I found this article posted in the comment section of a story on Relisha, and my jaw hit the floor:
In D.C. mayors race, Vincent Gray has secret weapon: Support of growing ex-prisoner vote
By Aaron C. Davis, Published: March 22 (2014)
(snip)
In a busy city services building in the heart of Anacostia, the Office on Ex-Offender Affairs used to be hidden on the third floor, behind a wooden door that always seemed to be locked... More than 5,000 residents with records visited the office in 2013, its first year in the new location.
Gray also signed into law early in his tenure a key priority of the advocates:
a ban within city agencies on asking job applicants whether they had been convicted of a crime.
Since then,
the District has hired 534 former inmates most for positions with benefits, including hundreds into jobs that were once off-limits because of their proximity to children, such as school bus attendants, drivers and camp directors.
The city has placed 400 more ex-offenders in jobs with private construction firms and paid for 112 to complete training for commercial drivers licenses. Last year, the government enlisted nearly two dozen city departments, courts and federal prisons to begin a broader effort to get ex-offenders hired.
Much more @ link
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/in-dc-mayors-race-embattled-gray-may-have-a-secret-weapon-in-growing-ex-prisoner-vote/2014/03/22/9a5834e4-aac3-11e3-adbc-888c8010c799_story.html
This may have played a role in klt's ability to obtain work at the DC General Shelter. If so, the fact that they're displacing families in response to what is clearly IMO a much larger, and politically motivated systemic issue, is another tragic facet to this story.
How many more children must be hurt, as pawns, in the games these people are playing? :banghead: