ANALYSIS/OPINION
It is not against the law to be homeless, yet the way the Bowser administration is approaching the homeless problem is (practically) criminal.
On Wednesday night homeless people living in about 20 tents near the Kennedy Center were put on notice: By 2 p.m. Friday, you have to skedaddle.
D.C. officials promised they would be placed in suitable housing by Friday, so Fox 5 News reporter Bob Barnard asked one woman living in “Tent City,” Lovenia Evans, what she wanted.
Her reply was simple: “an apartment.” She did not explain how she would sustain herself or an apartment.
Ms. Evans, who appeared to be middle-aged, wants what city officials think most homeless people want: their own home.
And while lawmakers and policymakers may think they know what’s best for all homeless folks, the new homeless policies in the nation’s capital could easily turn a “tent city” like the one by the Potomac River into ragged public housing buildings.
First, some background.
The nation’s public housing policies began changing during the George W. Bush administration, which made a point of informing state and local officials that Section 8 vouchers were portable, and states like Utah started building homes for the homeless and giving them away. While the annualized number of homeless people in Utah has remained mostly unchanged since 2005, the number of chronically homeless people has dropped from 1,932 in 2005 to 539 in 2014.
What a difference a home made!
The District saw Utah’s success, and now is trying to emulate it. Using single-family homes and apartments throughout the city, D.C. officials are gearing up to shut down shelters and place adults and families in homes of their own.
It’s the compassionate and idealistic thing to do, right?
Well, fast forward to this fall. On Sept. 1 Mayor Muriel Bowser unveiled her administration’s plan to end homelessness in the city, a political football since Richard Nixon told his administrators to give homeless activist Mitch Snyder a building in D.C. Ever since, the District has been warehousing the homeless.
That Ms. Bowser is taking a relatively unpaved path, as Utah did, is admirable. But now she’s in a race with herself, having announced that she has “a plan to make homelessness rare, brief and nonrecurring by 2020.”
To make homelessness a “brief” experience is one thing. To make it “rare” and “nonrecurring” calls for aggressive, effective policies. To say you’re going to pull off all three requires big bucks. So to refer to the Bowser Way as ambitious is an understatement.
This isn’t to say there aren’t a few positive signs that formerly homeless people are being housed.
When I learned some formerly homeless people were being moved into the newly renovated Genesis apartment building across from the old Walter Reed Army Hospital, I checked out the neighborhood. The building is one of several low-rise apartment complexes along several blocks. Genesis has 27 units, and its new occupants include senior citizens and former foster families. (And, by osmosis, these people are supposed to become a community network.)
Anyway, similar communes are coming — all part of the Bowser administration’s plan to wipe out homelessness as we know it. There also are “new” homes for homeless people in the Ivy City-Trinidad area, where plots were originally designated as a rural homestead for blacks. These and other new homes scratch scores of homeless folks off the Bowser Way list.
And that list will grow longer as adults and families move out of huge complexes being readied for development, including Barry Farm public housing in Southeast and sites in Northeast along Rhode Island Ave. There were more than 900 families in the soon-to-be-shuttered facility on the grounds of the old D.C. General Hospital, and there are hundreds more staying in motels. And once outsiders find out the District is giving away housing, there will be hundreds more.
To meet the mayor’s goal in five years, the city will have to subsidize housing for every Tom, Dick and Janeeka who crosses the Potomac. It’s the practice and policy that got the city in the fix it’s currently in, and it’s the same that the Bowser administration will come to see if she doesn’t soon take the blinders off.
This is what Madam Mayor either does not understand or doesn’t want to articulate: Public housing is public housing. Public housing is not affordable housing.
If all or the majority of units in an apartment/condo building are subsidized, it’s considered public housing, and it doesn’t matter whether the subsidy is a federal Section 8 certificate or a local voucher. Once homeless people are warehoused, it’s downhill from there. (Think prison, if you can’t get my drift.)
That’s criminal intent.
By her own admission, the mayor said she can’t end homelessness alone: “Together, we will close D.C. General and implement an all-eight-wards strategy to end homelessness.”
Good luck with that.
The mayor is going to need two wings and lots of prayers to pull off her plan by 2020.
The mayor needs to consider these facts as well: Utah covers 84,899 square miles, but the District is only 68.3 square miles — and much of that is federally designated or water.
• Deborah Simmons can be reached at dsimmons@washingtontimes.com.
• Deborah Simmons can be reached at dsimmons@washingtontimes.com.
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