"We want the city to support us and take into account the following points in their plans to move La Casa temporarily," Omar Montoya, a representative of the La Casa Resident Leadership Committee, said at a recent D.C. City Council meeting.

He continued urging that the temporary La Casa center remain near its current location in the largely Hispanic Columbia Heights neighborhood. Montoya also said the facility should maintain its current capacity, staffing, and accessibility, and he requested that city administrators keep La Casa residents informed and take their opinions into consideration.

The La Casa Multicultural Services Center, a e 130-bed emergency shelter and residential treatment program for men, will move this spring from 1436 Irving Street, NW. Though as construction has erupted around the La Casa site, where it will move is still uncertain.

Montoya’s presentation was the latest chapter in the lengthy dialogue between a united group of the center’s residents and city officials over the future of La Casa that began when the property -- known as Parcel 26 -- was sold in 2002 to make way for mixed-use development.

Initial discussions about the future of Parcel 26 included La Casa, which has operated on the Irving Street site since 1985 as the city's only bilingual emergency shelter and treatment program. But residents, staff, and neighbors became uneasy when the successful bidder for the project unveiled plans for hundreds of luxury condominiums and rental apartments for senior citizens -- but no La Casa.

"We saw the maps. and we asked, ‘Where is La Casa?’ We'd been pushed off the map,” said Gary Holbrooks, a representative of the La Casa Support Committee, which now is known as the La Casa Resident Leadership Committee.

La Casa's residents have since banded together in an effort to ensure that the center was included in the city's redevelopment plans for the Columbia Heights area. Despite the fact that these men are homeless, transient and, for the most part, native Spanish speakers, they have stood their ground for the last three years, going up against the City Council and against developers to make sure that their concerns are heard.

"When a group of people are trying to change a multimillion-dollar development plan, they need a common goal,” said Robert Pressley, one of the original leaders of the La Casa Support Committee.

La Casa residents themselves are now playing a large role in solving the relocation problem. With assistance from Neighbors' Consejo, a nonprofit group that provides multicultural social services in the neighborhood, the Support Committee resolved to secure a commitment from the city to rebuild La Casa on its current site as part of the Franklin Square redevelopment project.

"Many of the men La Casa serves have roots here, and for Hispanic clients, being in a Spanish-speaking environment is key," said Marnie Brady, the Neighbors’ Consejo community building and advocacy director.

Starting with a kick-off rally in front of La Casa in April 2002, the Support Committee began raising community awareness of how the loss of the shelter would affect the neighborhood and the city.

The Support Committee pointed out that the center's demise would increase the number of homeless people on the streets and deaths from hypothermia, and that the city could not afford to lose 40 residential treatment slots that save nearly $20 in health- and crime-related costs for every dollar spent.

Committee members also contended that closing the center, with no alternative in place, would send a terrible message to Washingtonians about the purposes and consequences of "urban renewal."

Then, with the solid backing of Ward 1 Councilmember Jim Graham, the La Casa committee secured the support of the two most affected Advisory Neighborhood Commissions (ANCs), 1-A (Columbia Heights) and 1-D (Mt. Pleasant). The committee also generated media publicity, launched a citizen letter-writing campaign to city officials, and encouraged the participation of at least 20 churches and other community groups.

Because of these efforts, the board of the National Capital Revitalization Corporation, the city agency developing the site, voted to amend the Parcel 26 agreement to include emergency shelter and substance abuse treatment services, as well as single-resident-occupancy (SRO) units, in the Franklin Square project plan.

The city subsequently appropriated $7.2 million for the new facility, which is now envisioned as a six-floor building that will provide a continuum of multicultural, bilingual services to support independent living.

But the appropriation has not ended the work of La Casa's advocacy group, the Leadership Committee. Nearly three and a half years after La Casa's successful appeal to the city's power structure, the center's future still is uncertain, even as bulldozers excavate a massive foundation for the new condominium structure just yards from the current treatment facility.

The center still lacks a temporary site, despite two years of effort by city officials and La Casa staff. The D.C. Coalition for the Homeless, led by executive director Michael Ferrell and La Casa Executive Director Michael Nettles, in conjunction with Councilmember Graham, other Council members, and current Deputy Mayor Lynn French, have explored a number of possibilities, including use of a former supermarket or one of the neighborhood's vacant schools.

None of these suggestions has panned out.

Late last year, the city announced that La Casa's substance abuse treatment program will move to a vacant two-story building on the grounds of a D.C. Mental Health Department facility at 1131 Spring Road, NW. But the city has not announced a temporary location for La Casa's 90-bed emergency shelter component that currently operates in seven trailers adjacent to the treatment center.

A few weeks ago, Ferrell of the D.C. Coalition for the Homeless met with the La Casa's Leadership Committee to discuss the relocation issue. He emphasized the positive aspects of the relocation and, in response to concerns about whether the older trailers could survive relocation to a different site, he reassured residents that the city has a stock of better trailers that would be available for the move.

And, as recent events have shown, while the membership of La Casa's Leadership Committee is constantly changing as men make the transition back into the community, the tradition of participation and activism is being passed on.