City approves $45.4 million budget for homeless services
The city’s newly approved $6 billion budget for Fiscal Year 2011 includes $45.4 million for homeless services, including shelter, housing stabilization and crisis intervention.
The figure represents roughly $2 million less than last year. Officials said they anticipate savings due to a restructuring plan that will return some previously contracted services, including the Virginia Williams Family Resource Center and the Emergency Family Shelter at D.C. General Hospital, to the Department of Human Services.
Considering the tough financial times and the struggles the city council underwent to arrive at this year’s budget, spending on programs for the poor and homeless emerged relatively unscathed according City Councilman Tommy Wells, who chairs the council’s Committee on Human Services.
“There is more money for Housing First,” Wells said. “The same amount of money is available for hypothermia. There are no shelters that I know of that are planned to be closed.”
Federal support has helped sustain the city’s innovative Housing First program, which provides housing coupled with counseling and other supportive services to homeless individuals and families in an effort to address the problems underlying their homelessness. President Barack Obama’s proposed 2010 federal budget, like D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty’s 2009 city budget, included $19.2 million for the District’s Housing First program. For the current fiscal year, Congress has approved $17 million for the program and the city is anticipating $10 million to continue to program in the coming fiscal year.
In addition, 105 housing vouchers for veterans have been provided to the District’s Department of Human Services through the Veteran’s Administration Supportive Housing Program.
City officials said that federal assistance, combined with local allocations of nearly $24 million for the Housing First program, will allow the city to provide permanent, supportive housing to an estimated 1,056 individuals and 231 families by the end of fiscal year 2011.
Still local expenditures on homeless programs are not keeping up with the needs, according to Ed Lazere, D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute executive director.
“The reality is for sure that there is no increase in funding, even though the shelters were jam packed during hypothermia season, and there is no doubt homelessness is on the rise,” Lazere said.
A recently released report on homelessness in the D.C. region found 6,539 literally homeless people living in the District, a 5 percent increase over last year. The largest area of growth in the city’s homeless population was among families seeking emergency shelter.
