On June 28, for the third year in a row, we join seven other D.C.-based newsrooms to pool our resources and audiences to investigate solutions and barriers to ending our community’s homeless crisis. By coordinating our stories together, we avoid duplication of efforts. And by releasing them simultaneously as a body of work, we hope to provide a more comprehensive understanding of this complex problem in our fragmented media landscape.
An increasing number of U.S. cities agree the many complex factors that keep over 500,000 Americans and nearly 7,000 Washingtonians living in a state of emergency demand, rigorous, objective and consistent reporting. The District of Columbia, San Francisco, Seattle, Sacramento and Los Angeles are publishing news “blitz” projects on homelessness this day, together making up the #USHomelessProject.
But our work only goes so far. For the first time, we’re holding a live event with some of the participating reporters, and their sources, to discuss what we’ve learned with you. (Details on p. 3). As in past years, we’ll also be discussing our findings on social media using the tag #DCHomelessCrisis.
Many thanks to our partner newsrooms: Washington City Paper, DCist, WAMU, The Afro. The Washington Blade, The D.C. Line, and CityLab. Robust local journalism is an essential tenant of our democracy.
But most of all, thank you for reading. And thank you for supporting our vendors by purchasing this newspaper. Please consider how else you may become engaged in our community. Homelessness is a symptom of poverty, which can be random, systematic or generational. We can all be part of the solution. It takes a village.
More information and an index of all work from the project is available at www.dchomelesscrisis.press
