Today, Councilmember Jim Graham, Chair of the Committee on Human Services, is holding a public oversight roundtable on “The Winter Plan: Protecting the Lives of Homeless People in the Winter of 2013-2014.” You can tune in to the roundtable here. 

Amber Harding and Scott McNeilly of the Legal Clinic testified before the Committee earlier this morning. The following is testimony delivered by Amber Harding and we will post Scott McNeilly’s testimony later today.

On January 7th 2013, a hypothermia alert was called at about 3PM. About an hour later, a seven month pregnant 23 year old woman completed her interview for family shelter at the Family Resource Center. The intake worker noted that she was seven months pregnant (and therefore qualified as a “family” under the HSRA), that she had slept on the corner of 7th and H Street NE the night before and had nowhere safe to sleep that night, and that she needed emergency housing assistance that day. She received a housing stability score of “0.”

I met this woman, now with an infant daughter, nine months later. She was not placed in shelter that night or any other night last winter when she had nowhere to go. She was given no lawful notice, nor any reason for the refusal to place her. A simple paper review of this file would have turned up this wrongful denial.

When I raised this case to the attention of DHS and the Community Partnership, they agreed to place her immediately. This family, like the other families we highlighted inour report last winter, was wrongfully denied on a night where she could have developed hypothermia, or even died, sleeping outside. Like the other families we represented last year, who comprised 20% of the placements during hypothermia, she was only placed when a lawyer got involved.

When I reviewed this client’s file, I felt anger and frustration, even sadness, but not surprise. All last winter we expressed concern that the cases we were seeing indicated a much more widespread problem. Because DHS and the Partnership almost always agreed with our assessments of cases when we brought wrongful denials to their attention, we assumed that the problem lay with the contractor, and so we tried to work collaboratively and constructively on a solution. We drafted policies and protocols we thought would be helpful at increasing compliance. We released our mid-season report detailing many of the legal violations we had seen so far and giving concrete recommendations for preventing further violations. But, as far we can tell, none of our recommendations was adopted.

When this Committee held an oversight hearing at DC General last winter, what was striking was that almost every family who was questioned about their experience prior to entering DC General revealed that they had spent multiple cold nights outside, despite pleading their case with the Family Resource Center, before they were finally placed in shelter. With past as prologue and with no sign of major reform to interrupt these patterns, we are heading into a rough winter season for families. We have tried to work in partnership with the government and its contractors, but our obligation to our clients is to pursue the most effective strategies, not necessarily the most collaborative ones, particularly when our clients are trying to access basic lifesaving services to which they are legally entitled.

As we’ve testified about repeatedly over the last few years, we have seen DC slowly whittle away at the right to shelter. First, the policy baseline that families should have access to emergency shelter year-round was dropped to the legal baseline of access only on freezing nights. Then, the Council scaled back the right to access shelter even on those nights by creating several new eligibility hurdles that are only (and discriminatorily) applied to families.

Now, this Administration is attempting to chip away the right to shelter even more by reading the Homeless Services Reform Act as excluding unaccompanied youth under the age of 18 from its protections. We find this interpretation of the law not only legally unsustainable, but also deeply concerning for what it foretells about the response to homeless youth this winter. For every other population represented in the Winter Plan, the understanding is that the plan represents the floor of what will be done to ensure access: if more space must be found because the need is greater than anticipated, then more space will be found. But if the Administration believes that youth are not legally entitled to shelter on freezing nights, will they provide the space needed to ensure that every youth has a safe place to go this winter, even if it ends up being more space than the Winter Plan contemplates?

We agree that comprehensive plans must be developed to better serve all who are homeless. But in the meantime the District must make sure that it meets the very basic goals outlined in the Mayor’s Order 2001-161, dated October 31, 2001 (Purpose):

… to identify vulnerable homeless people living in exposed, unprotected areas and provide immediate access to shelter and services… to save lives and prevent serious injury that can be caused by extended exposure to severe winter weather conditions.

DC residents should not be risking life and limb while they wait for more enriched services.

