Amber Harding: With upcoming budget vote, DC leaders must change course to ease humanitarian crisis
When the novel coronavirus pandemic sent the District into a public health emergency, thousands of DC residents (87% of them Black) were at significant risk of contracting or dying of COVID-19 — because they had no homes. This inequity is the result of years of inadequate response to our affordable-housing and racial-wealth-gap crises, and this tragic lopsidedness is bearing down on DC residents even more grotesquely in the time of COVID-19.
The numbers of cases and deaths among those who are homeless continue to grow — as of July 18, 329 cases and 21 deaths, rates four times higher than those for the general population — with no sign of the virus having run its course. The only prescription to prevent COVID-19 transmission and death in the homeless community is the provision of safe, non-communal placements, like hotels or housing.The importance of housing as a public health issue is no secret, nor is the gravity of our current situation. DC is very likely to experience a second wave of the virus, perhaps in the winter when more people come into shelters, and homelessness is predicted to nearly double when the eviction moratorium is lifted.
Mayor Muriel Bowser’s administration has taken steps to control the spread of the virus among people who are homeless, but the efforts have not been bold enough or fast enough. On April 24, the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless sent the mayor a letter raising the alarm and proposing widespread testing and greater use of hotels, dorms and housing to reduce the spread. At that point, 145 people experiencing homelessness had contracted the virus and nine had died. Since then, over 700 individuals and 78 organizations have signed the letter, asking the mayor to protect the health and lives of people with no homes. Testing has improved, and the use of hotels for high-risk individuals has increased. But there are now waiting lists for high-risk individuals to get into those hotels, and COVID-19 diagnoses and virus-related deaths among those who are unhoused have more than doubled since we sent the letter.
We know DC could do more to protect District residents, particularly those who are homeless, because we have seen other jurisdictions move more quickly and decisively to protect their residents. A recent investigation by APM Reports, an affiliate of American Public Media, found DC’s overall response to the pandemic to be “slow and passive … especially for Black residents” and concluded that “compared to other big cities that have also seen sizable outbreaks, the District has accounted for some of the worst disparities between Black and white residents who die after getting sick from the virus.” Jurisdictions such as Connecticut, California, Texas and Minnesota have proposed buying hotels to shelter people who are homeless. Connecticut rented 1,000 hotel rooms for people experiencing homelessness only a few weeks after the first case hit there; as a result, none of those individuals contracted the virus, and only 13 persons experiencing homelessness had contracted the virus as of June. Connecticut also plans to provide housing to 1,800 households over the next few months.
For those living on the economic margins in the District, the budget decisions made by the mayor and the DC Council can mean the difference between having stable housing and being homeless — and that’s during a typical year. Of course, 2020 is not a typical year. DC residents’ needs for affordable housing, health care and economic relief are more urgent than ever due to the pandemic, and the specter of a recession is pervasive in DC officials’ approach to resource allocation. On July 7, council members debated which was more concerning: the speculative harm that tax increases could visit upon high-income residents and businesses, or the very real harm already occurring to District residents — harm that could be mitigated by devoting new funding to safety-net programs. The needs of District residents in crisis prevailed in a few of the debates in the council, but the dollar amount devoted to their needs was shockingly inadequate.
Unless major revisions are made before the final vote on July 21, the DC Council will pass a budget that is dangerously out-of-touch with the humanitarian crisis that currently exists in the District. The virus rages on, yet not one dollar in this budget is dedicated to purchasing or leasing hotels in order to get people out of communal shelters. Unfortunately, the amount of money dedicated to preventing and ending homelessness in the budget is far below the need. The eviction crisis looms, and DC will only add to that impending trauma when it starts terminating families from its time-limited housing program next month and fails to even match last year’s funding for permanent housing vouchers that would pull people out of homelessness. Meanwhile, the bloated police budget overshadows funding for community needs, and over $100 million is devoted to extending the DC streetcar system while public-housing residents are made to wait for safe living conditions.
Some council members worked hard to increase funding commitments to prevent and end homelessness in this budget, and their efforts should be lauded. But it isn’t enough. It is incumbent upon the entire DC Council as well as the mayor to reassess and decide what kind of city DC wants to be: one that accepts further displacement, disease and death as an inevitable part of this humanitarian crisis, or a city that focuses its resources in order to protect all of its residents from harm.
Amber W. Harding is an attorney at the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless.
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