Supporters of safety net spending were heartened by the June 5 passage of a D.C. city budget that included $6 million to help move homeless families and poor individuals into affordable apartments and $18 million to build low-cost housing.
Poor and homeless men and women and their advocates fought hard for the restoration of funding for the Local Rent Supplement Program and the Housing Production Trust Fund, testifying at budget hearings and holding rallies and marches in weeks leading up to the vote on the Fiscal Year 2013 Budget Support Act, legislation necessary to enact the city’s $9.4 billion
budget for the coming year. The council also approved a measure proposed by Council member Jim Graham that offers more time to longterm welfare recipients facing sanctions to prepare for self-sufficiency.
“We won everything,” noted Nechama Masliansky, a senior advocacy advisor for the nonprofit housing and service organization So Others Might Eat.
An additional $7 million needed to keep emergency shelters open year round has been placed at the top of the council’s budgetary priority list making it the first item to be funded when additional revenues become available.