The following is testimony delivered by Scott McNeilly at today’s Winter Plan Roundtable. In addition to being a Legal Clinic staff attorney, Scott is also a member of the Interagency Council on Homelessness (ICH) and a member of the ICH’s Operations and Logistics Committee and Capacity Subcommittee, both of which were involved in developing the Winter Plan.  

Our Winter Plan process has continued to evolve and this year’s Plan contains some significant improvements in the way alerts are called and communicated, as well as some additional resources to address significant needs. Because this is an oversight hearing, I wanted to highlight some of the concerns that were discussed during the development of the Plan and some of the areas that we’ll need to monitor closely during the course of the season.

For the past few years, the ICH Capacity Subcommittee has been responsible for developing the number of beds or placements needed for the Winter Plan. For the past couple of years, the Capacity Subcommittee has been concerned about a shortage of beds for women on non-hypothermia nights. We’ve been quite accurate in identifying and providing enough beds for women on peak usage hypothermia nights but we’ve consistently had turnaways on non-hypothermia nights when it can still be dangerous to sleep outside. Although it’s not reflected in the current version of the Winter Plan, the 10 alert-night beds at the Open Door shelter will be converted to seasonal beds on November 1st, which should be enough to meet the need.

For single men, there are two primary concerns. First, last winter the Sacred Heart and St. Luke’s shelters were regularly over their stated capacities, often by significant margins. The understanding of the Committee is that this reflects, at least in part, an unwillingness of some men to leave the Northwest area and travel all the way across town for overnight shelter. The Committee and the Community Partnership tried unsuccessfully to identify an additional site in Northwest to relieve this stress on those facilities. We’ll need to carefully monitor the usage of these two facilities to ensure they aren’t becoming dangerously overcrowded.

Second, one of the church sites for men identified in the version of the Plan voted on by the ICH has since fallen through, which has resulted in a loss of 25 beds. This means that the first identified overflow site, Kennedy Recreation Center, will be converted from overflow to an alert-night facility. However, the capacity stated in the Plan for Kennedy is incorrect and is in fact 25 not 40. Therefore, we are 45 beds short of the total beds the Capacity Subcommittee determined we would need to meet the anticipated peak demand this winter. Last winter, for the first time in many years, the demand for beds by men exceeded the number identified in the Winter Plan. Given the turnaway data the Capacity Subcommittee has tracked through the summer, the demand this winter is likely to be comparable to last winter. It’s essential that the District identify the additional overflow capacity for men before the anticipated peak usage in January. Another cause for concern is our increased reliance on District recreation centers which are usually unavailable until 9 p.m.

You’ll hear from a number of people today about the concerns and issues related to serving families. This year, the Capacity Subcommittee and the Operations and Logistics Committee decided to focus on the anticipated need for family placements through the course of the hypothermia season, without specifying how those placements would be made. This reflects an acknowledgement that past projections of placements through the various anticipated housing resources have consistently been inaccurate – we’ve never placed as many families as past Winter Plans have promised. Rather than furthering our preparation, including these unrealistic housing goals in the Winter Plan has distracted from focusing on the real anticipated need. This also reflects the unfortunate reality that, due to the ongoing family shelter crisis, we will have to rely extensively on motels again this year.

There are major concerns this winter for families – the possibility that we may run out of motel rooms. Last winter, 421 “Priority 1″ families were placed in shelter between November and March, an average of 84 per month. The Capacity Subcommittee could identify nothing that would indicate that this winter will be better. Over the past five months, the District has managed to exit an average of just 22 families per month to transitional or permanent housing. If those numbers hold, we may be adding approximately sixty families per month to the system. The Department of Human Services has indicated that the maximum number of available motel rooms may be between 225 and 250. We’re starting the season with approximately 20 families in motels who were placed last year and some unknown number placed by the Child and Family Services Administration. If we place sixty families per month in motels, we may exhaust the existing supply by sometime in February.  As far as I know, there is no plan in place for that possibility but it might require the District to procure motel space outside of the District with all of the logistical challenges that would entail.

It is also important to note that because of the District’s ongoing affordable housing crisis and the disproportionate impact that crisis is having on families, DC has essentially no emergency shelter response for families in need outside of hypothermia. We need a Spring, Summer, and Fall Plan that can keep pace with the need.

