Years of uncertainty about the future of the Franklin School shelter at 13th and K streets, NW, may be approaching a resolution, with the Williams administration signaling that the shelter could be closed by the end of the 2006-2007 winter hypothermia season next spring. But with renovations and other issues at the few remaining downtown shelters, the fate of the 240-plus men who lay their heads at Franklin remains unknown, as does the ultimate arrangement for emergency shelter beds in the downtown D.C. area.

Franklin opened as an emergency shelter four years ago, and rumors of its closing have been circulating almost since it opened. Now the rumors are becoming a reality, and how the city and its homeless people got to this point is a perfect example of how not to make decisions.

For over a year, city officials have said they will only close shelters once alternative space is found. But when Randall closed in southwest, no alternative in the area was found.

There are troubling signs that Franklin could end up the same way. The city says that every effort is being made to find alternative space for Franklin’s residents. It’s good to know they’re trying to head off a disaster, but it sounds like too little, too late, considering the difficulty of finding anywhere to put a shelter, even a temporary one, as city officials have often explained it.

Last spring we heard about plans to close Franklin and turn the building into a “hip hotel.” Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development Stanley Jackson has moved ahead on this deal, while city officials responsible for helping homeless people have been playing catch-up. And there is still no plan for replacement beds.

This couldn’t come at a worse time. The Federal City Shelter at 2nd and D, NW is starting renovations, so it will not be taking in new residents, and its 135 hypothermia beds will be dedicated for regular residents next winter. The Hermano Pedro Shelter on Park Road, NW burned down two weeks ago, putting new stress on the shelter system. The Banneker Recreation Center near Howard University will not be used for shelter this winter. La Casa shelter in Columbia Heights is set to close for rebuilding in a few weeks, with alternative arrangements still in limbo. Central Union Mission is planning to leave downtown for Georgia Avenue.

And the most obviously place for these men to go, the Gales School shelter near Union Station, which is currently undergoing renovations, won’t be open until fall of 2007.

On top of all this, many shelters citywide are running at or above capacity – even since warm weather arrived. And a late-night tour of downtown D.C. will reveal scores of people sleeping in parks and doorways. So the loss of Franklin’s 240-plus beds, without a replacement nearby, would make this bad situation far, far worse. The business community supports shelters downtown, just like the homeless advocates who work on this issue full-time. In fact, the Downtown BID, D.C.’s core business improvement district, has long supported homeless services and emergency shelter beds downtown, because these give homeless people an alternative to living on the street.

So it is wrong for city officials to take on the same fatalistic attitude that, sadly, many of our homeless friends have adopted.

That’s why saying “we can’t find the space” won’t do. And neither will replacement beds east of the Anacostia, or in trailers parked in a vacant lot. All those options would take us back to the days when the District government, broke and overwhelmed, warehoused homeless people in unused school buildings, trailers, and the lobbies of government buildings. The living space was sometimes unhealthy, the locations were determined by happenstance, and the stopgap character of such arrangements (even when they lasted for decades, as they did in several cases) reflected our collective failure to grapple with both the root causes of homelessness, and the immediate needs of people caught up in it.

Now is the time for all that to end. We have to do better. The city is flush with tax revenues, there is citywide turnover in real estate, we have a new deputy mayor overseeing homeless policy, and the mayor’s 10-year plan to end homelessness is nearly two years old.

The City Council can do their part by slowing the loss of shelter space until new beds are found, and by paying for them. And Mayor Williams must surely be looking to his legacy – a revitalized District with a hot real estate market is something to be proud of. Don’t let that legacy be marred by a failure to solve this old problem of where to put emergency shelter beds.

Give the Office of Property Management an unmistakable mandate to find shelter space downtown. Give Deputy Mayor Brenda Donald Walker, who oversees DHS and homeless services, the authority to protect shelter space – citywide. Give DHS the money to make this happen. Give our homeless neighbors the sustained, dependable help that can become part of their own plans to work their way home again.

Be creative. For example, Randall School, which was closed last year and has set idle since then with the deal for the Corcoran in limbo, could be turned into one of the housing assistance centers envisioned in the mayor’s 10-year plan to end homelessness. Putting that plan together with the physical resources that are currently available is exactly what the city should be doing.

And hold the line on the most critical issues: Don’t close Franklin – don’t even make a move towards doing so – until an equal number of permanent emergency shelter beds has been found, paid for, and opened for use in downtown Washington.