jonetta rose barras: The housing crisis solution DC officials continue to ignore

You’ve heard the adage hundreds of times: The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results. Many DC elected officials and government functionaries have been wearing straitjackets for years. 

Consider the policies around homelessness and housing that city officials have advanced over the past 20 years, for example. They have basically required appropriating millions of dollars each year to subsidize construction of new apartments, mostly at 50% to 80% of median income. That range has meant that insignificant numbers of units have been available for very low-income residents, many of whom are on the edge of experiencing homelessness if they lose their jobs and miss a mortgage or rent payment, as happened to thousands during the COVID-19 pandemic.

I have never experienced homelessness. But when I was a young single mother pinched every day for money, I frequently worried about how I was going to pay rent and buy food.

It’s true DC officials used lots of federal and local money during the pandemic to help mitigate such fears, preventing evictions and foreclosures. Those funds have long since run out, however. 

Unfortunately, the District has raced back to its flawed, pre-pandemic approach to creating so-called affordable housing. Simultaneously, officials, including Mayor Muriel Bowser, seem to be gutting the few laws, like the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA), that have been a bulwark for renters against market forces. 

The results of this combination of myopia and insensitivity have been more housing instability and persistent homelessness in the nation’s capital. 

That reality was exacerbated during a maddening 100-day assault on America, perpetrated by President Donald Trump. He fired thousands of federal workers and terminated hundreds of contracts, destabilizing the financial foundations for the people affected and their households. He also ordered key members of his administration to plow through homeless encampments in DC, especially those located downtown near the federal enclave. 

My complaint about Trump’s actions shouldn’t be interpreted as support for encampments. Unless someone is at a campsite, a tent is no place to call home. Still, everyone deserves to be treated with humanity. 

The federal disassembling of sites where large numbers of homeless people had gathered came without advance warning. Moreover, the Trump administration has done nothing to improve the conditions of those affected by the presidential directive. 

Experts, advocates and a few elected officials have pleaded for a course of action other than business as usual if real improvements are to be realized. After all, the issue of how to prevent homelessness and assist low-income residents has been a consistent concern ever since the 1980s. Debates over the scope of DC’s Tenant Assistance Program in the early 1990s featured the same intensity and passion on display in debates over the Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERAP) earlier this year.

Don’t you wish some things really would change — especially after spending billions of dollars? 

In 2021, a citywide citizens group sought to persuade Bowser to purchase the Marriott Wardman Hotel site near the Metro station in Woodley Park. The property was being auctioned for a mere $140 million — a price that the city could have afforded, given the potential long-term economic impact. 

Housing advocates saw Wardman as a mixed-income, mixed-use development. Timidity and myopia prevented Bowser from acting.

In 2023, Ward 3 Councilmember Matt Frumin proposed the city purchase the Intelsat campus near the University of the District of Columbia for various uses, including affordable housing. The mayor and her minions continued down their well-worn path.

“If we’re going to make a dent in homelessness, we’re going to need more housing,” Alex Horowitz of Pew Charitable Trusts told me earlier this week during a telephone discussion on a report and analysis the organization prepared with Gensler, an architectural design firm helping to guide the future look, vitality and functionality of the nation’s capital.

“We found in DC that converting offices into micro units could create three times as many units,” explained Horowitz, director of Pew’s housing initiative.

In “Flexible Co-living Housing Feasibility Study,” Pew and Gensler made a solid and effective case for the conversion of vacant commercial offices into dorm-style housing, comparable to single-room occupancy (SRO) units. Doing so would “reduce the costs” for expanding the inventory; increase the supply of units available to low-income renters; and “alleviate some of the negative impacts of long-term demand changes for office properties.”

That all sounds like a win-win for everyone. Interestingly, before Pew and Gensler distributed their extensive study filled with useful local and national information and illustrations of how the dorm-style housing might look, they met with Nina Albert, DC deputy mayor for planning and economic development, to present their information and findings.

What happened? You guessed it: Nothing. 

Albert and Bowser have continued down their path of encouraging traditional conversions, replete with expensive tax forgiveness or abatements and exemptions to TOPA that would further jeopardize housing stability for many residents. 

