The Downtown Services Center, a Downtown D.C. Business Improvement District (BID) program that coordinates different types of assistance for homeless people in D.C.’s urban core, is facing two major changes: new management and a new location.

In the next year the center will have to move, at least temporarily, from its current home in the First Congregational United Church of Christ (next to the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library on G Street NW) because of redevelopment affecting the church and other buildings on its block. More immediate is the BID’s decision to subcontract operation of the center to D.C. Central Kitchen's First Helping program.

Services for homeless people account for about 6% of the BID’s budget, or roughly $600,000 a year. The BID, which covers 138 city blocks between 16th Street on the west and Union Station on the east, is the only business improvement district in the country that has a department of homeless services and a homeless services center. However, the BID is planning on taking a less active role in day-to-day operations of the latter.

Gray said that the BID is arranging for D.C. Central Kitchen, a nonprofit community kitchen that operates eight outreach initiatives in the District, to incorporate the work of the Downtown Services Center into the kitchen’s First Helping program. First Helping is a multi-partner collaboration that provides homeless people with street-level meal services, referrals, and counseling services.

First Helping director Craig Keller said the center’s activities would join three similar programs, two in Northeast and one in Southeast, that First Helping already supports.

Keller said consolidating these programs under the First Helping umbrella makes sense, in part because the merger will allow greater centralization of client files. Clients often deal with more than one provider, but too often service organizations "bump up against issues of confidentiality," said Keller. Aggregating the programs could therefore reduce service barriers.

Amidst this management change, the Downtown Services Center also has to begin searching for a new home. The First Congregational Church is negotiating with developer PN Hoffman to renovate and expand the church’s facilities. While negotiations are not yet final, John Mack, a church minister, said that the redevelopment probably will keep tenants off the premises for approximately 20 months, beginning in June 2007.

Mack added that under current plans for the new structure, two floors in the renovated building would be a "state-of-the- art" homeless services facility.

The first floor would house facilities for meals, laundry, showers and other necessities, while the second floor would be the site for medical services, group meetings, and case work, he said. The church would be located in the front part of the property at 10th and G streets in Northwest, while residential properties would be built on the part of the block of 10th Street extending toward H Street, he said.

While the BID may seek temporary facilities to tide the center over during the redevelopment, Gray said that a permanent move from First Congregational may be a better option for the center. Because the church also houses the Dinner Program for Homeless Women, the Downtown Services Center has to stop its activities there around 2:00 p.m. every day. Though, Gray added that BID might still maintain a satellite office in the church.

If the center could find a home that would allow it to operate for 12 hours a day, rather than the 6 hours it now can offer, the move could be "the best thing that ever happened to us," Gray said.

These changes affect an institution that Chet Gray, the BID director of homeless services, says is unique among D.C. service providers because of its “low-barrier, high-tolerance” approach. The center accepts clients who are "drunk, sober, high, clean, or dirty," as long as they do not provoke conflicts with others, said Gray. The center provides these clients a range of services, such as breakfasts, showers, medical treatments, and vocational rehabilitation, in one downtown location.

Still, key part of the center's work is direct street outreach. Three workers spend roughly 11 hours per day on the street, engaging homeless people and steering them toward services. The workers’ efforts are supplemented by BID Safety and Maintenance (SAM) employees. SAMs, who are easily identified by their distinctive red uniforms, assist tourists and local law enforcement officials and, according to the BID, are "trained to be attuned to people who are homeless -- to identify their needs and be respectful of their rights."