The Bureau of Prisons has extended its contract with D.C.’s men’s halfway house for another six months, buying the agency time to resolve a contract dispute that has threatened to leave the District without a men’s halfway house for federal prisoners.

Hope Village, a reentry center in Woodland that has for years been accused of providing inadequate services to prisoners, will now remain open at least until April 2020. It had originally been set to close on October 31, but the two parties agreed to an extension of the current contract on October 17, BOP confirms to DCist.

The Washington Informer was the first to report the news. “We are open for business until April 30, 2020,” Phinis Jones, a spokesman for Hope Village, told the outlet. “I believe that the Federal Bureau of Prisons is working on the contract to give it to us permanently, possible in May 2020. While all the hoopla about Hope Village has died down, I think we have made the case that we are the only option for male returning citizens who need a halfway house in the city.”

Representatives for Hope Village and CORE DC were not available to comment by the time of publication.

For nearly the entire year, the fate of reentry services in D.C. have been up in the air, as Hope Village and another provider, CORE DC, have been vying for a BOP contract.

BOP awarded the five-year $60 million contract to CORE DC, a service provider that runs a similar facility in New York, last year. That came as a loss to Hope Village, which has operated a halfway house in Ward 8 since 1978. For a time it looked like advocates and inmates—who have long been asking BOP to switch providers, given complaints about Hope Village—were going to get their wish.

But then the saga got a little more complicated. In December 2018, the owner of the Northeast building set to be leased out to CORE DC, Douglas Jemal, pulled out of the deal after neighborhood opposition to the project. Despite entreaties from advocates, who even protested outside of Douglas Development’s headquarters over the summer, Jemal has not budged. CORE DC has not publicly indicated that it has any other site planned for a halfway house.

At the same time, Hope Village filed a protest with the Government Accountability Office against BOP’s contract with CORE DC. In February, the GOA ruled partially for and partially against this protest, essentially ruling that both Hope Village and CORE DC needed to adjust their bids (CORE DC with a leased property, and Hope Village with new regulations allowing for sex offenders who’ve abused children to be housed at the facility).

This process dragged along even as Hope Village’s contract with the BOP was coming near its close in April 2019 (already the result of a contract extension). That month, the BOP granted yet another extension, until October 31.

And now, the federal agency has extended it once again, for another six months.It remains unclear who the BOP will choose for a longer term contract when this next extension is up.