First day of school for students at homeless shelter is mix of excitement, shame The 13-year-old from Southeast Washington woke up extra early this year. The bus ride from the D.C. General homeless shelter to the high school in her old neighborhood was a long one. "It's back in Anacostia, back where we used to live," the new freshman told me. Her father waited for the bus with her. "We're trying to get out," he said. But the way things are now, it's hard to get out, hard to find something we can afford. We talked while he waited with his kids for their Metro bus. He asked me not to use his name or the names of his 13- and 16-year-old kids. They really don't want all their friends to know what has happened to their family. Some of the 476 kids sleeping at the shelter this summer have been there for a while, and the older ones are getting pretty good at hiding their situation from friends. When school starts, the families and schools have to figure out how to keep the kids who lost their homes from also losing ground in the classroom. And from losing face. Most decide to stay in their old schools, taking city buses and the Metro to almost 60 different schools. Walking from the bus doesn't raise a red flag with other kids. And the city gets a federal subsidy to help fund those commutes. But sometimes it's too hard to keep up the commute. Or the kids just want to get away from their neighborhood, their school or their past, and they transfer into one of the Capitol Hill schools closer to the shelter. The problem is, there's usually no hiding where you live when you do that. The school bus drives right up to the shelter's front doors, past the sign that directs visitors to the kids" new neighbors - the jail, the morgue, the Southeast Sexually Transmitted Diseases Clinic (turn right), the Detox Center (also right), the jail's video visitation center (turn left). The current population of kids - 476 in last week's count - is down from a peak of about 600 this winter. Don't get all excited that the homeless population is shrinking, though. This doesn't mean that 124 kids have families that got back on their feet, found nice apartments and are all doing well. "About six to eight families a month just move out on their own; that's just natural attrition," said David A. Berns, director of the D.C. Department of Human Services. Each month, an additional 40 families get apartments through a program known as Rapid Re-Housing. For some families, this program is a lifeline. It gets them into an apartment quickly and provides a huge subsidy on rent for a short time - four months to a year - based on income. And because it costs about $50,000 a year to keep a family in the shelter, the several thousand spent to get a family into an apartment and back on its feet is a bargain. But the program has been so successful that there is a waiting list of about 200 families that qualify for apartments but don't yet have them. Meanwhile, the program can't take any more applicants.