2019 Reporting
Loud chants in Amharic, Spanish, and English filled the All Souls Unitarian church gymnasium on a Saturday afternoon in July. “Slumlords, you can’t hide! We can see your greedy side!” reverberated throughout the room, sustained by hundreds of renters from across the District.
The event was organized by the Latino Economic Development Center, a nonprofit that aims to promote financial stability for small business owners and renters by providing small business loans and credit building, as well as preserving housing affordability through tenant organizing.
By Meena Morar | Read the full article
Libraries in D.C. have long served homeless residents. Visiting the Martin Luther King Jr. Library downtown was a routine for so many homeless residents that its closure for renovations in 2017 left hundreds of regular visitors adrift.
In 2014, the D.C. Public Library system hired Jean Badalamenti as assistant manager of health and human services to help the city’s 25 libraries better serve as a resource for the city’s roughly 6,500 homeless residents.
Early last year, she pulled three “peer specialists,” from D.C.’s Department of Behavioral Health. The agency since 2004 has assembled a network of people certified to apply their experience with homelessness, substance abuse and other challenges to help people in similar circumstances.
By Mark Lieberman | Read the full article
Once finished, the new Ward 1 building will include 35 “apartment-style” short-term units for families in need of shelter and 15 permanent supportive housing units. In total, it will provide residence for up to 50 families experiencing homelessness.
But residents in a neighboring building say they did not know the city planned to build right up to the border of their condominium. They say
heir complaint has nothing to do with the shelter being put next door and that they want District residents to know how this project was pushed through despite organized requests for small but significant changes.
By Will Schick | Read the full article
I live in NoMa, just a 10-minute walk from the underpass encampments mentioned in the NoMa BID’s open letter. As someone who walks past the encampments daily, I was shocked to read the insensitive, dehumanizing letter penned by Robin-Eve Jasper, the NoMa BID President. Not only does the letter espouse common misconceptions about homelessness, its causes and solutions, but it also mischaracterizes the homeless community of NoMa as a dangerous “other.”
By Reina Sultan | Read the full article
On Wednesday, Aug. 25, the NoMA BID published an open letter saying that conditions were worsening in the underpass encampments and that “people are worried about their ability to safely traverse these public spaces.” The letter, signed by NoMA BID president Robin-Eve Jasper, detailed complaints residents had shared with the BID regarding the encampments and their residents, including: harassment, “aggressive panhandling,” used and bloody needles, rotting food, trash, broken glass, public nudity, prostitution, drug sales, and human excrement.
It called on NoMa residents to contact Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen, Mayor Muriel Bowser’s office, and Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services Wayne Turnage.
It also caused an upswing in complaints to Turnage, who tells City Paper that his office got far more complaints after the BID letter came out than what he had received before, and that the recent communications largely echoed the letter
By Chelsea Cirruzzo | Read the full article
Inspired by the Latin word for “hope,” Spero Ministries, a new employment initiative in Georgetown, aims to provide temporary employment and training for D.C. residents that may struggle with job stability or require a supportive work environment. This includes people with a history of homelessness, trafficking, refugees, and people returning from prison. Beginning Sept. 8, Spero will run a coffee shop during the week inside Georgetown’s Veritas City Church on K Street NW between Wisconsin Avenue and Key Bridge.
By Maia Brown | Read the full article
Last month, local nonprofit Martha’s Table announced a new partnership with the Mayor’s Office on Returning Citizens’ Affairs to open its Outfitters program to returning citizens who are coming home to D.C. A credit card to Martha’s Table Outfitters is now included in the welcome home package MORCA provides, with no extra referral step or application process required.
Martha’s Table Outfitters allows members to shop in their boutique at no cost with a $40 credit card that reloads automatically each month. The shop offers baby items, children’s clothing, and professional adult clothing, with most items priced between $1 and $6. The card reloads indefinitely, so customers can continue to shop there long after they secure a job.
President and CEO Kim Ford said having a support system is one of the most important resources for men and women returning from the criminal justice system.
By Brianna Bilter | Read the full article
For someone who’s never experienced it, “going hungry” might conjure up Depression-era imagery; emaciated scavengers roaming the street in rags, for example. But 21st Century hunger in the U.S. looks very different, and you might not even know it if you saw it.
Local governments and advocates now calls hunger “food insecurity,” which is defined as inconsistent access to adequate food for a household. It’s hard to know exactly how many people experience food insecurity; in the District of Columbia, estimates suggest roughly 1 in 9 people or 1 in 7 families.
Produced by Maura Currie | Listen here, live at 12:32 p.m.
Mercedes Dones-Patricelli, a homeless outreach specialist for Pathways to Housing DC, works in a large, busy area of Northwest DC that extends from 16th Street to North Capitol Street. She is one of three members of the downtown outreach team for Pathways DC, a nonprofit organization that provides permanent housing as well as comprehensive mental health, addiction and medical services for more than 3,500 people a year who are experiencing homelessness or are at risk for homelessness.
By Catherine Lee | Read the full story
The subject of homeless encampments can be difficult to understand, and even more difficult to talk about. Encamped communities affect not just the people who live in them but those who live around them.
By Will Schick | Read the full article
2018 Reporting
More than 3 million Americans — 1.1 percent of the U.S. population — have schizophrenia, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. But within the homeless population, between a fifth and a third are believed to suffer from schizophrenia.
Schizophrenia is just one of the disabling disorders of the brain that are overrepresented in the homeless population. Depression, bipolar disorder and personality disorders, as well as developmental disabilities like autism, severe learning disorders and intellectual impairments, are all present within the homeless population. Anything that impacts thinking, judging and perceiving too often leads to homelessness.
In all likelihood the influence of mental illness on homelessness is severely understated. Even the doctors I walked with on the streets of DC while I served as executive director of the Georgetown Ministry Center were not able to diagnose mental illness in many cases without repeated visits.
