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Long ago, people could ice skate on the Lincoln Memorial’s Reflecting Pool, and a 1964 proposal would have created a permanent ice rink each winter. Alas… these days, if it’s cold enough to skate, you’ll get chased away.
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Libby Solomon is a writer and editor for GGWash. She was previously a reporter for the Baltimore Sun covering the Baltimore suburbs and a writer for Johns Hopkins University’s Centers for Civic Impact. A Baltimore resident, Libby enjoys running and painting in her spare time.
A version of this article first appeared in Street Sense Media.
Althea Thompson is a woman experiencing homelessness who transferred from the Harriet Tubman Women’s Shelter to the Holiday Inn on Rhode Island Ave. NW, which the DC Department of Human Services (DHS) has used as a Pandemic Emergency Program for Medically Vulnerable Individuals (PEP-V) center since March. Usually, residents are assigned case managers within three weeks of admittance, according to the DHS. But after eight weeks, Thompson had still not been matched with a case manager.
Case managers are essential in helping connect shelter residents to housing, a process that can take years for many people experiencing homelessness in DC. Without one, Thompson is completely unable to progress her case. She keeps asking DHS staff at the hotel why she hasn’t been connected to a case manager yet, and says the department’s personnel keep telling her she will eventually be given one.
Of course, COVID-19 looms large across this year’s annual Year in Review issue. From the shocking death toll, to the devastating impact on local businesses, to the cancellation of Pride, coronavirus upended all of our lives. Here are the Blade’s staff picks for the top 10 local news stories of 2020.
Jessica Marino says her story is one of desperation.
For much of the past couple of years, Marino says desperation has guided her decisions as she has clawed through trauma and unsafe situations in pursuit of stability for her 9-year-old son, Sam.
“A lot of times, the decisions we make when we make them out of desperation are not going to be good choices because you’re sort of just grasping at something,” she said. “You’re trying to paddle upstream with nothing.”
Marino fears nothing but more desperation lies beyond both options at her latest crossroads.
That crossroads gave her the option to escape a $900-a-month Rochester apartment she says was unsafe, but do so by moving into a $1,614 Dover apartment her paycheck and savings won’t be able to sustain unless her circumstances cha