Finally, you are probably aware that the Interagency Council on Homelessness rejected the draft Winter Plan’s language addressing unaccompanied minor children. I was among those voting “no” on that language and my primary reason was that the proposed language did not answer basic questions about whom someone concerned about a minor should call and who is responsible for responding to that call. I understand that there are a variety of complicated assessment and referral issues involved with unaccompanied minors but the Winter Plan should be able to describe in simple terms the plan for preventing a youth from freezing to death during an alert.

The Winter Plan should be able to answer the question: if someone comes across a youth in a doorway at 1 a.m. on a freezing night, what happens? Who does what to make sure that child doesn’t freeze in that doorway?  DHS has focused on the various assessments and interventions that may need to occur the next day or later but we don’t have a clear answer to what happens that night. Although I think the law is clear that the child must be sheltered by the District during the alert, the law can’t be that we leave the child in the doorway, so what happens?  That and nothing more is what we need to answer for the Winter Plan.

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, and the Legal Clinic is proud to join the DC Coalition Against Domestic Violence (DCAADV) and others in honoring victims and survivors of domestic violence for the 8th annual observance of Purple Thursday.

Domestic violence is the second most frequently stated cause of homelessness for families, and one in four women in DC will experience domestic violence during her lifetime.  According to the 2013 Point in Time Survey, 31.4% of adults in families and 10.2% of unaccompanied single persons who are homeless in the District have experienced domestic violence, and 10.9% of adults in families are homeless directly as a result of domestic violence.

Access to emergency shelter and housing are crucial to keep survivors safe, but far too often, we see victims who are unable to find assistance and face the prospect of returning to abusers because there is no space in the District’s shelter system or housing programs. We urge the DC government to stand with survivors by investing in enough housing and shelter programs to ensure that every child, woman, and man has a safe place to go when fleeing domestic violence.

Check out these photos to see us show our solidarity with survivors today in a slightly sillier way.

From February to May of 2013, one local youth service provider turned away at least 150 unaccompanied minor children due to lack of emergency shelter space, many of whom also had children of their own. When made aware of this unmet need in September, the Interagency Council on Homelessness (ICH) responded by making the adoption of the Winter Plan contingent on the development of a plan to serve this population. But the draft plan that will be voted on by the ICH tomorrow (October 17th at 2PM) does not announce any new resources for youth that will change the status quo of turning away 150 youth in five months. Instead, the plan just lists the current resources available and suggests referrals to those resources.

The District seems to have concluded that it has no legal obligation to provide emergency shelter to youth when it is freezing outside, and thus it is not required to develop a plan that would serve every child in need this winter. The Department of Human Services reads the  Homeless Services Reform Act to say that youth are not entitled to the right to shelter in freezing weather and that, even if they were, no unaccompanied youth could ever meet basic eligibility criteria. We disagree, and you can read our legal interpretation below.

Putting aside our differing legal interpretations of the Homeless Services Reform Act, we can imagine few scenarios that so egregiously defy the spirit of the law. According to Mayor’s Order 2001-161 (October 31, 2001), the purpose of the Winter Plan is “to identify vulnerable homeless people living in exposed, unprotected areas and provide immediate access to shelter and services… to save lives and prevent serious injury that can be caused by extended exposure to severe winter weather conditions.”

The proposed plan will formalize a process by which many homeless youth are left without any shelter whatsoever on hypothermic nights. Attempting to exclude unaccompanied youth from the law’s protections will increase not only legal liability, but the risk of real and irreparable harm to vulnerable children this winter.

Let the Chair of the Interagency Council on Homelessness, City Administrator Allen Lew, know that the proposed plan will not protect the lives of vulnerable youth. You can email him at allen.lew@dc.gov.