Anosognosia — a lack of awareness of one’s mental health condition — affects about half of all people with serious mental illness.
I cannot tell you how frustrating it is to watch, as I have, over the past 30 years, as people grow old and die on the street because we do not have the tools we need to intervene.
By Gunther Stern | Read the full article
The D.C. Department of Human Services, which oversees the city’s homeless programs, has put in place policies and procedures to ensure that LGBT homeless people, both adults and youth, are treated with respect and receive the services they need, according to two department officials.
DHS spokesperson Dora Taylor said that since taking office in 2015, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser has made it known that aggressively addressing the city’s homeless problem, including specific issues pertaining to LGBT homeless people, are among her administration’s highest priority.
Taylor noted that among DHS’s actions since Bowser became mayor has been its implementation of the LGBTQ Homeless Youth Reform Amendment Act, which the D.C. Council passed unanimously in 2014. Council member Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3) and then-Council member Bowser (D-Ward 4) were the co-introducers of the legislation.
Taylor and DHS Senior Advisor Carter Hewgley said implementation of the law included a policy change adopted by DHS that requires all homeless shelters operated by the city or by city contractors to allow transgender people – youth or adults — seeking to enter a shelter to choose the one that is consistent with their gender identity.
By Lou Chibbaro Jr. | Read the full story
There is no formal tracking of nationwide mortality rates among the homeless, and advocates who work with homeless communities often struggle to get information when someone passes away.
“More often than not, we’ll hear through the grapevine that someone’s died,”
Reverend
Laing said. “It could take a while to put the pieces together, to find out if they had family or how to reach them.”
Once the pieces are put together, however, religious organizations and charities often step in to honor the lives of those who may have died without identification, or a readily identifiable next of kin. These same advocates, however, say cities need to do more to ensure that their residents have the dignity in death that they often weren’t provided in life.
“The person becomes a whole person again in death,” Laing said, “where, in life, they may have been just a number.”
By Molly McCluskey | Read the full story
Domestic violence housing programs generally want to create safe environments for women leaving abusive relationships. As part of a growing understanding about the needs of survivors, many of these programs in D.C. are reevaluating the rules and restrictions they have in place to accomplish that.
“You’re still being told what you can and cannot do and what’s best for you,” says S., a survivor of domestic violence in her mid-40s. “You’ve been so dictated to for so long, depending how long you’re in your relationship. That model really doesn’t fit—you can’t thrive out of that situation.”
For the past year and a half, S., who asked that we not use her full name to protect her privacy, has lived in apartment-style housing provided by the District Alliance for Safe Housing after leaving her husband of 10 years. That set-up is ideal for S., who had been used to running a household. She thinks living in a communal-style shelter would have made for a much tougher transition.
By Rachel Kurzius | Read the full story
The first LGBT youth-focused shelter in D.C. is continuing its legacy of serving one of the most vulnerable demographics.
The Wanda Alston House and Foundation, now in its 10th year of service, serves LGBT individuals ages 16-24. The residential home-turned-shelter currently houses eight people, and hundreds have been through its doors over the last decade. The house is named after the late Wanda Alston, a D.C.-based LGBT activist who was murdered near her home in 2005.
Individuals enter the program based on their level of vulnerability and what kind of care the city’s homeless management providers think will best fit that person’s circumstances. The facility provides 24-hour support for residents through counseling, mental and medical health services. Tuition assistance and professional development is provided and other life skill services such as learning how to balance a checkbook, shop for groceries and manage a credit score are also offered. Residents receive three meals a day, clothing and toiletries as well as other necessities like Metro cards.
By Abby Wargo | Read the full story
The H Street Service Center helps people seeking food assistance and Medicaid. Not even 30 minutes after the service center opened on a recent Wednesday morning, more than 100 people had filled nearly all the plastic blue chairs in the waiting room.
Advocates hope that a recent order from a federal judge means the experience at service centers like H Street soon won’t include worrying whether your benefits will be processed on time.
Last month Judge Christopher Cooper ruled the D.C. Department of Human Services must invest in resources to ensure that District residents who are food-insecure won’t have a long wait for food benefits…
By Meredith Roaten | Read the full story
At age 17, Dominique “Domo” Hardy was homeless and “living from pillow to post.” Now, he’s an advocate and mentor for other LGBT youth experiencing homelessness and adversity.
The 30-year-old D.C. native recalls fighting every day to survive in the streets alongside other gay teens also rejected by their families. At the time, Hardy says there were few resources in place to help kids like him, so he was forced to grow up fast and fend for himself with little to no support from the city.
Here, he answers The Washington Blade’s 20-question Queery interview.
By Grace Perry | Read the full story
The U.S. may not have made it to the World Cup this year, but nine DC high schoolers did. The students — all of whom have experienced or been at risk for homelessness — were honored by the DC Council last week for their participation in the 2018 Street Child World Cup in Russia.
The teens are all alums of DC SCORES, a group that creates neighborhood soccer teams that give kids in need the confidence and skills to succeed on the playing field, in the classroom, and in life, said Michael Holstein, DC SCORES’ director of marketing and communications.
Members of the all-female team that went to Russia range in age from 14 to 17. They were the first U.S. team ever to participate in the international competition, which has taken place twice before — in South Africa in 2010 and again in Brazil in 2014.
The group traveled to Moscow in May for the event, which sought to highlight the plight of homeless and economically disadvantaged children worldwide.
By Kate Oczypok | Read the full story
D.C. Central Kitchen is partnering with Building Bridges across the River at THEARC to bring new services to THEARC’s Ward 8 campus, including workforce development for youth age 18-25.
The nonprofit’s core training program has typically enrolled people aged 35-50, according to D.C. Central Kitchen’s chief development officer, Alexander Moore. Their most recent annual report cited an 87 percent success rate for placing trainees in a job in 2017. Moore said the expansion was considered when data revealed D.C.’s youth are increasingly at risk of being left out of the local economy.
More than 14.8 percent of D.C. youth are “disconnected,” from a job or school enrollment, which is above the national average, according to a 2018 “Measure of America” report. Thirty-eight states improved their rates of disconnection while Nebraska and D.C. were the only areas where the percentage increased during an 8-year time period. The District’s rate increased by more than 50 percent.
By Meredith Roaten | Read the full story
Like all residents of this place, she does not want to be here. The building is stuffy, she says, and she fears it’s making her child’s asthma worse. More than that, she fears he’s losing out on crucial resources. Giovanni is nonverbal and autistic, and the shelter doesn’t allow for home health aides to come in and provide him with needed services, she says. “We have paperwork from his school showing how you can see the change in his behavior from April [when we moved in] to now. He hit a kid at school,” she says.
But even though she doesn’t want to live here, Hunter says she is angry about feeling shoved out. She motions around her to the fencing closing in on the children’s playground, mounds of dirt piled where construction crews have started digging. She points in the distance to a building on campus that will be torn down soon, with residents of the shelter living right next door.
“I think it’s very disrespectful that they’re doing this [construction work] before everyone has moved out,” says Hunter.
BY Natalie Delgadillo | Read the full story
During the early 1990s, Ruby Corado spent most nights in public parks throughout D.C., trying to meet the basic needs of the homeless LGBT youth who had no safe space to go after 5 p.m. when the HIV clinics closed.
And so the movement began.
Now, 26 years later, Corado is the director of Casa Ruby, a local bilingual and multicultural organization founded in 2012 that provides housing and social services to LGBT individuals 24 hours a day.
The transgender El Salvador native says Casa Ruby started as an “emergency room.”
By Grace Perry | Read the full story
Several years ago, Patricia Hunt needed relief from her back pain. Her mother soon offered it—in the form of opioids.
Hunt, now 56, began taking them regularly, becoming so reliant on the drugs that family members urged her more than once to go to rehab. Yet hospital staff told Hunt’s sister that they couldn’t help her until she “hit rock-bottom.”
By 2015, Hunt sat behind bars in a federal prison for drug-related charges. There, the Woodbridge resident says she finally received the help she needed, getting sober and exploring the circumstances—including enduring “several different types of abuse”—that led to her self-destructive lifestyle. When she transitioned to a D.C. halfway house shortly after her 2016 release, she learned of a chance to start over with a job-readiness and empowerment program in Alexandria serving women who are formerly incarcerated or experiencing homelessness, Together We Bake. Within days, she was a student.
For Hunt and the roughly 130 women who have graduated from the program since it launched seven years ago, TWB has been a game-changer.
By
Eliza Berkon | Read the full story
A pilot program that could help public housing tenants boost their credit scores was unanimously approved by D.C. Council earlier this month. However, with an unofficial start date and no funding until at least Spring 2019, it is difficult to determine how effective the bill will be.
Approximately 20,000 low-income families, seniors and people with disabilities rely on deeply-subsidized housing, with DCHA as their landlord, according to the agency’s website. The Public Housing Credit Building Pilot Program Act of 2017 requires that the D.C. Housing Authority (DCHA) create a program that gives residents who rely on the agency the option of having their monthly rent payments reported to credit bureaus.
Most renters’ on-time housing payments are not reflected in their credit reports and therefore do not increase or decrease a tenant’s credit score. In competitive rental markets such as the District, a high credit score can often make the difference between a rental application being accepted or rejected.
By Christian Zapata | Read the full story
We may assume that when formerly homeless and low-income residents finally secure housing, they’re fine. In fact, they are not fine. Too many people lack basic furniture and household goods.
Did you know the average expense for an American family to move and furnish their own home is over $7,000? These residents, often struggling with a traumatic experience (for example, a medical issue, a flooded house or the loss of a loved one), do not have the money or resources to afford this. Donated furniture may seem like a solution, but pickup from a furniture bank, usually located outside the city, is usually prohibitively expensive. Sadly, without a stable home, many revert to homelessness or suffer in poverty.
A little over a year ago, we began operations at Lighthouse DC to address this critical gap in affordable housing. Unlike any other service in the Washington metropolitan area, Lighthouse moves and furnishes for residents. It’s part of the larger “Housing First” approach that focuses on providing residents with stable housing first and then offering additional supportive services. We use an innovative, collaborative model in which we partner with local nonprofits, government, business and professionals to dramatically reduce the cost of housing-related services.
By Brian Hart | Read the full story
SMYAL’s transitional housing program opened in January 2017 in response to D.C.’s 2015 Homeless Youth Census, which states that 43 percent of homeless youth identify as LGBT.
The facility can accommodate 12 residents at a time for SMYAL’s 18-month program. Since its opening, 13 residents have been housed.
Residents are referred to the program through social workers, doctors, therapists, school personnel or through another agency. Once referred, potential residents come in for interviews and assessments. If the resident is accepted, they receive a welcome kit with toiletries, sheets and towels. Transportation is paid for and Safeway gift cards are distributed for residents to buy their own groceries and cook their own meals.
Director of Youth Housing Jorge Membreño, a program assistant, a case manager or another member of staff is on site anytime between 8 a.m.-6 p.m. The program offers case management for the development of a personal action plan and weekly check-in meetings. Supportive services are offered including medical care, mental health services and self-care support. Residents also learn skills pertaining to job hunting, apartment hunting, finding programs to get food stamps and more. There are also community outings and LGBT youth networking opportunities.
By Mariah Cooper | Read the full story
Scott Borger spent a lot of time in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis lamenting the gradual defunding of nonprofits and local governments, and feeling sad about growing inequality in the D.C. area, where he’s now lived for a decade. Volunteering at Central Union Mission, a nonprofit based near Union Station that operates emergency shelters and other social programs, kept his eyes open to the challenges.
