It's not just Washington.

• Author: Boo, Katherine
• Position: Bureaucratic apathy towards homeless children

Katherine Boo is an intern at The Washington Monthly.

"Go play in traffic" is no joke at the Capitol City Inn, Washington, D.C.'s shelter for homeless families. Lots of the shelter's kids do, hustling quarters by washing the windows of stopped cars. They play on railroad tracks, too, where eastern corridor commuters go whizzing past. In March, after two infants died inside the shelter, the city's human services director suddenly discovered that D.C.'s 1,300 homeless kids were "at risk." But they're not the only ones. Poor kids everywhere who rely on city services face the dangers of bureaucratic apathy and incompetence. The one thing that isn't at risk is the job security of municipal employees. No matter how badly they screw up-or who gets hurt-their paychecks are the safest things around.

The caretaker

On January 14, 1988, Johnnie Smith, his wife, and four children burned to death in a fire at the Desire housing project in New Orleans. Just two weeks earlier, the Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO) had forfeited $106,000 of a federal grant to install smoke detectors in the high-rise building. Although the money had been awarded a year earlier and there were smoke detectors gathering dust in a downtown warebouse, HANO had failed to find anyone in or out of the authority qualited to screw them in.

When HANO was questioned about the failure by the New Orleans Times-Picayune, thendirector Jesse Smallwood explained, "I don't want to belabor that we could've or should've. . . .1 don't feel anyone should be blamed."

And nobody was. Although Mayor Sidney Barthelemy re-funded the installation project with $110,000 from a surplus account, he conducted no investigation of the lost grant or the death of the Smiths. Although HANO officials say the twice-funded installation project is still "in process," today, more than a year and a half after Desire's smoke detectors arrived at the agency warehouse, a maintenance worker at Desire says, "We're still waiting."

After ten years bouncing around Philadelphia's foster homes, 14-year-old Lillie Mae Ferebee was reunited in 1981 with her father. Unfortunately, William Ferebee, a diagnosed schizophrenic, had just completed a ten-year prison sentence for raping a child. Making the placement decision for Philadelphia Department of Human Services was a half-trained social worker on her first child welfare case. Her supervisor concurred with the judgment.

Three months after the reunion, Lillie Mae's grandmother...