The D.C. Department of Human Services is planning to phase out the use of motels as emergency overflow shelters for families experiencing homelessness by the end of next year, agency leadership tells DCist. The news was first reported by Washington City Paper.

The shift comes after years of city attempts to reduce the use of motels as overflow shelters. It’s often difficult for agencies to provide necessary services to families in this setting, and the conditions of the motels themselves have been oft-maligned by residents. It also comes after Mayor Muriel Bowser closed D.C. General, the large former hospital used as a family homeless shelter for many years. The Bowser administration is opening several new shelters in different wards to replace the dilapidated D.C. General.

The gap between the number of families experiencing homelessness and the available family shelter space has long forced the city to place families in overflow motels, especially during hypothermia season. It costs the city about $3,000 monthly to house each family at a motel, according to WCP. Advocates and the city alike have agreed that motels don’t serve homeless families well.

“Hotel rooms are not an ideal way to provide an emergency shelter, but just deciding that it’s not ideal does not mean it’s not the right choice when the alternative is that people won’t get help,” says DHS Director Laura Zeilinger.

Zeilinger says it’s always been in the plan for the city to reduce family homelessness enough (and create enough shelter space) that the city no longer needs to use motels for overflow.

“It’s not that we suddenly decided, okay, let’s close D.C. General and next let’s close motels. It’s been, let’s create a crisis response system … so that people don’t fall into homelessness,” Zeilinger says. “And let’s make sure when people come in and do need services, they’re supported to exit [the shelter system] more quickly.” All of that was supposed to make enough room in the existing shelter system to prevent DHS from having to place families in hotels.

Zeilinger says when she came to DHS in 2015, the city’s shelter system was overflowed into hotels in Maryland. At this time two years ago, she says, there were 734 families being sheltered in motels, even with D.C. General full. Today, there are 377 families being housed in motels (and 582 homeless families sheltered in the city total), according to Zeilinger.

When all of the District’s new apartment-style shelters are finished and reach capacity, that number can be further reduced Zeilinger says. “This is something that happens gradually over time. Every day families exit [the shelter system] to housing, and every day families are in need of housing. We project that the need for overflow will continue to decrease over the course of the next year, and we anticipate that by the end of fiscal year 20 we won’t have the need for overflow,” she says.

For their part, advocates have expressed skepticism that DHS’s plan to end motel usage is actually in line with the needs of homeless families. Despite DHS’s numbers showing a decrease in the number of homeless families, “other D.C. agency numbers show family homelessness rising, not going down. The number of homeless children in D.C.’s schools has increased 26 percent since 2015, doubled since 2014,” Amber Harding, an advocate with the Washington Legal Clinic, testified at a D.C. Council oversight hearing, according to WCP. “In 2018, more than three times the number of children counted in the Point in Time count were experiencing homelessness in D.C. schools—6,140 children. That means there were 4,207 children experiencing homelessness in our schools who were not counted in the 2018 Point in Time count. Family homelessness is not decreasing––family shelter usage is.”

Zeilinger says that though the agency hopes to reach its goal by the end of next year, leaving the motels is ultimately dependent on whether there’s enough room in the shelter system for every homeless family seeking services. “If there’s a need for overflow, we’re not going to leave families on the street,” she says.