So he did what any economist with a Ph.D would do: He pondered theories of economics until he landed on one that served his goal.
The result is Breadcoin, a nonprofit organization that aims to empower the city’s community experiencing homeless. His tokens can be used to purchase food for people living on the street or for donating to churches and nonprofits.
Inspired by the advent of bitcoin and other cryptocurrency, Borger hopes Breadcoin will appreciate in value and help bridge gaps between the city’s wealthy and underprivileged classes.
By Mark Lieberman | Read the full story
Congresswoman Maxine Waters has been an outspoken Democrat in Congress since she was elected in 1990. She has been re-elected consistently to represent California’s 29th Congressional District and is the longest-serving Black woman in the House of Representatives.
Waters has a well-earned reputation for unfaltering candidness. She has made headlines repeatedly for frank criticisms of President Trump, referring to him as a “crook” and a “liar,” and to his staff as the “Kremlin Klan.” Her outspoken opinions on the Trump administration have made her a viral sensation among folks on both sides of the aisle, who frequently refer to her as “Auntie Waters” on social media.
Throughout her political career, Waters has been a steadfast advocate for ending homelessness in the United States. Two years ago she introduced the pioneering Ending Homelessness Act of 2016. The bill would provide $13.27 billion in funding over five years for federal initiatives to help the thousands of Americans currently facing homelessness. She reintroduced the bill in 2017, but it was not passed.
Street Sense Media writer and vendor Reginald Black requested an interview with Waters because of that bill, her outspoken views and her position on the House Financial Services Committee.
By Reginald Black and Olivia Richter | Read the full story
For a sense of what it’s like to live in a Days Inn, consider this: The group of chronically homeless D.C. residents sheltered there refer to it as “the compound.”
Their rooms are “cells,” a former resident named Victoria says, and The Community Partnership for the Prevention of Homelessness—a group D.C. pays about $75 million annually to manage the Days Inn and other homeless shelters—is “the warden.”
Children can’t eat, walk, or sleep alone, and they’re not allowed to play outside. (If they do, according to a notice the New York Avenue NE Days Inn has distributed since 2014, it’s grounds for eviction.) A monitor makes rounds every Wednesday for “room checks,” and each night at 9:30 p.m. for “curfew checks.” Parents have to sign out in a ledger at the front desk when they leave the motel, and sign in when they enter.
And though officials who run the Department of Human Services chronically refer to the motels as “temporary” and “emergency” shelters, families live there for months at a time. Many have lived in motels for years.
This service runs the District about $3,000 per family each month—comparable to the cost of a luxury two-bedroom apartment with a waterfront view. As of mid-April, 325 families lived in these five shelters, nearly double the 169 families currently living in D.C. General, the city’s largest family homeless shelter.
By Morgan Baskin | Read the full story
If she wasn’t juggling telephone bills, she was juggling rental payments. More than a few times she had sat on the smooth wooden benches inside the Landlord-Tenant Court of the DC Superior Court.
That woman was me. It has been decades, however, since I occupied that landscape. There is no need now for me to fear eviction. Still, every time I see someone else’s belongings on the sidewalk and see other people, like vultures, picking over the carcass of their dreams, I am traumatized anew by the thought it could happen to me.
The struggle against homelessness is not made easier when there are federal leaders intent on slashing the social safety net, on making the poor and working class pay for ill-conceived tax cuts.
By Jonetta Rose Barras | Read the full story
As part of Miriam’s Kitchen, which has been serving meals and providing care for people experiencing homelessness since 1983, Miriam’s Studio sprung from the idea that this community not only needed physical nourishment but emotional sustenance as well. In 2010, former Miriam’s executive director Catherine Crum began bringing art therapy interns from George Washington University to supervise its occasional art classes. The result is Miriam’s Studio, which now offers twice-daily therapy sessions that use a variety of art media (today they’re beading) to help guests work through emotional difficulties or trauma they might have experienced.
“Many programs around the city focus on the survival basics of what people need when they’re experiencing homelessness like food and housing and jobs, [which are] absolutely essential,” says senior art therapist Brittney Washington, who runs the studio. “At [Miriam’s] Studio, we accompany people through a process of feeling safer in this space and having some time—even if it’s just two hours at a time—to not have to think about ‘How am I going to survive?’ and instead focus on ‘How might I practice self-expression?’”
By Christina Smart | Read the full story
Founded in 1989 as the nation’s first “community kitchen,” DC Central Kitchen uses food as a tool to build better communities. Each year it serves millions of meals to those in need and trains for culinary careers men and women who have had trouble finding employment. Almost 100 percent of the graduates are now making living wages with full benefits.
But its future location is uncertain, with the organization cramped in its current quarters in downtown’s largest homeless shelter. Meanwhile, the District’s headed real estate market is making it difficult for DC Central Kitchen to culminate a deal for a new site.
According to Moore, they are “all in” for the planned expansion to THEARC. However, the new site is solely dedicated to new projects. The existing programs still don’t have a permanent home — and they’re badly in need of one.
“We’re totally out of space and our two existing facilities can’t keep up with residents’ demands for job training and community nutrition.”
By Kate Oczypok | Read the full story
The danger of hypothermia is an obvious one: freezing to death. Hyperthermia, or heat related illness, can be just as dangerous.
“Extreme heat often results in the highest annual number of deaths among all weather-related disasters,” warns the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
As the District continues to shatter heat records, the danger is becoming more acute. The non-profit Climate Central found that the District had averaged around seven or eight days with temperatures at or above 95 degrees in 1970; by 2016, that figure was hovering around 15, according to the Washington Post.
