After weeks of advocates, residents, and councilmembers demanding action, D.C. announced this month it will expand its shelter program that houses medically vulnerable residents into a fourth hotel.

But the news came with a caveat: D.C.’s Department of Human Services, which oversees the Pandemic Emergency Program for Medically Vulnerable Residents (PEP-V), also said that it plans on ending the program completely come September, when the federal dollars that fund the initiative run out. Once the fourth location is full, the city will also no longer maintain the waitlist for the program, which has grown to 600 people. 

It is unclear what will happen to the more than 600 people currently living in PEP-V housing, or the hundreds of people facing housing stability who have added their names to the waitlist. D.C. doesn’t have enough housing supply to place the more than 600 PEP-V participants in a permanent home, DHS says, and if DHS can’t provide PEP-V residents with a housing voucher, it’s very likely those people will have to move to a homeless shelter. 

The agency itself noted as much in its release: “Given the scale of the PEP-V program, and that FEMA reimbursement is authorized until September 30th, not all persons residing at a PEP-V site will have attained housing by the time PEP-V sites close in September 2021.”

“[The program] was never intended to exist in the long run,” DHS Director Laura Zeilinger tells DCist. “We will not be continuing to fill a program that is about to wind down.”

After the fourth PEP-V hotel is full and some residents begin leaving those shelters, DHS will stop replacing them with people on the waitlist. Zeilinger says this is so the PEP-V program can shut down gradually, instead of all at once in September. 

DHS announced on April 2 the expansion of PEP-V, which during the pandemic has offered rooms at three different D.C. hotels for residents experiencing homelessness who are at a high risk of illness if they contract COVID-19. 

The fourth site, at the Capitol Skyline hotel in Southwest, will likely open by the end of April, Zeilinger tells DCist. It previously served as an isolation housing site. It will add 200 more rooms to the program, which as of April 8 housed 631 people — an addition that still only accounts for about 30% of the 600 individuals on the waitlist for a PEP-V room. After the fourth hotel is full, PEP-V will serve more than 800 residents.

Zeilinger says that DHS expects to have contacted every individual currently living in PEP-V to create a housing plan for September by April 16. She notes that not every individual in PEP-V qualifies for permanent supportive housing, so others may be connected with one-time supplemental rent assistance, or new emergency housing vouchers provided by the federal department of housing and urban development. Last week, HUD announced an allocated $19 million to D.C. for homelessness services, and Zeilinger says DHS will learn in the coming weeks how many emergency housing vouchers will be granted to the city. (The vouchers will be distributed through the D.C. Housing Authority).

For those on the waitlist who will not take one of the additional 200 rooms opening later this month, Zeilinger says DHS is focused on continuing its vaccination program and finding residents still in congregate shelters to connect them with housing resources. As of April 9, 222 PEP-V participants had moved out into permanent housing options, and 166 current PEP-V residents have been connected with a voucher for housing, according to Zeilinger.

The expansion comes after housing advocates and local lawmakers criticized the department for its failure to quickly use federal resources to open a fourth location earlier this year, despite the program’s swelling waitlist and an increased commitment from the federal government to pay for the shelter. 

Earlier this year, President Joe Biden opened two additional streams of federal funding to assist localities pay for their homelessness services.

One came in the form of an executive order, which directed the Federal Emergency Management Agency to fully cover all state or local funds spent on emergency hotel housing during the pandemic through September 2021, and retroactively reimburse any money spent on these programs during the pandemic. (Previously, D.C. footed 25% of the bill for PEP-V housing, while the federal CARES Act covered 75%). The American Rescue Plan, passed in March, also allocated funds for states to entirely purchase hotels for the purpose of converting them into non-congregate or permanent housing options.

Despite the additional streams of federal funding, DHS was slow to act on expanding the shelter program into a fourth hotel. Last month, DHS Director Laura Zeilinger said the department was weighing the need for additional non-congregate shelter with the priority of vaccine rollouts, and added that some PEP-V costs, like case management and staffing, would not be eligible for federal reimbursement.

On March 26, Ward 1 Councilmember Brianne Nadeau and ten other councilmembers wrote a letter to D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser that called on DHS to open a fourth hotel for PEP-V. Nadeau argued that in addition to the federal funding, the city could staff the expansion with personnel and other resources from the soon-to-close isolation housing (ISAQ), as well as from D.C.’s seasonal hypothermia shelters, which will be demobilizing for spring.

https://twitter.com/BrianneKNadeau/status/1375582354564075527

“The District’s residents cannot wait any longer for action,” Nadeau wrote. “While PEP-V locations are service rich and require a lot of staffing, the decommission of the ISAQ and the seasonal hypothermia shelters should allow for some staffing resources to be redirected for at least one additional PEP-V location.”

Once the program ends come September, it’s unclear what will happen to the demobilized hotels and motels. Councilmember Nadeau and Ward 5 Councilmember Kenyan McDuffie have both called for the city to fully purchase hotels to convert them into permanent supportive or affordable housing — a proposal that’s already been adopted in places like California and Oregon. Funding for the purchase or conversion of hotels is included in the latest American Rescue Plan. 

Zeilinger says DHS is working with the city’s Department of Housing and Community Development on a housing strategy that incorporates purchased hotels, given the federal dollars available, but that such projects would require transforming hotels out of their current states. The city previously used a motel-shelter model, which was marked by poor conditions and allegations of abuse by contractors. D.C. ended its last contract with a hotel for emergency housing in August of last year.

“We are in conversation with our housing partners at the Department of Housing and Community Development and Office, planning on what that might look like,” Zeilinger says. “Whether it is a version of hotels who are interested in selling, or other properties within the district that are consistent with our housing plan. We’re not trying to maintain hotels as housing, but there are some hotels that may lend themselves to a conversion.”