Photo by Sarah Anne Hughes.
As activists for the homeless protested outside, Mayor Vincent Gray announced during his State of the District address that the city would launch a campaign to house 500 families in 100 days.
Between the launch date and June, Gray explained, the campaign “will identify and lease at least 500 apartments for homeless families using either rapid re-housing or permanent supportive housing vouchers” through landlord outreach.
Department of Human Services spokeswoman Dora Taylor said the campaign will officially launch on April 1, one day after the end of hypothermia season — the period during which the city is obligated to shelter the homeless when the temperature falls below 32 degrees.
“The Interagency Council on Homelessness met in January to identify some strategies to reduce the number of families in need of shelter,” Taylor said via email. “One of those strategies included an outreach plan for landlords. The Community Partnership for the Prevention of Homelessness and the DC Housing Association sent a letter to all of their respective landlords, which in one week, resulted in the identification of 93 units for inspection for possible inclusion in the Rapid Rehousing program.”
DHS, TCP and the Transitional Housing Corporation are simultaneously engaged “in a comprehensive outreach campaign to identify 500 apartments in three months.”
The campaign is one way the city is trying to deal with the hundreds of homeless D.C. families who sought shelter this winter. With D.C. General full and hundreds of adults and children at area hotels, families seeking shelter on cold nights have been housed in recreation centers since the end of January. (A policy that led a judge to issue a restraining order against the city.) And with spring coming, these people will no longer be guaranteed a place to stay.
Nassim Moshiree, a staff attorney with the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless, said the program is a good idea, but she questioned why it wasn’t implemented earlier.
“It’s a good effort, it’s important to do,” she said. “What families in shelters really need is housing … and the faster they can do that the better. We wish they could have started this months ago.”
Moshiree said the campaign will hopefully open up shelter space for families being sent to recreation centers at the moment, who will soon lose their guaranteed shelter. There’s also the matter of cost: DHS Director David Berns told the City Paper that, for the $140 or $150 it costs the city to house families at D.C. General or a hotel, “the city could keep three to four families housed through rapid rehousing or emergency rental assistance.”
As DHS’s oversight report to the Council stated, 10 families were placed in permanent supportive housing from D.C. General between October 2013 and January 2014. That number was 154 families for rapid re-housing. During that same period, one family was placed in permanent supportive housing from a motel and two through rapid re-housing.
When asked why the campaign is being implemented in April, Taylor reiterated the timeline:
