Broken systems created homelessness — and only multifaceted solutions can end it, advocates say

On Thursday evening, a candlelight procession downtown and then an overnight vigil in Freedom Plaza will pay tribute to 81 men and women who died in DC over the past year “of preventable and manageable diseases without the dignity of a home.” Organized by the People for Fairness Coalition, the seventh annual event culminates the morning afterward in a lobbying push at the Wilson Building as advocates battle against housing instability. 

DC Mayor Muriel Bowser has pledged to end long-term homelessness in the District by 2020 — a deadline that is obviously fast approaching. While advocates acknowledge that some progress has been made in the five years since Bowser’s promise that “homelessness in the District will be a rare, brief and non-recurring experience,” they say the gap between the need for homeless services and the funding to provide them is still far too wide.

Permanent supportive housing is considered to be the gold standard to solving homelessness, with a more than 90% success rate of residents able to retain their housing, according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness. But advocates say truly ending homelessness goes beyond securing housing for those who need it now: It’s about understanding what causes homelessness in the first place, and providing resources for workable policies and practices.

“The city needs to look further upstream,” said Karen Cunningham, executive director of Everyone Home DC, a nonprofit serving the local homeless population. “You can’t ask the homeless services system to solve poverty — that’s not what it’s designed to do. Homeless services can’t make up for the lack of affordable housing or training for jobs that meet the cost of housing, or that you need three jobs to pay rent.

“We need to lift people out of poverty by putting more resources into quality education, employment, child care and health care — and to make sure that people have access to what they need to thrive,” Cunningham added. “If we’re going to make homelessness rare, brief and non-recurring, all those other things upstream need to be addressed.”

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A snapshot of homelessness in DC

The region’s 2019 Point-in-Time Count, an annual survey of people experiencing homelessness on one night in January, counted 6,521 people as homeless in the District this year. Although overall that’s a 5.5% decrease from last year, the number of individuals experiencing homelessness (vs. families) increased by 8%, a shift that is often seen as a bellwether that homelessness is on the rise.

The survey also sheds light on which populations are more likely to become homeless. In DC, those demographics do not mirror the city’s general population. Among the homeless adults counted, 87% were black; in the general population, the figure is 47%. 

“This is not a coincidence,” said Jesse Rabinowitz, Miriam’s Kitchen advocacy and campaign manager. He said the figures prove that “homelessness and systemic, structural racism are inextricably linked. It’s vital to understand homelessness through an intersectional lens.”

Among the single adults without children counted in the annual survey, 95% have dealt with chronic physical problems or serious mental illness, were formerly incarcerated, were previously in foster care, have had a substance use disorder, and/or have experienced domestic violence.

Seniors are also particularly vulnerable. Renowned homelessness expert Dennis Culhane, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Social Policy & Practice, recently released a study that projected that by 2030, the number of homeless people in the country over age 65 will triple from 40,000 to 106,000.

Cunningham said right now in the District there is only one housing solution being made available for every 10 people experiencing homelessness. About 50 people die each year in the city while experiencing homelessness, according to Robert Warren, founder of the nonprofit People for Fairness Coalition.

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The root causes

“Of the 6,521 people who experience homelessness on a given night, there are that many different reasons for homelessness on an individual level,” said Rabinowitz. “Homelessness is not a personal failing but rather is caused by broken systems.”

Advocates highlight racial inequity as a chief predecessor to homelessness, impairing access to quality education and health care; jobs and job training programs; and transportation. Overcriminalization of communities of color, experts say, can keep people from securing housing or employment, and housing discrimination creates areas with high concentrations of poverty — areas with fewer services, job opportunities and worse educational outcomes. 

“Deep poverty alone doesn’t account for the disproportion of people of color, especially black Americans, who are homeless — centuries of black Americans being systematically denied the ability to accumulate wealth also plays a part,” Cunningham said. “Whereas a white person coming on hard times might have emergency funds, insurance or a network of better resourced friends and family they can turn to for help, a similarly situated black person may not have those safety nets due to a history of systemic racism that has left many black families and communities under-resourced.”

Kate Coventry, senior policy analyst on homelessness for the DC Fiscal Policy Institute (DCFPI), noted that disabilities can be a big predictor for homelessness, particularly among single adults. “As a society, we don’t help people manage disabilities well, or help them find a job they could do so that they could develop and be independent.” Additionally, people who experience chronic homelessness often die from diseases or illnesses that are largely preventable if they had homes, she said.

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The housing outlook

Making housing affordable is a bottom-line solution for most advocates — but rapid gentrification and loss of public housing structures in the District is creating a crisis, many say.

“When we talk about affordable housing, we always ask, ‘Affordable to who?’” said Daniel del Pielago, organizing director for the nonprofit Empower DC. For example, to qualify for affordable housing units priced at 50% of the Area Median Income or AMI, a family of four would need to make $60,650 a year. A minimum wage full-time job in DC nets about $29,000 a year, which could put affordable housing units out of reach for the working poor.

When an individual or family does become homeless, studies show that using “housing first” strategies — which place people in housing quickly and then connect them with services like health care — involves fewer tax dollars than if that person or family lives in a shelter and relies on emergency-based public services at hospitals and the like.

Although the District is incorporating the housing first model to help eliminate homelessness and has increased its budget for homeless services, the city’s investment still falls far short of the need, according to DCFPI.

“We know what works to end homelessness,” Cunningham said. “Now we need the investment in the solutions that we know work.”

City officials say they have to balance competing priorities within limited resources, yet some tangible steps have been taken to end chronic homelessness. Mayor Bowser in August opened a new short-term family housing facility in Brookland that can house up to 50 families — one of five opened over the past 14 months — and in October, her office released a report that proposes to add more low-income housing in wealthier parts of the city where it is currently scarce. 

The DC fiscal year 2020 budget allocated funding for new permanent supportive housing for 586 chronically homeless individuals, the largest investment ever made, but that’s just one-third of the estimated need of 1,644 slots, Coventry details in an October DCFPI report. The city’s $15.9 million expenditure would need to be tripled to meet existing needs, she explains — and according to advocates, the individuals who are waiting for permanent supportive housing are those most likely to die while homeless.

Targeted affordable housing in the District — for those who need long-term affordable housing but not intensive support services — was budgeted for $737,000 for about 30 individuals, far below the estimated 307 people in need. DCFPI says the city should invest an additional $1.8 million. 

For families, DC budgeted $6.3 million for 180 new permanent supportive housing units, fully meeting the need, according to DCFPI. Targeted affordable housing for families, however, fell short: The city budgeted $5.1 million for 203 units, but at least 500 families are in need.

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Other solutions

Street outreach programs, which connect those experiencing homelessness with assistance to access housing, were funded at DCFPI’s recommended level of $3.7 million. Such programs often start from the ground floor by helping people obtain birth certificates so they can get IDs to access homeless services — a critical part of the process, Coventry said in an interview. The programs also help connect individuals with vital services like mental and physical health care.

Geography and transportation equity can also be barriers to obtaining or maintaining stable housing. “DC is a segregated city in many ways,” said Cunningham. Affordable housing may not be near job centers, quality schools or grocery stores. “What does it cost to get from where you live to where the jobs are?”

Mysiki Valentine, advocacy manager with the DC nonprofit Fair Budget Coalition, says transportation equity is something people don’t think enough about. “A Circulator bus, free to residents, that traveled east to west in the city would change lives,” he said.

“People live on the east side, work on the west side, and public transportation to get there is slim. If you’re already low-income, barely able to pay rent, barely able to buy food, the last thing you’re thinking about is if you have the $2 to take the bus.”

