With one-bedroom apartments renting for an average of $1,100 a month and the minimum wage at only $6.60 an hour, affordable housing in the Washington, D.C., area is a commodity in short supply.
And once the cycle of low income versus high rent begins, it is difficult to break free. But that’s where transitional housing comes in.
Developed in the mid-1990s as part of a continuum of care, transitional housing programs are arguably the most important step towards putting homeless people on the path to stable housing within the metro area’s inflated rental market.
However, as rent continues to skyrocket and the homeless population increases, the waiting lists for these programs have been getting even longer, prompting housing advocates to push for additional units in the Washington area.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) defines transitional housing as “a project that has its purpose facilitating the movement of homeless individuals and families to permanent housing within a reasonable amount of time.”
In the District, transitional housing programs generally run for 24 months and are sponsored by a wide variety of organizations.
“Transitional housing has been a major part of what the Community Partnership has been building and supporting since we assumed responsibility for homeless services in 1994,” said Steve Cleghorn, deputy director of the Community Partnership for the Prevention of Homelessness (CPPH).
Between 1994 and 2004, the number of transitional housing beds in the District climbed from 744 to 1,808, and they continue to increase yearly.
“These beds and units are neighborhood-friendly,” Cleghorn said. “Many are scattered-site; they look and feel just like any other housing and have no detrimental spillover effects in neighborhoods. No one collects outside to get in, for example.”
Transitional housing services extend beyond a place to live. They range from health care and financial assistance to education and life-skills training.
Programs assist clients in such areas as job training and placement, financial planning, life and family skills, and addiction counseling. Before being accepted into a program, clients must undergo an intake and evaluation process, and residents generally must be drug and alcohol free. Most programs also require clients to attend regularly scheduled classes or meetings.
“It isn’t enough to say a person is ‘ready’,” said Polly Donaldson, executive director of the Transitional Housing Corporation. “That’s an intangible.”
You really need to look at their motivation,” she added. “The questions are what degree of services is needed, and when does one stop needing them. Not everyone is a fit.”
Perhaps due to the stringent criteria for acceptance, transitional housing shows phenomenal success rates.
About 600 people participating in HUD-funded programs move to permanent housing annually, Cleghorn said. In addition, 400 to 500 clients of privately funded programs move to permanent housing, with two out of three clients who are enrolled in two-year programs moving on to permanent housing.
Across the board, the biggest flaw with transitional housing seems to be not having enough of it – a problem that stems mainly from a lack of funding.
Nancy Taxson, Executive Director of Homestretch, a transitional housing program in Virginia, said: “They’ve been saying they’ll end homelessness in 10 years for three or four years now. It’s not going to happen. There just isn’t enough affordable housing.”
Homestretch, for example, receives 20 to 25 referrals monthly but generally can accept only five.
In the District, So Others Might Eat (SOME) faces a similar situation.
“It’s disheartening,” said Troy Swanda, the organization director of single-room occupancy (SRO) housing. “We have too many families lined up already, and the phone is ringing off the hook.”
“With the current housing prices, it’s pretty tough for nonprofits to compete in the market,” he added, “but we’re doing what we can.”
We just put a contract in on a building that will have another 42 SRO units that should be open by the end of the year”, Swanda said. And in about a month SOME will open Independence Place, a 21-unit apartment building for families.
SOME’s long-term goal is to add about 1,000 units to its program.
At the Transitional Housing Corporation, Donaldson said: “We have an extremely high demand, but because this is a two-year program, and most people transition out at about 18 months, we can only turn around about half of our units each year. That’s just not enough.”
“Anyone who runs these sorts of programs knows that combining a safe site for housing with comprehensive programs is an expensive proposition,” she added.
The most important factor in securing transitional housing sites is a committed seller, Donaldson said. “You really have to find someone who believes in your mission and might be willing to sacrifice a little profit.”
Cleghorn, of the Community Partnership offers a different perspective.
“We see occupancy rates in public and private transition housing of about 70 percent for adults and about 80 percent for families, meaning that many beds and units – 30 percent and 20 percent respectively – go unused,” Cleghorn said.
“That tells us that we need to promote the reallocation of existing transitional housing capacity, not the building of more units.”
The population that transitional housing generally targets also presents some hurdles.
“Transitional housing is often very specific about who it serves and can have eligibility criteria that make it not work for many people,” said Cleghorn.
“It is not unusual for transitional programs to require six months ‘clean time,’ and most require at least 90 days,” he added. “This can mean that a family must stay in an emergency shelter until they reach that threshold, when in fact they need a therapeutic environment to make progress on [substance-abuse] recovery.”
The Community of Hope is planning to address that problem.
Although the organization’s policy is to accept the next person from central intake into its transitional housing program, in July it will break ground on the Hope Apartments, a 10-unit building designed to help families through substance-abuse recovery.
Noting the difficulty of meeting a six-month addiction deadline while facing the daily challenges of being homeless, Community of Hope Executive Director Kelly Sweeney McShane said the new facility will offer not only traditional transitional housing services, but also a special emphasis on addiction issues.
Programs will include outpatient therapy and a focus on the children’s mental health and well-being, McShane said.
The “Homeless No More” plan, which is Mayor Anthony Williams’ year-old plan to end homelessness in 10 years, calls for maintaining, but not increasing, the number of transitional housings beds in the District over the next decade. Still, many advocates agree that the current programs will continue to flourish.
“Transitional housing works,” Cleghorn said, “for the consumer and for neighborhoods.”