The District of Columbia is Legally Obligated to Provide Emergency Shelter to Homeless Youth in Severe Weather

Analysis by Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless

I. Introduction

According to preliminary data from one local youth service provider, at least 150 minor children were turned away from shelter services from February to May of 2013 due to lack of space, many of whom also had children of their own. When made aware of this unmet need, the Interagency Council on Homelessness (ICH) responded by making adoption of the Winter Plan  contingent on the development of a plan to serve this population. On October 3, 2013, a draft modification of the youth services section of the Winter Plan (“Winter Plan Addendum”) was circulated for consideration. The changes outlined in that modification were largely based on guidelines put forth in a document entitled “Proposed Framework for Serving Unaccompanied Minor Children” (“Proposed Framework”) which was released by the Department of Human Services (DHS) around September 12, 2013. Both of these documents are based on the premise that unaccompanied youth[1] do not have a right to shelter in severe weather pursuant to the Homeless Services Reform Act (HSRA), and therefore they propose a piecemeal approach to providing shelter to unaccompanied youth that is based primarily on referring youth to non-shelter services.

It is important to note at the outset that much of the analysis in the Proposed Framework is based on two faulty premises: 1) that federal law prevents the establishment of low-barrier emergency shelter for unaccompanied minors and 2) that the only relevant analysis is whether the Department of Human Services has a legal obligation to serve this population.

First, the federal Runaway and Homeless Youth Act specifically authorizes the establishment of emergency shelters for runaway youth, defined as someone under 18 who has “left home without permission of their parents or guardians[.]”[2] The explicit purpose of this federal program is to provide “an alternative to involving runaway and homeless youth in the law enforcement, child welfare, mental health, and juvenile justice systems.”[3] Not only is the establishment of such emergency shelter allowed under this act, but there are two providers who currently receive funding under this act in the District. Rather than conforming to federal law, the Winter Plan Addendum would actually run counter to the goals of the relevant federal laws dealing with unaccompanied youth unless it is changed to include the provision of emergency shelter for unaccompanied youth.

Second, the HSRA is clear that the obligation to provide severe weather shelter to all residents of the District of Columbia is that of the “District” or the “Mayor,” not any one specific agency.[4] While DHS has traditionally taken a lead role in implementing the District’s obligation to provide emergency shelter to homeless residents, the inquiry into whether unaccompanied youth have a right to severe weather shelter does not hinge on whether DHS as an agency is charged with serving that population.

As will be explained more fully below, it is our position that the HSRA does not exclude unaccompanied youth from its mandate to provide severe weather shelter and that the Winter Plan Addendum fails to effectuate that legal right sufficiently. Perhaps more fundamentally, the Winter Plan Addendum fails, for a significant portion for the homeless population, to comport with the spirit of the law perhaps best summed up by the Mayor’s Order 2001-161, dated October 31, 2001 (Purpose):

The Hypothermia Procedures shall establish a Winter Plan designed to identify vulnerable homeless people living in exposed, unprotected areas and provide immediate access to shelter and services. The overall goal of this emergency plan shall be to save lives and prevent serious injury that can be caused by extended exposure to severe winter weather conditions.

II. Unaccompanied Youth have a Legal Right to Shelter in Severe Weather

Contrary to the guidelines laid out in both the Winter Plan Addendum and the Proposed Framework, the HSRA does not exclude unaccompanied youth from its mandate that the District provide emergency shelter in severe weather. When the temperature, including wind chill, drops below 32 degrees Fahrenheit, the HSRA provides a right to shelter to “any resident of the District who is homeless and cannot access other housing arrangements.”[5] The Winter Plan Addendum seems to implicitly deny that this right extends to unaccompanied youth, while the Proposed Framework does so explicitly. This policy seems to be based largely on a misinterpretation of three terms in the HSRA: “individual,” “resident,” and “homeless.”

A.  Unaccompanied Youth are “Individuals” or “Families” under the HSRA, depending on whether they have minor or dependent children with them.

