For several days, Shannon Cheeks shuttled her newborn baby from hospital to hospital in search of shelter. She finally found a temporary home at the D.C. Village Family Emergency Shelter in April, but her stay there may not last long.

City decision makers are now discussing the possibility that the shelter may close sometime this fall and will be replaced by a proposed Southeast bus operations center for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA).

Metro bus plans to move its maintenance facility from M Street SE near the new Washington Nationals Stadium to 6 acres of sprawling D.C. Village.

That means Cheeks and the more than 350 other people - mothers, fathers, young children and teenagers - currently living at D.C. Village would be moved to another family shelter or into permanent housing in neighborhoods closer to the city's center. D.C. Village sits virtually isolated on a campus in the southwest corner of the city.

Mayor Adrian M. Fenty has said D.C. Village residents will have adequate shelter before final plans are approved.

"We'll move all the clients into affordable housing units," Fenty said. "That will be determined before D.C. Village closes."

Council Member Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6), who represents the neighborhood around the new stadium, also said the families will not be neglected and will be placed in neighborhoods more convenient in the city.

"It's important that the families in our homeless program are not isolated from government resources, or housing and job opportunities in the city,'' Wells said. "I'm going to continue to ask for timeline and regular updates on the progress of the city's efforts.''

D.C. Village is the largest of five family shelters operated by the D.C. Coalition of the Homeless and houses families in a communal-style setting. Advocates have pushed for the center to provide more private quarters for families and to offer other services, such as day-care and on-site health care.

"Even as the current system is configured, some of the families may go into apartment-style shelter programs," said Michael Ferrell, executive director of the D.C. Coalition for the Homeless.

If plans are approved, the center would close as early as September or October, Ferrell said. He emphasized that this is only a proposal. "Nothing has remotely been finalized at this time."

For the residents of D.C. Village, news of this possible change will mean new uncertainties piled onto lives already affected by homelessness and life in a troubled shelter. D.C. Village has been the focus of growing concern among the District's policy-makers, with complaints about the food, poor living conditions and scant resources.

"I don't know what I would do,'' said Peggy Anderson, who has been living at D.C. Village for the past year with her teenage daughters. "I'm just trying to find some (permanent) place to live."

Service providers believe closing D.C. Village may adversely impact an already-crowded homeless system.

"We're at capacity every winter as it is,"said Nechama Masliansky, advocacy director for SOME (So Other Might Eat), which operates six facilities for homeless people. "We support the whole principle of all homeless families gaining dignified shelter. The principal thing is for them to have long-term housing."

There are eight other family shelters in the District. D.C. Village has 358 of the 716 family emergency shelter beds. The second-largest is Families Forward, which has space for 149 families. Ferrell said there's an average of 200 applicants on waiting lists for family shelter.

Transit officials said the District government offered them D.C. Village in order to develop the current bus terminal site on M Street SE, a few blocks from where the Nationals' new stadium is being constructed.

The move away from the new stadium also would benefit Metro. Increased traffic generated by the stadium would make it difficult for buses to reach the terminal, said WMATA spokesperson Joanne Ferreira. WMATA is trying to expedite the move to D.C. Village.

"We're trying to get it done as soon as possible," Ferreira said. "The Nationals will be going into the new Navy Yard stadium a year from now."

The transportation agency said it would like to utilize 16 acres of the D.C. Village property for operations, maintenance, storage and security. The project would be implemented in two stages, with 114 buses in April 2008, and 200-250 buses by May 2010.

Although she may not have long at D.C. Village, Cheeks, 23, is hopeful she won't have to return to sleeping at hospitals, or on the streets.

"I should be here no more than two months," Cheeks said. "I'm on a list to get an apartment based on my income. So if they close, I hope I have a place to go."