“We’re regressing as far as policy — look at the RENTAL Act,” Daniel del Pielago, housing director for the nonprofit Empower DC, told me during a phone interview earlier this week. “They are not trying anything new or different. At one point there was a lot of energy around social housing, but that has died down.

“We are in the situation [where] we don’t have the housing we need. People in housing units are trying their hardest just to hold on,” continued del Pielago.

Tell me about it.

He said that recent research has indicated the “sharpest increase in evictions has been in wards 2, 3 and 6.” Those areas are where people with some of the highest incomes live. It’s also home to a large population of senior citizen renters.

“It’s catching up to us where no one is safe,” continued del Pielago, noting that “wards 7 and 8 continue to have the highest number of evictions.”

Part of the campaign against homelessness is to prevent evictions, which often result in people living temporarily in the corner of some relative’s or friend’s home, in a government-funded shelter, or in their car or on the street. Del Pielago mentioned that recently he passed a cooperative at 11th and M streets NW that has been shuttered for at least 10 years. He noticed broken windows in the basement.

“I think people have been sneaking in to find somewhere to stay,” he said, offering that for people with very low incomes, public housing was supposed to bring relief. Locally, the DC Housing Authority has failed residents, repeatedly.

Del Pielago said $700 million in revenue bonds has been issued to help make repairs and renovations to 19 buildings. “We’re monitoring to make sure they actually deliver. 

“If that works, it would be great,” he said, before adding a note of caution: “I’ve never seen a [DCHA] property renovated and delivered as promised.”

The last time the housing authority delivered on a promise of improvements may have been in the 1990s, when it was being managed by a court-appointed receiver. Since then, there have been empty promises, internal squabbles and political machinations galore — all while the homeless rate remains high and people hunt, mostly in vain, for affordable housing.

“We have to be more nimble at meeting people where they are,” Frumin, chair of the council’s Committee on Human Services, told me. 

“[But] when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail,” said Frumin, capturing DC’s decades-old dilemma.

He said that when he first joined the council in 2023, he mostly asked questions and conducted research. “I did not want to behave like I had all the answers.” 

Now, however, Frumin said he is exploring the full spectrum of housing models. “I’m trying to figure out how to diversify our portfolio.”

“I don’t want to say the city has not been doing anything,” he continued, citing as an example 801 East Men’s Shelter near St. Elizabeths in Ward 8. The recently modernized facility incorporates a variety of housing models and services, including a low-barrier shelter and medical support, among other things.

“There could be folks that could be supported effectively by SRO,” added Frumin. There are three SROs already in the city that were built and are successfully being run by nonprofit organizations.

Obviously more such housing is needed. According to the Pew/Gensler feasibility study, the chief problem in DC is insufficient inventory. The proposal appears to do just what Frumin has called for: meeting people where they are. The U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey found that “61% of Washington, D.C.’s 335,000 households are renters. Of that amount, 204,000 or 56% are single occupant,” the report says.

The authors wrote that the cost of rent in one of the co-living spaces would be around $1,200, about half the median rent of $2,155 in DC; some units could go for as low as $750. As many as 45 to 56 units could be located on each floor, enabling a typical building with 10 floors of residences to accommodate up to 560 people. Kitchens and bathrooms could go in internal spaces where there isn’t any natural light..

“There is no reason someone has to be in college to live in dorm-style housing,” said Horowitz. Group homes that have helped young professionals weather the economic demands of just starting their careers and senior citizens’ complexes are quite similar.

Cities like Austin, Houston, Minneapolis and Raleigh are “making it easier to build small units,” said Horowitz, asserting that such policies are helping to address the affordability crises in their communities.

“We need to be looking at all of these kinds of options,” said Frumin. But how many other elected officials are prepared to tackle the city’s never-ending affordable housing and homeless crisis more creatively?

Don’t get your hopes up.

jonetta rose barras is an author and DC-based freelance journalist, covering national and local issues. She can be reached at thebarrasreport@gmail.com.

This piece is our 2025 contribution to the D.C. Homeless Crisis Reporting Project in collaboration with other local newsrooms. The collective works are available at bit.ly/DCHCRP.