In addition to the broiling days, excessively hot nights means that people who are exposed to the elements for 24 hours a day don’t get a chance to really cool down for days at a time.
By Rachel Sadon | Read the full story
The trend towards a digital and cashless economy makes life more efficient for many, but often leaves the disadvantaged behind.
For example, it is difficult for homeless people to access traditional financial services like banks without a home address–but without bank accounts, it is difficult to get a place to live. Plus, in a society disrupted by tech, a growing number of restaurants and services only accept cards as payment.
We discuss how access to banking is particularly difficult for the homeless, but also key to their securing permanent homes.
Guests
Call in to contribute to the discussion: 1-800-433-8850
By Kojo Namdi | Listen in at 12:30 p.m.
In 2016, District Attorney General Karl Racine sued Sanford over terrible conditions at the Congress Heights buildings. Dozens of low-income renters had vacated in the preceding years, leaving only a committed few who refused to abandon their homes despite roaches, rodents, and poor maintenance.
After the lawsuit, the redevelopment project stalled. The case has taken manifold twists and turns over the past two-and-a-half years, including the court-ordered installment of a third-party property manager responsible for fixing the buildings to code.
The case has also involved thousands of pages of legal documents, hundreds of hours of attorney time, and a Dickensian cast of characters warring over the future of a single plot of land and an entire neighborhood.
More than that, the dispute is a case study in the kind of development sweeping D.C. from west to east that has unnerved ingrained communities while rousing those who stand to profit.
By Andrew Giambrone | Read the full story
There is broad public support for replacing the shelter, including from the families living there. However, replacement shelters are still being built and most current shelter residents do not know when and where they will be placed.
Based on interviews with 15 residents during multiple visits, Street Sense learned that the only part of the replacement plan that residents were sure of was that the shelter is closing and they are supposed to be placed somewhere else. Four residents said they are just waiting on their caseworkers to inform them of the next steps. Three others, including the family in the van, are moving to their own apartments. The rest of the interviewees had no idea what to expect but trusted they would be placed somewhere.
All five staff members interviewed were worried about whether they would lose their jobs or be relocated to a different site. Staff were not provided information to answer residents’ questions.
By Tatiana Brown | Read the full story
DC Council members this week grilled District officials over delays in constructing planned family homeless shelters in wards 7 and 8, while officials maintained both shelters will still open on schedule in the fall.
The two shelters are part of a replacement plan to close the maligned DC General shelter, which houses about 250 families. Five other shelters are under construction or will break ground soon, but only three are scheduled to be completed in time for DC General’s planned shutdown this fall, leaving the District to house families temporarily in motels, officials said.
Department of General Services director Greer Johnson Gillis said Monday at a council oversight hearing that per standard practice, her agency did not vet the subcontractor building the shelters in wards 7 and 8.
By Cuneyt Dil | Read the full story
2017 Reporting
In 2008, the equation for help was reversed. Instead of placing a raft of requirements before providing shelter, D.C. adopted a “housing first” policy, following a model pioneered by the non-profit Pathways to Housing.
As the District approaches a decade of implementing housing first policies, the number of chronically homeless people, defined as being homeless for at least one year or four times in the past three years and having a mental or physical disability, has declined by nearly 33 percent.
Can the city continue to find homes for them as family homelessness remains a priority, as critical federal support is on the chopping block, as housing becomes increasingly expensive?
By Rachel Sadon | Read the full article
When Kristy Greenwalt needs something from from the federal government these days, it’s not always clear who she’s supposed to call on. Greenwalt, the executive director of the District’s Interagency Council on Homelessness, is one of many city-government and nonprofit leaders whose jobs became much more difficult and murky on January 20, when one administration that made progressive strides on low-income housing and homelessness was replaced by one that—so far—seems to have little interest in those issues.
“They don’t really have people who can get policy out the door,” Greenwalt says of the Trump Administration.
By Benjamin Freed | Read the full article
D.C.’s biggest problem lies with its inability to effectively address the increase of families experiencing homelessness. While the national average for individuals in homeless families decreased by 2.6 percent from 2015-2016, D.C.’s average increased by over 34 percent.
From pre-K to college, students across the country are also experiencing large degrees of homelessness. There are currently enough homeless American children to fill American University’s enrollment 10 times.
By Sydney Covitz | Read the full article
Reporting
Hart said he first noticed a glaring gap in affordable housing services while working for nonprofits and the local government. Often, Hart said, the homeless are provided with unfurnished living spaces. District furniture banks struggle to keep up with delivery demands for low-income housing, and waitlists extend months or years, he added.
“Four walls and a ceiling are not a home — that’s a shelter,” White told a crowd of 200, including eight of his council colleagues, at a June 7 event celebrating LightHouse’s launch. “The government provides shelter. Nonprofits step in, and they make it a home.”
By Grace Bird | Read the full article
2017 Reporting
Despite nearly 7,500 D.C. residents counted as homeless this year, a lack of affordable housing on both sides of the Anacostia River, and tent cities still being broken down by the District, Patricia Mullahy Fugere chooses to be hopeful about eradicating homelessness. She has helmed the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless since 1991, after she co-founded the nonprofit organization and served as its board president in the mid-1980s. Fugere sat down with City Paper last week to talk about the state of homelessness in D.C., what officials can be doing to alleviate major pressures on the shelter system, and how the District can lift up those in need.
By Andrew Giambrone | Read the full article
Street Sense vendors on how we can end homelessness.
By Keirsten Ownes | Watch more videos
“It’s like society punishes [these homeless LGBT youth] in every way possible for being different. The punishment is no jobs, no access to resources, no beds,” says Ruby Corado, executive director of LGBTQ homeless youth organization Casa Ruby. “A big part of my job is to restore their pride and dignity. It’s to tell them—when the world tells them they are demons—that ‘baby, they’re wrong.’”
