The People for Fairness Coalition and Miriam's Kitchen organized a vigil and march on Dec. 21 in conjunction with National Homeless Persons' Memorial Day. (Photo by Rodney Choice of Choice Photography courtesy of Street Sense Media)

Homeless advocates memorialize the dead — and rally for those who remain in need of housing

By Katherine Saltzman On Jan 23, 2019 Last updated Jan 24, 2019

Mayor Muriel Bowser will join volunteers tonight in the cafeteria at Columbia Heights Educational Campus as they prepare to deploy around the city to conduct a yearly census of people experiencing homelessness in the District. The city’s Point in Time Count comes on the heels of the most frigid temperatures of the year, when District officials declared a “cold emergency” and opened extra shelters and warming facilities.

Tonight’s census also comes one month after activists and homeless people undertook another yearly tradition: In the midst of steady rain on the night of the winter solstice, dozens gathered to attend a vigil at Luther Place Memorial Church and afterward marched through downtown DC to mourn and memorialize the 54 individuals without a home who died in the District in 2018.

“Until our hearts change, nothing will change. Until an empty building matters more as affordable housing than profit, our brothers and sisters will die on the streets.
— the Rev. Linda Kaufman

The sixth annual memorial vigil and march commenced a two-day event organized by the People for Fairness Coalition (PFFC), an organization dedicated to providing outreach and peer mentoring programs for impoverished individuals who have experienced housing instability in DC.

The event was part of an advocacy effort to raise awareness on the lack of affordable housing in the District and to demand that the DC Council and Mayor Muriel Bowser increase funding for supportive, long-term housing access for individuals experiencing homelessness with a goal of ending chronic homelessness in the city. Across the country, Dec. 21 is recognized as National Homeless Persons’ Memorial Day.

The Dec. 21 march proceeded through downtown DC from Luther Place Memorial Church to Freedom Plaza. (Photo by Rodney Choice of Choice Photography courtesy of Street Sense Media)

PFFC and Miriam’s Kitchen, a DC-based homeless advocacy organization that helped organize the event, called on Bowser to invest $35.5 million in her 2020 budget to support stable, long-term housing for 1,140 individuals and 177 families.

“Housing is the best form of health care anyone can have,” PFFC director Robert Warren said in a press release. “Homeward DC (DC’s plan to end homelessness) can be the solution but only if it’s fully funded.”

Homeward DC is Bowser’s initiative to make homelessness in the District a “rare, brief and non-recurring” experience. Her administration’s strategy included the October closure of the dilapidated and overcrowded DC General Shelter and construction of six short-term family housing facilities across the District — three of which are open, with the remainder expected to be completed by early 2020. Another aspect encompasses funding for agencies and organizations that follow the Housing First approach, a “coordinated entry” system that starts by placing homeless residents into stable, long-term housing. Once in housing, each resident receives ongoing support and services from specialists.

Representatives of social justice organizations, homeless advocates and DC government officials — about a dozen in all — spoke at the vigil. They included Warren; Laura Zeilinger, director of the DC Department of Human Services; and the Rev. Linda Kaufman, the DowntownDC Business Improvement District’s director of homeless services — an Episcopal priest who ministers at St. Stephen & the Incarnation Episcopal Church in Northwest DC.

“Until our hearts change, nothing will change,” Kaufman said at the vigil. ”Until an empty building matters more as affordable housing than profit, our brothers and sisters will die on the streets. Until we see a windfall sales tax gathering money from those with abundance as a way of giving housing instead of tax cuts, our brothers and sisters will die homeless. Until we see empty offices and think housing — cheap, safe, affordable, stable housing — until we see housing for every person, our brothers and sisters will die homeless.”

As homeless advocate Waldon Adams marched through the streets as part of the memorial procession from Luther Place to Freedom Plaza, he held a sign bearing the name of a former client who passed away while in the process of securing long-term housing after experiencing years of homelessness.

“I had a client who was really sick, and had a couple of buddies that I would see at a food kitchen. I would meet him every Wednesday,” recounted Adams, an outreach specialist at Pathways to Housing DC — a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing long-term housing, health care and social services to homeless individuals. He begged me to help his friend first because he was wasting away, and he was asking me to do this before himself.”

Adams assisted the client with paperwork and helped him obtain a housing voucher. Soon after the client’s admission to the program, he died of a heart attack.

Formerly homeless, Waldon Adams is now an outreach specialist at Pathways to Housing DC. In addition to his work on homeless advocacy, he is an avid marathon runner and athlete. (Photo courtesy of Miriam’s Kitchen)

For Adams, the loss of his client — as well as his work as an advocate for long-term housing for the homeless — hit close to his own experience. Earlier in his life, Adams experienced many years of chronic homelessness, battling addiction, living with a mental illness and serious health complications from HIV/AIDS and often ending up in the hospital or psychiatric care.

Ten years ago, Adams was able to secure permanent housing through the Housing First model. “The only rule was that you don’t destroy the property, that you pay your portion of the rent and don’t disturb your neighbors,” Adams said.

Since then, Adams has become an outspoken leader on homeless advocacy and outreach, though he’s also known as an avid marathon runner and athlete. The mayor recently named him to the DC Interagency Council on Homelessness, with his nomination set to take effect today with the completion of the DC Council’s review period.

Adams, a longtime DC resident, didn’t expect to his homelessness to last as long it did, but he found that limited access to resources, outreach and services made climbing out difficult. His situation was so desperate, he said, that ending up in the hospital due to his health issues offered something of a respite.

“I didn’t grow up homeless or poor, so I had no idea how to survive the streets when this happened,” Adams said. “I found myself homeless but had no skills on dealing with homelessness. The only thing that saved me was mental issues — I was bipolar and had advanced HIV, which kept me in the hospital.”