La Casa Transitional/Treatment Center on Irving Street NW is trying not only to rebuild homeless men’s lives but also its own image and reputation.

For years, La Casa has been known in the neighborhood as a flophouse for homeless men, a refuge of last resort for the addicted and the sometimes violent.

"People who came here were people other shelters didn’t want," said Brunilda Sepulveda-Irene of the Coalition for the Homeless and director of the center.

Bruni, as she is known to the staff and clients at the center, notes that when Coalition for the Homeless took over the center from the D.C. Department of Human Services, there were no rules concerning who could be admitted. Frequently, those admitted were intoxicated and security was a problem. There were no programs to help the men move out of homelessness and into jobs and housing.

She witnessed these conditions when she was brought in as director of the shelter two years ago.

"There were people who were here, working and homeless," she said in disbelief. "What are we doing as agencies that are keeping people homeless?"

Last July, Sepulveda-Irene began to transform the shelter into a treatment and transitional center to help homeless men overcome their addictions and find jobs and housing.

"It has been an uphill struggle the whole way," she said.

La Casa now runs treatment programs every day that include group sessions on addiction control, relapse prevention, behavior management, life skills and cultural sensitivity in the first phase of the three-phase program.

The second and third phases of La Casa’s six-month program include learning resume and interviewing skills, setting up residents with jobs, and helping residents save money to enable them to move into their own housing when they graduate from the program.

"Once they take responsibility for their life in here, then they’re going to start to take responsibility for their life out there," said Sepulveda-Irene.

La Casa’s first graduates completed the program this month.

Part of the director’s mission has been to keep the center bilingual, given its location between Mount Pleasant and Columbia Heights, one of the most Hispanic neighborhoods in the city.

But she and the coalition have come under fire for letting some of their bilingual staff go. Sepulveda-Irene, who is bilingual, said those staff members were not properly certified as addiction counselors. She now boasts that most of her staff are certified addiction counselors, and many of those that aren’t yet certified have completed course work for certification.

Staff upgrades are just one aspect of the transformation underway at La Casa. Over the past year the building itself has changed. On a tour of the center, the director showed off the new kitchen, the center’s first. The men served by La Casa are now divided into crews responsible for cooking and serving meals and also for cleaning and maintaining the kitchen.

Other improvements include an exercise area complete with weight machines and rooms for the men’s group counseling sessions. The bathrooms and shower rooms are also being remodeled to make the space more livable. The residents’ living areas will also be repainted to make them more comfortable.

"I need to get it through to people that when they see it, it’s totally different," Sepulveda-Irene said.

She said one very visible and symbolic change will be made also: the bright mural that has adorned the outside of the building since 1992 will be painted over to try to impress on people the changes happening inside.

She spoke about the difficulties in making people understand the transition from a flophouse to a treatment and transitional center, both in the neighborhood and among the homeless who still only know the old La Casa.

She said some in the neighborhood are only concerned about the short-term problem of getting the homeless off the street. To that end, La Casa is still operating two emergency shelters, trailers that house 25 men each and operate from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m., like the old La Casa. But even that operation is undergoing changes.

"If you’re intoxicated, we’re starting to say, ‘No, you can’t come in,’" the director said.

One of the center’s current residents remembers conditions in the old days of La Casa. Carlos, who has been a resident for two months, used to be a security officer in charge of D.C. government buildings in Northwest Washington, including La Casa.

"From what I remember from when they were a shelter to now, that’s two different worlds," Carlos said.

Carlos, 43, who asked that his last name not be used, said he fell into addiction after a broken marriage and subsequently lost his job and his home. After a brush with the law, a judge ordered him to get treatment. Carlos chose La Casa.

"Before I got here, you know what I wanted to do?" he asked. "Throw myself in front of a bus."

This is the third treatment program Carlos has been in for his addictions, but he senses a difference between La Casa and the other two.

"It took a little program like this to focus my thinking," he said. "I feel like I’ve lifted one of the biggest weights from my life."

Part of La Casa’s program includes encouraging clients to perform community service, even if they are not required to do so by court order. Carlos serves food to other homeless men at La Casa del Pueblo, a church around the corner from the center.

Carlos is most impressed by the counselors’ approaches towards addiction. Through group sessions and counseling, Carlos said he has a new respect for his addictions.

"I’m a diabetic. I’m going to have that for the rest of my life," he said. Drug addiction is the same.

"Some people go through recovery and think, ‘I beat it.’ Uh-uh. That’s something you’re going to have for the rest of your life, too."

Carlos is upbeat and enthusiastic about the program, but he tries not to be overly optimistic.

"As an addict, if I think too far ahead, I might disappoint myself and it might put me out there again," he said. "So I live for the day. But today I have choices I didn’t when I was using."

Sepelvda-Irene recognizes that though they’ve made huge strides in the past year, La Casa still has a long way to go.

"Union Mission didn’t just become Union Mission overnight," she said, referring to one of the District’s biggest transitional and treatment centers.

She still struggles daily with the myriad problems that face La Casa, from trying to get the D.C. Department of Human Services to fix the air conditioning in the building, which the city owns, to finding donated suits for the men to wear to job interviews, to buying food for the men to eat.

"We just want the chance to stay afloat for just one more year," she said. So despite her family obligations, she works 10 to 12 hour days at the center and then goes home and works on her budget problems until late in the evening.

"I just try to do my job as best I can," she said. "Sometimes I make it, sometimes I don’t."

The Coalition for the Homeless named her "Social Services Employee of the Year" last year, but she keeps the plaque in a box in her desk. She’s too self-conscious to hang it in her office, she said.

"We’re always one paycheck away from homelessness," she said.

Copyright 1998, The Common Denominator