The D.C. Council finalized the city’s $21 billion budget for the 2025 fiscal year on June 12, 2024, reversing some of the largest cuts made in the mayor’s proposed budget. But housing advocates warn it’s still not enough.
The council approved the budget last week, funding 619 housing vouchers. The budget also restored $70 million in funding to the Early Childhood Educator Pay Equity Fund, which helps child care providers at daycares and preschool teachers adjust to the cost of living in D.C. with a stipend that brings their pay in line with public school teachers, and restored $31.7 million in funding to the Access to Justice program, which provides legal aid for low-income families facing evictions, domestic violence, and other legal challenges. However, councilmembers did not find funding for all budget shortfalls, including financial strains in the Rapid Rehousing (RRH) rental subsidy program that will push 2,200 families out of the program this year.
“There are now 577 vouchers, and there’ll be an amendment to add even more than that,” Council Chairman Phil Mendelson said at the hearing. “What the mayor had submitted was zero vouchers. We will be at least 577.”
Housing advocates decried the mayor’s initial budget, which included no new housing vouchers for people experiencing homelessness. The budget passed by the council two weeks ago included 477 vouchers, and Mendelson added another 100 before the June vote. Then in the meeting, At-Large Councilmember Robert White proposed an amendment to add another 42 vouchers, which brought the total to 619. The amendment reduced funds for street outreach services and cut $1 million from a newly proposed truancy program to fund the vouchers.
“That’s not enough with regard to the 2,200 families who’ve been told they have to exit Rapid Rehousing, but it’s definitely much better than what we thought when we got the budget in April,” Mendelson said at the hearing.
Two councilmembers, Ward 2’s Brooke Pinto and At-Large Councilmember Anita Bonds, voted against the amendment. They both opposed that the funding came from the truancy program, citing concerns of a crisis in high school truancy that results in 60% of high school students being truant or chronically absent in the District, according to Pinto. Of the new vouchers, 325 are Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH) vouchers for families, 126 are Local Rent Supplement Program (LRSP) vouchers for families, 148 are PSH vouchers for individuals and 20 are LRSP vouchers for LGBTQ+ residents.
In homelessness prevention, the Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERAP), which supports District residents facing housing emergencies and evictions, will still see a dramatic reduction in funds compared to last fiscal year’s budget of $40 million in local funding, plus about $20 million in federal funding. This year’s cut is a little less than Mayor Muriel Bowser’s initial proposal, due to a one-time $6.7 million injection into the program, bringing the ERAP budget to around $26.7 million.
To raise enough funds to balance the budget without cutting other programs, the council raised the property tax rate on houses selling for $2.5 million and more, the payroll tax for paid family leave from 0.62% to 0.75%, and the sales tax by 1% over the next two years. The council also ignored the recommendation of the city’s chief financial officer, Glen Lee, to stow $217 million over the next five years to refill the city’s local reserve fund.
In a letter to the council on May 29, before the first vote on the budget, Bowser defended her cuts and cautioned the council’s spending would outpace the city’s revenue.
“The council’s proposed budget and fiscal policy sets up our residents and businesses for additional tax hikes next year or large cuts to services and programs,” Bowser wrote.
Meanwhile, homeless advocacy groups like the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute (DCFPI) and the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless said the approved budget was much better than the mayor’s initial proposal but still left too many people in need of housing support out in the cold.
“While the mayor is the one who deserves most of the blame for deciding to ‘save money’ by depriving thousands of families of stable housing and due process, the council both failed to reform Rapid Rehousing and stop the exits,” Amber Harding, executive director for the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless, told Street Sense. “In fact, the council has made the program worse than it has ever been before. We hope to see some improvements by the final vote on the law.”
The council still has to vote on the Budget Support Act, which includes statutory changes necessary to implement the budget. In that vote, Harding hopes there’s language that prevents D.C. residents from being exited from RRH without the due process of an appeal.
Ahead of the final vote, DCFPI pushed for more dramatic changes in the budget, including adding 600 new PSH vouchers for individuals, funding ERAP at the fiscal year 2024 level of $62.5 million, funding additional housing vouchers for families who will be terminated from RRH, and boosting the Pay Equity Fund to keep up with costs of meeting minimum salary requirements of the program.
Erica Williams, executive director of DCFPI, said while the council made improvements to the mayor’s budget, the city’s budget still lacks equitable funding for public services D.C.’s most vulnerable populations depend on.
“For many residents, the rent eats first,” Williams wrote in a statement. “By underfunding programs to help folks afford housing, council both exacerbates the housing crisis and undermines the benefits of antipoverty investments elsewhere in the budget.”
