Homeless women in the District will receive a boost when the Gales School reopens as a low-barrier women’s shelter this fall.

The shelter, located near Union Station, is projected to have 150 beds, all for single homeless women.

The new shelter is a welcome improvement at a time when many homeless women and program administrators say women’s shelters are deteriorating and under-funded.

In fact, these conditions, along with the lack of space, are what prompted the Department of Human Services to switch the population served by Gales from men, who were originally housed there, to women.

Ivy, now a client at the Open Door emergency shelter, stayed at D.C. General her first night in a women’s shelter and said it was a horrible, degrading experience.

“They just throw you in there with some dirty sheets and then kick you out at seven in the morning,” she said. “I am just at a total loss for words. You won’t understand until you have to go for yourself.”

Kristyn Feldner, who manages the Luther Place Night Shelter at N Street Village, had an in-depth look at shelters around the city over the past few months and said the buildings often were run down.

“A few of the facilities we’ve seen are in dire need of repair,” she said. “They absolutely try their best, but physically some of those things are hard to make a case for.”

Kathy Banks, a resident at N Street Village, said women who spend time at the day center there often complain about conditions at other shelters.

“A lot of them say the same thing -- sometimes they don’t have running toilets, sometimes they don’t have hot water for showers,” she said. “There’s a lot of drug use going on.”

Another woman at N Street Village, who asked to remain anonymous, echoed complaints that shelters are cold and dilapidated. “I think the shelters that help women with children are first priority, as they should be,” she said. “Because there are more shelters for men, women are the last to get any services.”

Chapman Todd, division director at Catholic Community Services, agreed and said one of the most significant differences between men’s and women’s shelters is the level of case management. Over the past few years there has been a transformation in city shelters aimed at making more services available, Todd said, but women’s shelters still don’t receive adequate case management funding from the city.

“There are positive things going on at the women’s low-barrier shelters,” Todd said. “It’s just that the emphasis of bringing in government providers or enhancing contract funding to fund a more appropriate case management ratio has lagged behind the men’s programs.”

The lag is partly due to fact that there are more homeless men than homeless women. In the District of Columbia there are TK single men who are homeless compared with TK single women. And there are TK people in families who are homeless.

“There is some economy of scale in the men’s programs that allows you to do more case management -- that’s the easy explanation,” Todd said. “Another explanation would be that the priority from the government’s perspective perhaps was to meet some of the needs in the men’s programs first and follow up with the women’s, and it’s kind of lost momentum.”

Still, women’s shelters do make case management services available. Kenyatta T. Thompson, senior program manager at Harriet Tubman and John Young, the two largest women’s shelters, said that both facilities provide clients with case managers to help them find housing and jobs.

Emergency shelters “get a bad rap,” Thompson said. “I want people to understand what happens at the emergency shelters. We can’t perform miracles. We can only do with what we’re given. My staff and myself are more than willing and open to help women move on and to the next level.”

Thompson added, “A lot of the clients come to us with complaints about the facility, and I tell them, ‘Your voice is stronger than mine. If you go down to the District housing office or Mayor Fenty’s office, they would most certainly listen to you, more than they would listen to a complaint coming from the program director.”

Brenda Wade, now a resident at N Street Village, did just that while she was at Harriet Tubman. Wade visited Adrian Fenty and Marion Barry, then both city councilmembers, with complaints about broken air conditioning and poor shower ventilation.

“When I first got there the conditions were horrible. I humbled myself and went to various offices to get the mold off the walls,” she said. “It didn’t take no time for Fenty to comply with what I requested.”

However, Linda, a D.C. General client, said shelter residents are responsible for their own surroundings. “I’ve heard horror stories of other places and also horror stories of [D.C. General], and I just wonder what people expect if they don’t maintain it,” she said. “Cleaning is up to ladies.”

But many of the conditions women complain about remain outside their control, Feldner noted.

“You have to be honest about your dignity being removed when you can’t even have a door on your bathroom stall,” she said. “There are things that [make] you just want to cry, the stall doors especially. I think it’s a small thing that shows the larger picture.”