Bowser had proposed extending her administration’s experiment with free DC Circulator service, but council members cut funding for the initiative, saying it was poorly planned and disproportionately benefited tourists and non-DC residents because the routes are clustered downtown. Activists had complained that existing Circulator service didn’t reach Ward 7, though one is planned; a route set in 2018 does go from Union Station past Eastern Market to the Anacostia and Congress Heights Metro stations in Ward 8.

This month, Bowser announced a new study on the impact of transit subsidies for low-income residents — either discounted fares, or free, unlimited trips. With the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority as one of the partners, the research project will involve up to 2,500 adults who receive public assistance, with final recommendations expected by late 2021. A grant from the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab will pay for most of the $1 million cost, according to the mayor’s office.

Advocates also point to another issue of transit equity: Metro ending service earlier than in the past also adversely affects workers in the service industry and other jobs with late hours.

Advocates have also pressed the city to make improvements to public restroom access, for which $400,000 was allocated; the city also budgeted $200,000 to develop a new strategic plan on how best to house survivors of domestic violence.

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Advocates’ experience

There are 1,593 children experiencing homelessness in DC, according to the 2019 Point-In-Time survey, and they face unique challenges. The DC Office of the State Superintendent of Education reports a higher number — 7,728 students during the 2018-19 school year — using a definition that includes any child who “lacks fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence,” even if it’s for one night. In testimony this week to the DC State Board of Education, Jamila Larson of the Homeless Children’s Playtime Project said that 1 in 15 DC students experience homelessness each year — twice the national rate.

Valentine, previously a teacher at DC Prep’s Benning Campus, witnessed firsthand how housing instability impacted students’ ability to learn — which set them up for becoming susceptible to homelessness in the near future as well as later in life. “I would ask my students what their dreams are and they said they didn’t know — but they knew they had to get jobs and help their parents pay rent,” Valentine said. “Kids can’t learn or do well on a standardized test when they’re worrying about whether they’ll have a roof over their heads.”

Warren, of the People for Fairness Coalition, experienced homelessness himself, once as a child and twice as an adult after becoming unemployed. In 2008, when he was staying at the 801 East Men’s Shelter in Southeast, he recognized men he knew to be homeless back in 1996, and he knew he had to do something about helping people transition out of homelessness and into stable housing. 

“It struck me seeing those same men in the shelter, and some of them are still there today — it changed my life,” Warren said. “It was through the grace of God that I was able to get housing. I decided I wanted to help other people be informed and be able to help inform others on how to get out of homelessness.”

Peer mentorship and advocacy are core tenets of Warren’s coalition, which also works to ensure homeless or formerly homeless individuals have a voice in government policy decisions, as with Friday’s lobbying day. Early on he partnered with Miriam’s Table and DCFPI and focused on a universal right to housing campaign. 

“When you talk about public policy and how to spend tax dollars, a lot of people don’t think you’re worthy of that conversation, so it’s really hard,” Warren said. “When we started 11 years ago, it was hard to get a seat at the table — service providers weren’t used to having the voice from the consumer in the room, so it was a rocky start.”

Warren continues to push for the eradication of homelessness through his work with government and non-governmental agencies that collaborate to formulate policies, including the DC Interagency Council on Homelessness and The Way Home campaign. The latter is a collaboration of 102 organizations and about 5,500 individuals, according to Rabinowitz, who heads up the effort as part of his work at Miriam’s Kitchen.

Rabinowitz said The Way Home partners took the summer to think about what future growth looks like, and how to build partnerships and increase advocacy. The goal, he said, is always to engage directly with people who are or have been homeless to formulate service and DC budget recommendations. On Sept. 17, The Way Home held its fifth annual welcome back to the DC Council from their summer recess to raise awareness of homelessness issues.

Cunningham says she is seeing the combined efforts make a difference. “Getting issues in front of DC Council members — you never get everything you ask for, but we’re getting more than we would if we were not working together. We’re speaking with one voice on what we need to end homelessness.”

This post has been updated to correct the name of the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Social Policy & Practice.