Photo by rjs1322.

Saying that the rising costs of housing the homeless has became an urgent issue in D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser is proposing a new law that would make it easier for the city to deny shelter to some.

The mayor wants to limit eligibility and make it easier for the city to check residency requirements. “We cannot serve the entire region,” Bowser said at a breakfast meeting with the D.C. Council today, noting that 12 percent of applicants for family shelter don’t live in the District.

While the nation saw an overall decline in homeless between 2015 and 2016, D.C. went in the opposite direction, recording one of the biggest increases in the country. According to a point-in-time count taken in January, overall homelessness increased by 14.4 percent in D.C. last year. Much of the increase is due to the rising number of homeless families, which grew by about 25 percent last year.

By law, D.C. guarantees shelter on freezing nights, and has recently extended it to families for the rest of the year. But over the past three years, the number of people seeking shelter during hypothermia season has far exceeded the available number of beds, and the city has turned to housing families in D.C. and Maryland motels.

Housing families in overflow motels is now costing the city $80,000 a night, according to Laura Zeilinger, the director of the Department of Human Services.

“The $150 a night it costs for a hotel room and services on top of that—those are not solutions,” Zeilinger said. “Those are dollars that would be much better invested in the affordable housing that residents need.”

DHS also estimates that as many as 10 percent of applicants for shelter during hypothermia season have access to safe housing, though they are otherwise eligible for a bed. Bowser’s proposal would “clarify” that anyone with access to safe housing is not considered homeless in the context of receiving emergency shelter.

Several councilmembers pushed back on the proposal to change the homeless definition ahead of winter, while others indicated support, particularly for clamping down on sheltering people coming from outside the city.

The mayor also gave an updated timeline for when seven new family shelters designed to replace D.C. General will be completed. The city expects that facilities in wards 4, 7, and 8 will be completed by September of 2018 and those in wards 3, 5, and 6 (which were all moved from a private site in Bowser’s original plan to city-owned land) are due in the summer of 2019. The Ward 1 site, which saw some of the most vociferous opposition from neighbors, remains in the acquisition phase.

When they do come online, the new facilities will replace the beds in D.C. General, but will not add to the District’s capacity to house the homeless.