As has been true for now more than thirty years, we are an effort of the community, coming together from our various perspectives and experiences…companions on the journey towards a more just and inclusive DC.

Budget season is over and it’s been a pretty exciting ride.  This year, the D.C. Council really stepped up and, through restorations and investments, supported many programs relied upon by low-income and no-income D.C. residents. The Council put $4 million into the tenant-based Local Rent Supplement Program in order to provide permanent affordable housing to about 250 homeless families in the District and open up much-needed space in emergency...

In giving final approval to the FY 2013 Budget Support Act today, the D.C. Council voted to delay additional cuts in TANF for a year.  Councilmembers Jim Graham and Michael Brown introduced the amendment with the one-year delay language, and all but three Councilmembers voted in favor of the amendment.  (Councilmembers Alexander,Catania, and Mendelson voted against the delay). In passing this amendment, councilmembers recognized that the...

Thanks to the leadership of Chairman Kwame Brown and the support of several Councilmembers, the DC Council voted unanimously yesterday to approve a budget that prioritizes homeless families by including a $4 million investment in the Local Rent Supplement Program (LRSP)!  These funds will be used to house 250 families currently staying in DC shelters and will ultimately open up shelter space so that new families that experience a housing crisis...

The DC Council’s Committee of the Whole held its FY2013 Budget Support Act Hearing on April 30th. Executive Director Patricia Mullahy Fugere testified for the Legal Clinic, challenging the Council to pass a budget that lives up to the ideals embraced when the Council declared DC to be a “Human Rights City” just three years ago. You can read her testimony here.  The most eventful moment of the hearing was when over sixty men,...

We mark our 25th anniversary this year and look to this important occasion not as a celebration, but rather as a call to action.  With nearly 7,000 people homeless in the nation’s capital on any given day (about 40% of whom are in families), and tens of thousands of households struggling to find housing that they can afford, there seems little to celebrate.  To be sure, we’ve helped a lot of people move their lives to a better place, but so...