The Proposed Framework concludes that unaccompanied youth are neither “individuals” nor “families” and thus are excluded by the HSRA’s right to shelter in severe weather. DHS suggests that since the term “individual” is not defined in the HSRA, the controlling definition should be that of the implementing regulations promulgated by DHS. Although no citation is provided, the term “individual” is said to be qualified in those regulations as “individual adult,” and therefore the HSRA term would similarly exclude minor children.[6]

Besides contorting the generally accepted meaning of the word “individual” and the plain language of the HSRA, this approach is flawed for several reasons. First, since the HSRA provides a definition for the term “adult,” [7] the drafters could have easily excluded minor children from certain rights under the HSRA by using the term “adult” rather than “individual.” As the drafters used the term “individual” in reference to the right to shelter, the term seems to indicate a broader group of persons than just adults. Second, the HSRA defines a family as “a group of individuals with at least one minor or dependent child.”[8] If “individuals” only included adults, this definition would require two adults (“a group”) in addition to one minor child in order to qualify as a family. Under this standard, a single mother with a child would not qualify as a family. Given that such a result would run counter to the clear intentions and operation of the HSRA, the more logical interpretation would be that a family can be composed of two “individuals,” at least one of whom is a minor. (Similarly, there appears to be nothing in the HSRA prohibiting minor parents with minor children from qualifying as a family for purposes of accessing shelter services.)

Finally, the regulations DHS refers to do not in fact contain any definition of the term “individual”.  There are sections in these regulations that describe the intake and assessment process for “individual adults”, but this simply reflects the reality that we have a separate system for individual adults.[9]  This is not a sufficient basis for concluding that it was the intent of the Council in enacting the Homeless Services Reform Act to exclude individuals under age 18 from protection from hypothermic weather. Further, given that DHS claims to have no authority to serve this population in the first place, even if DHS promulgated regulations that defined out this population, the regulations would be merely reflective of its practice and irrelevant to statutory interpretation.

B. Unaccompanied Youth Can Meet the Residency Requirement of the HSRA

The Proposed Framework concludes that, even if unaccompanied youth were included in the HSRA’s promise of shelter in severe weather, they would not be considered eligible because they could not establish District residency. It is true that, in general, only District residents are eligible for homeless services under the HSRA.[10] But there is no reason why unaccompanied youth would, categorically, be unable to meet this eligibility criterion.

The Proposed Framework does not provide a citation for its statement that a minor who is not legally emancipated cannot establish residency independently of his or her parents. This omission is not surprising given that the DC Code indicates the opposite. The HSRA states that residency determinations will be made in accordance with DC Code § 4-205.03, which in turn states that “[a] child is residing in the District if he or she is making his or her home in the District.”[11] This definition does not limit the residency of a child to that of his or her parents. This same statutory provision is used to determine eligibility for another DHS benefits program, TANF, which allows minors to receive benefits even if they are not living with a parent or guardian in certain circumstances.[12] Given that the TANF program allows minors to independently receive services as District residents under some circumstances, the same should be true for minors seeking homeless services under the HSRA.

Furthermore, DC law has a variety of instances where minors who are not legally emancipated are permitted significant latitude in their affairs. For example, minors can access services like TANF[13] and WIC[14] for themselves and their children if they are parents and they meet certain requirements.[15] In addition, minors 15 years of age or older may contract for life, health, and accident insurance;[16] minors can consent to medical services for pregnancy, pregnancy termination, and substance abuse;[17] and minors can consent to mental health treatment and medication without a parent’s involvement.[18] If minors are able to independently conduct their lives in these key areas, it seems reasonable that they should also be permitted to receive emergency services under the HSRA.

Even if some minor children faced challenges in establishing District residency independently of their parents, they could still be eligible for hypothermia shelter. The HSRA states that “severe weather shelters operating as low-barrier shelters shall not be required to receive demonstration of residency or prioritize District residents.”[19]Moreover, the HSRA provides that “[n]o individual or family may be deemed ineligible for services solely because the individual or family cannot establish proof of homelessness or residency at the time of the individual or family’s application for assistance.”[20] Finally, the HSRA explicitly permits the provision of life-saving hypothermia shelter to non-residents so long as District residents receive priority.[21]Together these provisions demonstrate that lack of residency or proof of residency will not necessarily disqualify unaccompanied youth from accessing emergency shelter on hypothermic nights.