The biggest cause of homelessness, regardless of sexual orientation, is poverty. Contrary to popular beliefs, LGBTQ people are poorer than the straight population; they’re also more likely to be female and people of color. And despite DC’s reputation as one of the most socially progressive cities in the United States, tales of discrimination against homeless trans youth abound beneath the surface.
By Julie Strupp | Read the full article
The final vote on the District’s Fiscal Year 2018 budget cut funds for the Emergency Rental Assistance Program by $2 million — a 21 percent reduction from Fiscal Year 2017. This is $750,000 less than the cut proposed by Mayor Bowser, but ERAP’s insufficient funding has been an issue since the program started in 2007. Although the city council has approved more funding for the Homelessness Prevention Rapid Rehousing Program that began in 2015, this should not be seen as an alternative to emergency rental assistance, according to Max Tipping of the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless.
By Dorothy Hastings | Read the full article
The year he’d spent hunkered down under the dark stone rail bridge near Union Station had been different from the previous 10 Willie has spent on the streets of Virginia, Colorado, and the nation’s capital. He used that new stability to start taking classes toward a barber’s certificate. His tent isn’t much — none of them are — but the sheltered site and steady home-base have been the platform he needed to be able to make it to class regularly, keep appointments with caseworkers and friends who hire him for odds jobs, and spend time here and there with his kids.
The city clean-up threatened to fling Willie’s life back into chaos.
By Alan Pyke | Read the full story
The motley and slightly under-caffeinated crew offers a range in demographics. On average, they’re probably in their 20s to mid-50s. Any gender. Any fitness level. They’re about a 40/60 split between Back on My Feet members—people who are currently homeless and residing in one of four transitional housing facilities from across the district—and volunteers, who come to run from the surrounding neighborhood.
All of us are awake. All of us are ready to run.
By Mikka Macdonald | Read the full article
For the past five years, nearly every recruit to pass through the Metropolitan Police Department’s training academy has heard Alan Banks talk about the six years he spent homeless as part of their training on how to interact with the District’s homeless residents.
The trainings are designed to show officers that the homeless are people just like them, Banks told ThinkProgress. But Banks also shares a special connection with the recruits: Before he was homeless, he spent decades in federal law enforcement.
By Joshua Eaton | Read the full article
Dania Matos was a teenager growing up in New Jersey when the sheriff came to her family’s front door and explained that they would have to vacate the premises immediately. Matos saw distress on her mother’s face, and promptly began to bargain with the officer. She spilled out their story—she had a younger brother and sister in school, and her mom was dealing with the aftermath of a divorce.
“That sheriff could have easily dismissed me,” she says. “But he looked me in my eye and said, ‘OK, I’m going to give you a few hours’ in one of the worst situations ever. That meant a lot. So I try to pay that forward every day,” Matos says.
By Quintin J. Simons | Read the full article
For most people, a lost or stolen form of identification is an easily fixed nuisance, not a calamity. While it might require waiting in a long, pesky line at the DMV and digging out a few other documents, such items can usually be easily replaced.
The process is not as simple, however, for the roughly 8,000 homeless people living in DC. Living on the streets, many people have a hard time keeping track of birth certificates, Social Security cards, or other forms of identification. And without any ID, it’s much harder to access shelter services, receive medical treatment, apply for housing, or find work.
“Any of the possible avenues out of homelessness, you’re going to need ID,” says Bob Glennon, the clinical director at Miriam’s Kitchen, a homeless shelter in the city.
By Courtney Vinopal | Read the full article
Neighbors concerns’ for the shelter’s future residents are also numerous, if hypothetical. The shelter’s proximity to the police station at 3320 Idaho Ave. NW raises worries that families will feel like they’re being monitored. The dearth of affordable restaurants in the area could prove alienating to residents without substantial means. And the distance from the nearest Metro station might be inconvenient, especially for parents who need easy access to a job elsewhere in the city.
But for parents like 28-year-old D.C. native Jessica Odom — who’s lived in the city’s existing family homeless shelter at D.C. General since April — some of those prospects sound more like opportunities than red flags. Living next to a police station, for instance, would make her feel safer than she does now, she said.
By Mark Lieberman | Read the full article
Senator Al Franken sat down with Street Sense vendor Ken Martin to discuss homelessness, gentrification and Bill Maher.
“It starts very early. You have to attack it in different ways.”
By Ken Martin & Roberta Haber | Read the full article
Tucked between train tracks and freeway-like New York Avenue NE, where vehicles drive fast and sidewalks are dangerously narrow, the Quality Inn & Suites looks like a forgotten slice of D.C. from the outside.
Inside, dozens of homeless families occupy this hotel-turned-shelter.
In the hotel’s parking lot on a Monday evening, a small boy throws a near-spiral with a soft football and stands triumphant. A few of his peers—black boys and girls ages three to seven—dart across the pavement with one another and adult volunteers from the Homeless Children’s Playtime Project, a nonprofit group founded in 2003 that provides play nights at the Quality Inn. They’ve been doing it since January and plan to add a Wednesday evening playtime for toddlers.
By Andrew Giambrone | Read the full article
Elijah Payne says June 24 was the best day of his life.
On that Saturday, he graduated from the Capital Guardian Youth Challenge Academy, a highly structured, quasi-military program for at-risk youth. The 16-year-old entered the academy after years of poor school attendance and impulsive behavior.
While the first few weeks were tough, Payne said part of him didn’t want to come home by graduation. Throughout his time in the academy, his mindset and behavior improved. His mother, Cinquetta Williams, said he’s become more affectionate, often coming by the house just to give her a hug.
By Tom Coulter | Read the full article
Quick work was made of the cleanup; by 10:30 the majority of tents had been taken down. Many of those evicted from the area around the 2nd Street bridge picked up and moved to a new encampment three blocks away in front of an empty building in the vicinity of M, N and 3rd Streets Northeast.
