Twenty local groups, including the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute, the Homeless Children’s Playtime Project and the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless, have a released a comprehensive plan they say will improve the system that serves homeless families in D.C.
Helping Families Home lays out a plan through next spring that will create a “system that serves families appropriately with the goal of quickly connecting families with the right services, including emergency shelter if needed, when they need it, regardless of the time of year.” This includes providing year-round shelter, moving families out of shelter within 30 days, and improving data on how money is budgeted and spent. “Importantly, this roadmap identifies the funding needed in the fiscal year FY 2014 and FY 2015 budgets to achieve these goals,” the plan states.
One of the areas where additional funding is needed, according to the plan, is to improve quality of life at D.C. General, the city’s family homeless shelter. The plan calls for the city to hire ten additional social workers for the shelter, including eight family case managers who would focus on children. While shutting down the shelter is the ultimate goal, “the reality is that it will need to be used for several years until a replacement shelter system is ready,” the report states.
Two million dollars is needed to pilot a prevention program with case management, according to the report.
“No one wants to repeat the crisis from last winter,” Jenny Reed of the DC Fiscal Policy Institute said in a release. “Yet without sufficient planning and funding, the likelihood is high that the crisis will happen again.”
We’ll have more on this report later this week. Read it below.
