The District is ending its contract to house homeless families at the Days Inn on New York Avenue NE at the end of next month. The 87 families housed there by the city will move to apartments and other shelters by August 28, and the city’s contract with the motel will end on August 31, according to a Department of Human Services (DHS) spokesperson.

The Washington City Paper was first to report the news. 

As recently as three years ago, the city had 734 families housed in motels, but the Days Inn is now the last remaining motel the District uses to provide emergency shelter. D.C.’s Department of Human Services has been working to end its reliance on motels for years, and last year DHS Director Laura Zeilinger announced that the process would be done by the end of 2020.

Last month, DHS terminated its relationship with the Quality Inn, also on New York Ave NE. It has also ended contracts with Hotel Arboretum, the Howard Johnson Hotel, and Motel 6. The District is continuing to use hotels as quarantine sites for people experiencing homelessness during the pandemic. 

Hotel rooms “are not an ideal way to provide an emergency shelter,” Zeilinger told DCist last year. Advocates have criticized the city’s reliance on motels, and people being housed at the motels have also spoken out about poor conditions. Residents of the Days Inn have referred to it as “the compound” because its rules were so strict, according to City Paper. Children who lived there were not allowed to play outside, and also not allowed to walk, eat, or sleep without supervision, the outlet reported in 2018. 

The contract with Days Inn cost the District $474,000 per month, wrote DHS spokesperson Dora Taylor-Lowe in an email to DCist.

According to Zeilinger, the city’s goal has always been to close the motels by opening up new shelters — and by reducing the number of families experiencing homelessness in the city to begin with.

City Paper reported that 14 families from the Days Inn will be moving into apartments as part of the city’s rapid rehousing program, which heavily subsidizes families’ rents for a year. A DHS spokesperson told the outlet that these families may end up qualifying for longer-term housing support from the city. (Advocates have criticized the city’s reliance on the rapid rehousing program, because they say it leaves families without enough support after that year and in some cases cycles them back into housing insecurity.)

The remaining 73 families will move into short-term family housing programs or apartment-style shelters until they can move into permanent housing, an agency spokesperson told City Paper and confirmed to DCist.

The closure of the motels “is part of our long-term effort to transform the homeless services system away from spaces like DC General and motels, to Short-Term Family Housing (STFH) programs, which provide a more supportive environment for families,” wrote Dora Taylor-Lowe. “Preventing homelessness when possible, providing safe and supportive shelter in STFH, and enabling efficient connections to housing, are improving the experiences of District families who experience housing crises.”

After it closed D.C. General, a large and long-troubled shelter for families, the District began planning smaller shelters across all wards of the city. All but one of those new shelters are now open and housing families. The final new shelter, located in Ward 1, is scheduled for completion as early as the end of this year.