D.C. lawmakers are scrambling to find additional funding for emergency rental assistance and housing vouchers in the budget for the coming year, expressing concerns that cuts to both programs proposed by Mayor Muriel Bowser could lead to a spike in homelessness.

The urgency around the two programs — one that helps low-income residents stay housed by paying their rent in emergency situations, the other helps people experiencing homelessness move into housing — was made clear on Wednesday, when members of the D.C. Council gathered in the Wilson Building for a 12-hour-long meeting to hash out changes to Bowser’s proposed budget.

Virtually every lawmaker at the meeting cited Bowser’s proposed cuts to ERAP, the city’s emergency rental assistance program, as a point of concern. The mayor has proposed spending $8 million next year on the program, a dramatic 80% decrease from the $43 million budgeted for the current fiscal year.

“When we look at things that would make a difference right now, for me that looks like ERAP,” said Councilmember Janeese Lewis George (D-Ward 4). “We know rent continues to rise and people are struggling to meet those needs.”

“Our homeless services system cannot accommodate a flood of people entering the system after getting evicted,” said Councilmember Robert White (D-At Large).

When she unveiled her budget proposal in late March, Bowser justified the cuts to ERAP by saying unemployment levels were low and pandemic-era increases in funding for the program were no longer needed or sustainable. (In 2018, the city spent roughly $7 million on ERAP.) But many lawmakers have countered that argument, noting that although hiring may have reached pre-pandemic rates, rents have also continued to rise. They’ve also pointed to the fact that the $43 million budgeted for the current fiscal year was fully spent within six months.

White told his colleagues he was able to increase ERAP’s budget for the coming year to $14 million, but at the current spending rate, it would only last a fraction of the coming fiscal year, which starts Oct. 1.

“The $14 million will last less than two months,” he said.

Council Chairman Phil Mendelson, who will work over the next week to piece together a budget proposal that the council will vote on on May 16, said he would aim to get ERAP back to its current funding level, but that it would be a challenge given the competing priorities and one of the tightest budgets in at least a decade.

In the meantime, though, more immediate relief is coming: Bowser told lawmakers this week that the city received $33 million in COVID-19 relief funds not spent by other states, and it’s aiming to spend the money on ERAP and rapid rehousing, a program that temporarily subsidizes rents for people experiencing homelessness.

White also told his colleagues he was trying to find funding to pay for additional housing vouchers for the coming year, noting that Bowser has proposed keeping spending on the program flat. Because of the nature of the permanent supportive housing program — as the name would suggest, a rent subsidy that never expires — the D.C. government must increase funding for it annually in order to accept new residents into the program.

But the challenges to finding that funding remain; with a leaner budget than in years past, lawmakers are struggling to address some of Bowser’s proposed cuts while paying for other initiatives and pet projects.

White’s effort to add funding to the program comes shortly after Bowser presented the D.C. Council with a revised fiscal year 2023 budget that shows the D.C. government failed to spend $17 million earmarked this year for permanent housing vouchers — putting a finer point on the city’s long-standing issue disbursing vouchers in a timely manner.

White expressed worry on Tuesday that increased needs and faster processing by city agencies could mean that the city could run out of vouchers before the end of the 2024 fiscal year.

“It is undoubtedly true that if we don’t fund new housing vouchers this year, there will be a time soon when we don’t have vouchers available and we will fall behind on the progress we have made to end chronic homelessness in the District,” he said.

Permanent supportive housing vouchers, a subsidy provided to chronically homeless families that includes case management, are one of the strongest tools available to mitigate homelessness.

But a public dashboard updated by the Department of Human Services, the agency responsible for managing permanent supportive housing vouchers, indicates the agency has not yet finished spending money allocated for the program during the previous fiscal year. While all 3,430 available vouchers in fiscal year 2022 were matched to eligible households, as of April 20, only 1,628 of those households actually moved into housing, a process known as “leasing up.” Only six families in the permanent supportive housing program moved into new housing in April.

DHS has acknowledged in reports to the council’s housing committee some of the issues leading to bottlenecks. A number of bureaucratic failures have stymied efforts to quickly match residents to housing, including staff turnover at DHS, as well as a shortage of case managers and social workers assigned to work with program participants. The agency has also experienced significant delays in identifying and inspecting apartments to meet city housing code standards.

The city’s failure to move unhoused people through the voucher lease-up process has exacerbated the number of people forced to live outside. At the McPherson Square homeless encampment, for example, which officials cleared in February, dozens of residents were matched with some kind of housing intervention, but never moved into a new home.

“I don’t want to see the government throwing money and ideas around if we can’t tie them to specific expectations, particularly as we head into a time with more constrained budgets,” White told DCist/WAMU this spring. “This is aside from the more important fact that we have real people who’ve been approved for housing [who are] living on the streets, and that’s a problem.”