C. Unaccompanied Minors Can Meet the HSRA Definition of “Homeless”

The Winter Plan Addendum and the Proposed Framework both assert that minors who have left their homes but could conceivably be allowed to return at some point are not homeless under the HSRA and therefore have no right to shelter. These assertions are based on a troubling interpretation of the term “homeless” and would result in many unaccompanied youth being left without shelter on hypothermic nights. Because the HSRA defines someone as homeless if they are “lacking a fixed, regular residence that provides safe housing,” we believe that many unaccompanied youth would qualify as “homeless” and would therefore be eligible for services under the HSRA.[22]

While neither the Winter Plan Addendum nor the Proposed Framework provide a basis for their conclusion that children in these situations are not homeless, they are presumably premised on the idea that these children have “safe housing” that is available to them. This reasoning is deeply flawed. Perhaps the most glaring flaw is seen in one situation described in the Proposed Framework in which a minor would not be considered homeless who “has a house to return to but has no place to stay for the nightor until transportation can be arranged” (emphasis added). There is no durational requirement to be considered homeless under the HSRA.  The purpose of the right to severe weather shelter is to prevent someone from freezing to death during the particular night when the person has “no place to stay.”

III. Conclusion

As with the federal scheme outlined in the Runaway and Homeless Youth Act, the District’s goal should be to get youth into safe and stable environments so that appropriate assessments can be performed and a response developed. The proposed Winter Plan Addendum may deter youth from accessing safety and appears to be contrary to both federal and District law. Most troubling of all, the proposed system will formalize a process by which many homeless youth will be left without any shelter whatsoever on hypothermic nights. If there is no suspicion of abuse or neglect, these youth will not be eligible for shelter through CFSA, leaving only the services that are currently available to homeless youth: the same providers that were forced to turn away over 150 minor children in five months due to lack of capacity. The inevitable outcome will be that minor children will be left outside during hypothermic nights.

As the purpose of the statutory right to shelter in severe weather and the Winter Plan is to prevent the loss of life or limb for any person experiencing homelessness when it is freezing outside, attempting to exclude unaccompanied youth from the law’s protections is likely to lead to legal liability for the District as well as tragedy for a vulnerable child.

[1] For purposes of this analysis, the terms “unaccompanied youth” and “minor children” are used interchangeably and include all individuals below the age of eighteen who are not accompanied by a caregiver, parent or guardian, although they may have children of their own.

[22] DC Code § 4-751.01(18).

The DC Council Committee on Human Services is holding a hearing today on Bill 20-414, the “Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Cost-of-Living Adjustment Amendment Act of 2013.” Legal Clinic staff attorney Becky O’Brien submitted the following testimony to the Committee.

I want to thank you for introducing Bill 20-414, “TANF Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) Amendment Act of 2013” which proposes an increase to TANF benefits for District families.

Due in large part to the District’s current low TANF benefit levels, parents live in a state of constant crisis. Nearly all of the TANF families with whom I’ve spoken run out of TANF benefits before the end of each month. No family in DC who survives on TANF can afford private housing and very few have the benefit of housing through subsidized programs. As a result, these families are homeless or at immediate risk of homelessness. They are living on a friend’s couch, living in shelter, moving from place to place, or staying in unsafe conditions. Every parent I speak with talks about the final weeks of every month when TANF benefits are gone and SNAP/food stamps benefits exhausted. Parents are forced to spend their time seeking emergency help to pay the bills, going to food pantries for a bag of groceries, missing meals, and doing anything they can to ensure that they provide for the basic needs of their families. Simply put, families cannot survive month to month on TANF benefits.

As a community, we have some basic expectations of the TANF program: provide financial assistance to families with no income so basic needs are covered and assist parents in moving toward work. But when our TANF parents are forced to spend part of every month searching out ways to meet the very basic needs of their families, they cannot focus on the goal of moving toward work. It is nearly impossible to focus on seeking or keeping a job when you do not know where you will get your next meal, when you live in constant fear of losing your utilities, when you are in jeopardy of losing your housing, or when you stay with an abuser because you do not have the resources to leave.

Over the past few years, the DC Department of Human Services (DHS) has poured time, energy, and money into improving its TANF program. DHS has focused on improving the individual assessment so barriers to work can be removed, and in improving employment services so parents can get and keep good jobs. Increasing TANF benefit levels is an essential part of these enhancements and improvements to the program.

