation’s capital, said Central Union Mission cannot shoulder the financial burden for transport.

Consequently, a cornucopia of materials that could help the homeless will sit in warehouses, Boyd said.

Fox said he hopes he can get the business sector involved in transporting items. For now, however, supplies are running very low at the shelter.

In 1990, the center successfully sued the federal government to force it to distribute surplus goods to the homeless as required by the 1987 Stewart B. McKinney Homeless Assistance Act.

Since the program began, the government has donated billions of dollars in supplies and properties to the homeless and the poor, including some military base buildings that have closed under budget cuts.

Joe Murphy, a spokesman for the Defense Reutilization and Marketing Office, which supervises the distribution of military surplus, said that last year alone the government gave away $595 million worth of goods.