The D.C. Housing Authority (DCHA) Stabilization and Reform Board voted during its July 10 meeting to prioritize 1,300 families exiting the Rapid Rehousing (RRH) program for federal housing vouchers. Detractors worry the move will delay housing even further for the 40,000 people currently on the city’s voucher waitlist, some of whom have been waiting for decades.
The board voted 6 to 2 in favor of a resolution that makes the 2,200 families exiting this year from RRH, a short-term subsidy program that pays a portion of a family or individual’s rent for a market-rate apartment over a year, first in line for the available federal Housing Choice Vouchers. In May, the D.C. Department of Human Services (DHS) began sending pre-exit letters announcing that due to the RRH program exhausting all funds for extensions, families who have been depending on the subsidy for over 12 months will be removed from the program.
Throughout the District’s budget process, housing advocates raised concerns DHS was leaving the families exiting RRH with few options other than the streets or a shelter. Advocates asked the D.C. Council and Mayor Murial Bowser’s administration to prevent the impending crisis in some way.
Neither Bowser nor the council could find a solution in the budget for all families, though the council passed emergency legislation to allow another six-month extension of the housing subsidy (DHS says there are no funds for the extension) and added over 600 vouchers for families exiting the program. That wasn’t nearly enough, however, for all 2,200 families, so it’s fallen to the housing authority to become a safety net where others have failed.
“This is a bailout of failed policy,” Rebecca Lindhurst, managing attorney at Bread for the City, a nonprofit providing food, clothing, medical care, and legal and social services to low-income D.C. residents, said at the hearing during her testimony. “I think we are sweeping in to save DHS from something that looks really bad politically.”
Ronnie Harris, a former voucher holder who fills the voucher recipient commissioner seat on the DCHA board, and D.C. Interagency Council on Homelessness Director Theresa Silla were the only two members on the eleven-person board who voted against the measure. Three members were not at the meeting, according to the roll call, and did not vote. The commissioners and housing advocates against the resolution said those exiting RRH should be able to move into stable housing, but felt it was unfair for those who have been waiting for a voucher since the mid-2000s to have another 1,300 households jump ahead of them.
“I feel that it is absolutely critical that the primary focus of DCHA needs to be on shoring up all of the services it’s currently providing, because it is failing people that are currently experiencing homelessness,” Silla said at the meeting. She added DCHA should be prioritizing people on the waitlist who are experiencing homelessness and in shelters for any available vouchers.
“Being a former long-term voucher holder I cannot in good faith vote yes for this,” Harris said. “If I was still waiting on that waiting list I know how I would feel and I know there would be letters flying off everywhere that wouldn’t do anything.”
The members who voted yes said they feel like they’re between a rock and a hard place, choosing between pushing people who have been waiting for years further back in line, or risking those exiting RRH eventually becoming homeless.
“I don’t like agreeing to this resolution but I’m going to agree to support this resolution because the alternative feels unacceptable,” Commissioner Christopher Murphy said.
DCHA, for its part, argues it’s been making progress on the waitlist and can house the people on the waitlist and those exiting RRH simultaneously, a claim commissioners both in favor of and opposed to the resolution said was unlikely. DCHA has pulled 19,000 people from the current waiting list, Amy Glassman, DCHA’s general counsel, said at the hearing.
“So we have 19,000 folks who are presently in some stage of potentially getting a voucher,” Glassman said. “They’re either in an eligibility review, they have a voucher and are looking for a unit, or hopefully getting ready to respond to the notification that they were pulled from the waitlist.”
There’s some dispute over what being “pulled” means, but DCHA has contacted 19,554 people on the waitlist, and they are in some stage in the process of getting a voucher. Another 18,000 people on the waitlist have yet to be contacted. According to DCHA oversight documents from February, 40,570 people are on the voucher waitlist. DCHA modeled how this prioritization of RRH will affect those still on the waitlist, and staff said early projections predict the agency will begin addressing people on the waitlist again in early 2025.
“These are really difficult decisions and hard choices,” Raymond Skinner, chair of the DCHA board said. “I guess that’s why we get paid the big bucks.”