Recently, advocates met with TANF work vendors to discuss the most prevalent problems families face. Those conversations confirmed that vendors regularly spend time identifying resources to help stabilize families in their program. Some programs keep food at their offices to offer clients whose benefits have run out. Others help parents identify organizations that provide free groceries, while still others advocate on behalf of families to get them into shelter when they lose their housing. I applaud their willingness to do all they can to support the families in their programs, but this is time that should be spent on assisting those parents in finding good jobs. The fact that vendors need to help parents access these basic resources is a sign that families cannot survive on the current TANF benefit level.

Sadly, our parents have not seen an increase to their TANF benefits in years. Current benefit amounts are far too low to cover the basic costs of living in the District even when supplemented by other benefits. We fall far behind comparable jurisdictions for TANF benefit levels. A family of three currently receives $428 in DC while that same family receives $576 in Maryland, $638 in Boston and $753 in New York City.

We support the proposed –and long overdue – increase to TANF benefits as an effort to stabilize DC families in crisis. The increase will not eliminate this crisis but it will begin to ease it, allowing parents to focus on their efforts to secure a good job and hopefully move off the TANF program altogether.

This week, the Housing Complex exposed the troubles DC is having placing homeless families through its Rapid Rehousing program. The director of the Department of Human Services (DHS) is quoted in the article, opining that the biggest obstacle for placing families is the lack of affordable units that families could afford on their own after the program stops helping them pay rent. We think Rapid Rehousing could be a valuable part of the affordable housing spectrum if it were tailored to meet both the needs of homeless families in DC and, perhaps more critically, the realities of DC’s housing market.

If the District had available a multitude of apartments that were reasonably priced to residents who work one, two, or even three minimum wage jobs, much less those on public assistance, DC wouldn’t have the family homelessness crisis it has today. Instead, the loss of affordable rental units is a major cause of homelessness for families. We sympathize with Director Berns’ sentiment that allowing families to rent units with higher rents than they can afford once they stop receiving a subsidy sets them up to fail—but this is evidence of a design flaw in DC’s Rapid Rehousing program. The central problem is that DC has designed a program broadly targeted to homeless families, and then based it on the presumed availability of units that will be affordable to these families without a subsidy.

This isn’t to say that Rapid Rehousing is destined to be a failure in DC. It just can’t be the primary solution to family homelessness without some major changes. It is certainly possible to improve the program’s placement success by looking to practices employed by housing programs that work well in this rental market, such as the Local Rent Supplement Program (or its federal equivalent, the Housing Choice Voucher Program) and DHS’ Permanent Supportive Housing program. Both of these programs are designed to help level the playing field for their participants while also responding to DC’s specific housing market realities by:

1. Allowing participants to select units with reasonable rent as determined by a neighborhood-specific market analysis of rental units (performed jointly by expert federal and local authorities.) This greatly increases the chances of finding units to rent. Just as importantly, it reduces the likelihood that families will be limited to accessing apartments that are priced below market levels for a reason, i.e. they are in terrible condition or are in dangerous neighborhoods; and
2. Lowering the perceived risk to landlords that they won’t get paid rent if they lease to families of limited income by guaranteeing the government portion of the rent for longer than four months and by indicating what services tenants will receive during the length of their subsidy. The letter that landlords currently get in the Rapid Rehousing program states that the program will pay a portion of the rent for four months and mentions nothing of any services provided to the tenant to help them increase income and retain housing. Landlords are wary of renting to applicants with poor credit or rental histories and limited income with such a limited promise of support from DC’s Rapid Rehousing program. We do not see this same wariness in other affordable housing programs. Director Berns has said that the government will continue to extend support if families need it in Rapid Rehousing beyond four months. If DC assured landlords of that commitment, we think they would increase the number of landlords willing to rent to homeless families.

Finally, DC’s Rapid Rehousing Program could benefit from employing housing locators to assist applicants in finding homes. The families staying in hotels have been assigned to at least three or four different caseworkers, all funded by DC tax dollars, but none of whom have specialized training in finding housing. This staffing structure seems both duplicative and ineffective. In fact, many families have reported to us that they rarely hear from their workers and when they do the message is often that it is entirely on the family to find a unit and negotiate with the landlord.