On the next day, June 21, a representative of NoMa Business Improvement District, a police officer, and the owner of the vacant building arrived to inform those who had moved to the new encampment that they were required to be gone by 9 am the following day or the police would force them out.
By Maren Adler | Read the full article
LGBTQ youth often run away from or are pushed out of their homes by unaccepting families, but too often, long-term placements and homeless shelters don’t offer a better alternative. Instead, they become just another place where LGBTQ youth are harassed, sexually assaulted, and denied recognition of their gender. To make matters worse, few states have effective policies that recognize their particular needs, and federal rules protecting this population are in danger.
By Casey Quinlan | Read the full article
A coalition of advocates and District officials are divided over proposed reforms to D.C.’s shelter system, with city lawmakers expected to mark up and vote on the reforms in the coming months.
For the first time since 2005, D.C. is pushing for sweeping changes to the laws that govern its homeless services. This time around, they are facing the extra strain of a deeper affordable housing crisis.
By Andrew Giambrone | Read the full article
The D.C. Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency declared the first heat emergency of 2017 on Tuesday, June 13, followed by two more later in the week. The heat index climbed as high as 97 degrees and stayed there for nearly 10 hours. During that time, the HSEMA 2017 Heat Emergency Plan was fully operational.
Many members of the homeless community are still unaware of the resources available to them. Employees of each of seven the cooling centers catering to people experiencing homelessness reported little to no usage. “That’s good to know,” Joe Malual said when told about the existence of cooling centers. “We need places to go when it gets hot.” Malual was waiting to access services at Miriam’s Kitchen in Foggy Bottom.
By Maren Adler | Read the full article
When Debbie Banks enrolled in DC Central Kitchen’s (DCCK) free Culinary Job Training (CJT) course in 2010 she was homeless. “I lost my job, lost my home, and walked the streets eating nothing but bagels. That’s why I don’t eat bagels now,” she says.
The 14-week intensive program that includes culinary instruction, job readiness training, and life skills development takes adults who face employment barriers because of histories of incarceration, substance abuse, homelessness, and trauma and prepares them for jobs in food service, including restaurants.
By Laura Hayes | Read the full article
Homeless residents and community advocates voiced concerns at a June 14 Committee on Human Services hearing that Mayor Muriel Bowser’s proposed amendment to improve housing services would instead limit access to shelters and housing.
After 11 months and more than 20 meetings between D.C. departments, local advocates and people experiencing homeless, Bowser proposed amending the Homeless Services Reform Act of 2005 to align D.C. law with federal policy and to modernize the bill.
By Justine Coleman | Read the full article
2016 Reporting
There are more than 11,000 homeless people living in and around the nation’s capital.
ThinkProgress has dedicated a portion of our coverage on Wednesday, June 29 to elevating their stories, examining the city’s policies toward the homeless, and looking at how people bounce back.
The realities of homelessness often defy rampant cultural stereotypes. There are many different paths into life on the street, as Sasha, Jennifer, and Waldon explained to us, while the road back to stability is deceptively simple.
By
Victoria Fleischer | See more videos from ThinkProgress.
“If we don’t have volunteers, it takes staff away from their programs—volunteers end up being a huge help,” Greg Rockwell of Thrive DC, told DCist.
By Christinia Sturdivant | See the full list.
A more recent 2015 study by the United States National Institute of Health (NIH) claimed that “mortality rates among Housing First participants are higher than those reported among members of the general homeless population in prior studies.” The study found that those in Housing First programs are more likely to die due to chronic illness than their counterparts in the general homeless population. This data is, in part, a result of the fact that Housing First targets those in most urgent need, which often translates to the oldest and the most ill. However, conclusions from the study are cited by the NIH as potential indications that these programs are in need of “greater integration of medical and end-of-life care.”
By Jacqueline Groskaufmanis | Read the full article.
Japan, Denmark, Singapore and Canada.
Homelessness is an issue for nearly every country. In recent years, the United States has increased efforts to end homelessness around the country. As the U.S. looks for new methods of handling the homelessness issue, here’s a few examples of how other countries have lowered homelessness rates.
By Justin Salhani | Read the full article.
Sam Tsemberis, a nationally recognized expert on solving homelessness, recently told an auditorium of more than 250 social workers and other homelessness providers at Johns Hopkins University’s Montgomery County campus about the housing model he developed, Housing First, and its effectiveness.
By Mark Rose | Read the full article.
The nation’s capital has the biggest income gap in the country and a rapidly gentrifying population that’s driving up rent, setting the stage for homelessness to proliferate. There’s currently a freeze on the D.C. Housing Authority’s affordable housing waiting list, but a city ordinance passed in 1981 made camping out in public spaces illegal. Even though they can’t afford housing elsewhere, people aren’t allowed to set up temporary abodes on the streets. If they do, they’re treated like criminals.
Ann Marie Staudenmaier, an attorney who works closely with homeless people in D.C., says police aren’t to blame for the resulting crack-down on encampments. Instead, it’s local lawmakers who are mostly responsible for the criminalization of homelessness by ramping up efforts to dismantle camps in the past year.
By Carimah Townes | Read the full article.
Department of Human Services (DHS) workers cleared three homeless encampment sites near K and 26th Streets NW on the morning of June 28. The main encampment, sheltered by a Whitehurst Freeway bridge that crosses over the I-66 exit onto 27th Street NW, was the temporary home to two dogs and approximately 12 people.
In a departure from recent encampment evictions, if residents were present to claim their belongings and ostensibly begin taking down their tents, they were not forced to leave the area. However, unattended belongings were discarded, not sorted or stored.
By Katlyn Alapati | Read the full article.
