The following is an excerpt of the oral testimony of our Executive Director, Amber Harding at the final budget hearing at the D.C. Council. Since delivering this testimony, we learned that homelessness has increased by 4% this year, with a 15.8% increase for families.
The FY27 proposed budget lays out a vision for a D.C. that few low-income residents will be able to call home. This budget promises a D.C. with street sweeping but no homes for people living on those streets, homes for sports teams but not for families, and more and more law enforcement to enforce the increasingly punitive approach to poverty. In this budget’s vision for D.C., many residents will go without food, healthcare, housing, and the ability to enforce their legal rights. Some of the cuts to the safety net may have originated with the federal government, but this does not absolve D.C. of its responsibility to fill those gaps and make sure people have what they need to survive.
At the Legal Clinic – where our cases have tripled this year – we already see the impact of D.C.’s recent disinvestment in safety net programs, as well as its evisceration of our clients’ legal rights. Last year, the Council passed a budget that not only failed to invest sufficiently in permanent affordable housing, but also solidified an inhumane, strict benefits cliff in rapid re-housing, throwing many residents into an entirely predictable cycle of housing, eviction, and homelessness. For the first time in a decade, D.C. passed a budget without a single dollar invested in ending the homelessness of individuals—this at a time when unsheltered D.C. residents were (and are) increasingly at risk due to federal and local government’s displacement efforts. (Encampment evictions have increased by 200% since 2024, according to the City Paper.) The one bright spot in the past few years has been the expansion of non-congregate shelter for individuals, or bridge housing. Unfortunately, with the lack of investment in long-term housing, bridge housing, like rapid-rehousing, has become a bridge to nowhere.
Now, evictions are at a historic high and homelessness is on the rise. The budget before you doubles down on the cruelty– increasing homelessness, and failing low-income D.C. residents right and left. Here is a small sample of what low-income D.C. residents have said to you in emails or testimony over the last year:
“…my daughter and I are staring into the abyss of homelessness once again. The thought of going back to a shelter, of starting the process all over, is nothing short of devastating. I know I’m not alone in this struggle; there are countless families like mine, fighting to stay afloat in a system that seems designed to fail us.”
“We are now one bad day away from losing everything we’ve worked to stabilize… When routines are disrupted, my youngest regresses and my oldest spirals. I feel that in my bones as their mother… I am not asking for special treatment, just a humane adjustment so disability doesn’t become a doorway back to homelessness.”
“I currently have nowhere to go and it’s cold and I was not placed in a shelter or anywhere, then they are basically saying shelters are not helping with anything.”
“My family was exited from FRSP due to program time length without the required exit plan. Instead of a bridge forward, we were left with nothing. The impact on my family has been devastating. The stability we worked so hard to build is now at risk. The fear of homelessness has returned, and with it has come emotional, mental, and financial decline. As a parent, watching my progress unravel while trying to reassure my family has been heartbreaking.”
D.C. is pushing low-income, primarily Black, residents out of the city through intentional policy choices (like the HPP+ program that pays your rent if you give up all D.C. benefits and leave the city) and funding priorities (like refusing to fund deeply affordable permanent housing and instead pretending, despite all evidence to the contrary, that short-term or shallow subsidies will maintain housing stability). Whether it is President Trump’s statement that “the homeless have to move out immediately,” the Bowser Administration’s “no tent” zones erected around the city, or the failure to invest in deeply affordable housing, the message is clear: unhoused people are not welcome in D.C. This proposed budget does little to change that message.
Ending homelessness is and always has been about political will. It is entirely possible to end homelessness with regular, sustained investment of resources and smart, humane policy. Even during, or perhaps especially during, rough financial times (which these inarguably are), there are always choices to be made, choices that could center and support the people who are struggling the most.
The economic picture for D.C. is leaner than it has been in years, but the economic picture for low-income D.C. residents is potentially life-threatening. Responding to the urgent needs of these D.C. residents should be the top priority in this budget. If you cannot find money from less critical programs to divert to supporting D.C. residents most in need, than I urge you to raise the revenue required to do so. You have a responsibility to the people in this city who are truly in crisis, and who cannot wait for better times to come around again.