Ex-Homeless Man Now Running Shelter : Coup: Keith Mitchell once stayed at capital’s largest center for the dispossessed. His job there is being watched closely.

WASHINGTON —  He came to the District of Columbia’s largest homeless shelter a few years ago dirty, desperate and broke, a hapless former drug dealer who had been sleeping for months on the street.

Today, Keith Mitchell is running the place.

In a coup that has at once amazed and concerned advocates of their cause, Mitchell and a small band of allies have just begun presiding over what is one of the most famed havens for the homeless in the United States: the 1,400-bed shelter opened in a downtown building a decade ago by Mitch Snyder.

It has been celebrated in a television movie, been bankrolled by celebrities and for years has led the fight against homelessness by staging elaborate protests and hunger strikes. But few moments in the shelter’s history are as intriguing as its latest.

For the first time, it is being led by a bum it helped redeem.

That extraordinary change occurred only a few weeks ago, when the Community for Creative Non-Violence, which has managed the shelter since it opened, voted Carol Fennelly out of office. Fennelly, a longtime companion of Snyder’s and one of the country’s most prominent advocates for the homeless, had been running the shelter since his suicide in 1990.

She has since packed up and left. So have a few veteran staff members. All eyes now are on Mitchell, a 38-year-old former computer programmer whose stable life in Washington’s black middle class crumbled four years ago.

The District government and some advocates for the homeless--who each badly need the shelter to succeed--are watching the changing of the guard warily. There are doubts about how well Mitchell can manage such a large facility and questions about whether he will fundamentally alter how it is run.

Mitchell is a protege of Snyder’s and Fennelly’s. Because he had an easy rapport with others at the shelter and showed an avid interest in wanting to help, they began assigning him tasks soon after he arrived. He has spoken across the country at fund-raisers for the homeless. And a few years ago, he even became an elected advisory neighborhood commissioner, representing a small downtown area from Union Station to the shelter on Second and D streets NW.