Washington, D.C. has more than thirty health clinics and mobile medical programs specifically geared toward the city’s homeless. The need is as huge as it is varied — doctors treat everything from poor vision to heart disease on a daily basis — and the city’s expanded Medicaid program helps smooth out most funding gaps.
But only a portion of the region’s 11,600 homeless residents seek out this kind of medical care.
By Alex Zielinski | Read the full article.
Eric spent the last 19 years without a place to call home. Thanks to his unbelievable determination and the stability he found at Street Sense, he finally has a key to his own apartment.
By Bowe Partin | Read more about Eric’s journey here.
Technology is crucial for survival and quality of life, particularly in the LGBT community because of the high risk of isolation from family support systems. Data on homelessness is elusive, in part because the demographic doesn’t always identify as homeless even when their living arrangements are temporary.
According to the American Institutes for Research’s National Center on Family Homelessness, there are an estimated 2.5 million homeless children in the U.S. Forty-three percent of homeless youth in Washington, D.C., identify as LGBT with 15 percent saying they were kicked out because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. Nationally, there are an estimated 650,000 homeless LGBT youth.
By Lauren C. Williams | Read the full article.
When Darrell Gaston started working as a housing specialist in the Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs, there was only one shelter with nine beds for LGBTQ youth in the city. There are now 30. However, many LGBTQ youth still don’t get to a shelter that can meet their specific needs. Forty-four to 50 percent of unhoused youth in D.C. identify as LGBTQ and the city is only beginning to provide services to accommodate them, according to Gaston.
By Kim Szarmach | Read the full article.
Details still need to be worked out, but The Homeless Children’s Playtime Project expects to remain involved and is already thinking about ways to adapt to the smaller sites. “It’s been clearly expressed that they desire for us to be involved, and we desire to be involved,” says Playtime Project spokesman Micah Bales. “It is obviously going to be different from D.C. General, where we have relatively large spaces to work with and quite a bit of dedicated space. [In smaller facilities] it tends to be much more intimate.”
By Rachel Sadon | Read the full article.
This July, a bill aiming to add homelessness to the classes protected by D.C.’s Human Rights Act will be brought to the city council’s Judiciary Committee. … The Human Rights Act of 1977 currently prohibits discrimination based on 19 traits including race, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability and source of income. It was last amended in 2007. “We have one of the most progressive and expansive human rights statutes in the country,” said Stephanie Franklin, Interim Director of Policy and Communications for the D.C. Office of Human Rights (OHR).
But the act still allows employers, law enforcement, private businesses and housing and healthcare providers to legally discriminate against people they perceive as homeless.
By Kim Szarmach | Read the full article.
Although voter IDs are not technically required in order to vote in D.C., Martin says that every time he’s voted over the past several decades he’s always been asked to show some form of identification. Certain polling facilities in D.C. request to see an ID before the person can enter the building. The D.C. Board of Elections (BOE) told ThinkProgress that they work with these locations to make sure they are accessible as possible to people — like the homeless — who may not have an ID.
By Rachel Cain | Read the full article.
Undocumented homeless immigrants are a daunting population for nongovernmental service providers to help, since federal funding rules and other laws create barriers that make every case a jigsaw puzzle.
Undocumented immigrants are explicitly prohibited from federal programs, thanks to the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA), a major federal overhaul that restricted immigrant access to welfare programs among other federal public benefits, which listed “housing assistance” as such a benefit.
By Alejandro Devila Fragoso | Read the full article.
The term Civil Gideon is derived from the 1963 landmark court case Gideon v. Wainwright in which the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously decided that criminal defendants have a right to counsel. The civil Gideon movement argues that indigent parties should be provided legal representation in civil cases where basic human needs—such as child support, custody and housing—are at stake.
By Katlyn Alapati | Read the full article.
Tampons and pads are rarely donated to shelters and can’t be bought with many public assistance benefits like food stamps or Medicaid. Yet women make up a third of all homeless people in shelters.
“Menstrual hygiene products are very personal, everybody has their preference for what they want to use,” Seibert said. “We wanted to make sure that even though we were asking for donations we weren’t just assuming we knew what people prefer.” At one shelter, a big priority was wet wipes given that homeless women don’t always have access to showers. At another it was panty liners so that they didn’t need to wash their underwear as frequently.
By Bryce Covert | Read the full article.
Since 2013, tenants of 401 K Street NW have been fighting against Bush Companies, which owns their building and plans to demolish it to pave the way for new luxury apartments in its place.
The apartments currently house low-income tenants receiving rent subsidies through the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Section 8 voucher program. It is also one of the last buildings in D.C.’s Chinatown neighborhood that is primarily occupied by Chinese people.
By Kim Szarmach | Read the full story.
Those who lack shelter and even basic resources or support networks are already among the most vulnerable people on the planet, and when those stressors are made worse or more unpredictable by human-caused climate change, organizations struggle to keep up.
Eric Klinenberg, a New York University sociologist who has examined how cities can “climate-proof” their residents, told ThinkProgress the first priority is “protecting homeless people during heat waves, or even in what now counts as ordinary summer weather in places like Phoenix.”
By Ryan Koronowski | Read the full story.
“Fellowship, partnership, and friendship. What more could you ask for?” said Edmund Delany, Senior Vice President of Capital One Bank and a financing partner of SeVerna on the K, a nearby Bible Way property completed in 2015.
By Khyeria Fergusson | Read the full article.
It’s rare for a social service nonprofit to receive such a substantial donation out of the blue. The organization depends on “hundreds of little Oprahs” — small grants and donations — in a typical year, N Street Village director Schroeder Stribling told ThinkProgress. Caught off-guard, N Street Village is now facing a welcome question: What to do with a surprise $1 million?
By Alex Zielinski | Read the full article.
The annual report from the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments gives a one-night count of homelessness (the count occurred on January 28) in the region.
By Rachel Kurzius | Read the full article.
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