The District housed fewer people experiencing homelessness in fiscal year 2025 than the year before — even as the city wades through its voucher backlog. The “significant slowdown,” as Executive Director of D.C.’s Interagency Council on Homelessness Theresa Silla described it to it at a D.C. Council Committee on Human Services oversight hearing on March 7, comes in the same year as an uptick in homelessness in the city.
The District’s homeless services system moves more families into housing than single adults each year, even though more individuals experience homelessness. The process is also slow. While the city funded 2,400 new Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH) vouchers for individuals in fiscal year 2022, only 600 people moved into housing with the vouchers that year. With D.C. funding fewer vouchers in subsequent years, only a fraction of adults experiencing homelessness have moved into housing.
In 2024, according to Silla’s testimony, the number of families experiencing homelessness across D.C.’s homeless services system increased by about 11%, from 1,284 families in FY23 to 1,431 families in FY24. In response, the family system “mobilized” to house families as quickly as possible, Silla said.
The number of families exiting homelessness and moving into housing increased by 32% over the last year, from 885 families in FY23 to 1173 families in FY24, she said. “While we are anxious about the increase in families experiencing homelessness, we are grateful for all of the members of the family system … who rally to house families as quickly as possible,” Silla said.
But single adults have not seen the same outcome. Homelessness among unaccompanied people rose slightly based on the city’s data about how many people it serves, from 8,691 people in FY23 to 8,768 in FY24. But the number of individuals who moved into housing decreased by 22%, from 972 people in FY23 to 756 people in FY24. This means less than one-tenth of individuals who experienced homelessness in FY24 moved into housing.
One of the main ways individual adults experiencing homelessness move into housing is through the PSH program, which provides long-term rental assistance and case management to those who are chronically homeless.
In FY24, 995 individuals were matched to a PSH voucher, according to DHS data from January 2025. In the same timeframe, 544 individuals moved into housing with the voucher. As of Oct. 31, 2024, all FY22 through FY24 resources had been matched to a household, DHS data says.
But that doesn’t mean everyone is in housing. Hundreds of individuals who are eligible for and matched to vouchers are still homeless, with 38% of vouchers not utilized from FY22 to FY24, according to DHS data. This means about 1,187 of the 3,126 vouchers allocated for singles from FY22 to FY24 remain unused, with their recipients still sleeping outside or in shelters.
This is nothing new for DHS and the D.C. Housing Authority (DCHA), its partner on the PSH program. Since the city expanded PSH vouchers in 2022, the city has had a backlog of hundreds of vouchers waiting to be processed. Part of the delay is the lengthy process; once someone is matched to a voucher, they still have to apply for the program, find an apartment, and have the city approve that apartment.
As the backlog continued, the city slowed voucher investments. In FY25, the District only allocated funding for 148 PSH vouchers for individuals, a sliver of the 1,260 vouchers advocacy groups pushed the city to fund. It was the third consecutive year the city reduced the budget for PSH vouchers for individuals as officials played catch-up with the remaining vouchers.
Delays occur at every stage of the process, which officials at the oversight hearing attributed to DHS staffing shortages and DCHA’s disarray. Brian Campbell, the administrator for the DHS’s economic security administration, said DHS increased overtime spending by $129,000 last year, which he attributed to the agency’s higher caseload across all its programs.
“It’s certainly a contributing factor. The other thing that explains it, frankly, is that our caseload has risen 40% since COVID. So it’s a matter of: there’s work to get done. How do we get the work done?” Campbell said.
On the DCHA side, a 2022 U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) report found the housing authority suffered from issues like poor management of its voucher program.
As part of bringing DCHA into federal and local compliance, rent reasonableness, a process the housing authority uses to verify landlords are charging voucher holders a rent comparable to what other rents would pay, was first implemented in July 2023. DCHA said in a June 2023 release it did not anticipate “any delays” in processing timelines, yet housing placements came to an immediate halt, Silla said at the hearing. Interim DHS Director Rachel Pierre said DCHA and DHS collaborated to expedite the process for those impacted.
DHS’s reliance on the DCHA administering the local rent subsidy program is one reason there is such a gap between the percent of families and individuals moving into housing, Silla said. The family system does not rely on DCHA to exit families from short-term housing to housing facilitated by the Family Rehousing Stabilization Program, which provides rental assistance to families for 12 to 18 months.
“The road to recovery at the D.C. Housing Authority has been hard on our single adult subsystem,” Silla said.
While a higher percentage of families move into housing, there are still delays in the PSH program. In FY24, 441 families were matched to a PSH voucher, and 158 moved into housing, according to DHS data. But 48% of recent PSH investments for families haven’t been used, meaning 922 families are waiting to move in with a voucher.
Thus far in fiscal year 2025, 33 singles and 27 families have been matched to a voucher through the PSH program, according to DHS data last updated in January. Another 149 singles and 27 families moved into housing. The District’s voucher progress over the last year may impact how much funding the mayor and D.C. Council will give the PSH program in the next budget, which is expected to be released in the coming weeks.
