Deputy Mayor Chris Geldart, speaking at the April 19 ANC 3F meeting.
A Bowser administration official publicly acknowledged that there are problems with the District’s housing vouchers system, including agencies not following up or otherwise providing necessary services to apartment residents receiving housing assistance.
Chris Geldart, the deputy mayor for public safety and justice, told ANC 3F’s April 19th meeting that the agencies that connect clients with vouchers for housing also bear responsibility for following up with those clients and ensuring they are getting services.
“I say all that to say, that ain’t working,” Geldart said.
Neighborhood apartment residents, including voucher holders, have raised concerns for the past few years about disruptive behavior and even violent incidents. In some cases, they said people with behavioral health issues were being housed in their buildings without proper supervision or support.
Landlords have also been criticized for their response to a growing number of police calls from their buildings. MPD’s Second District commander said in December that three apartment buildings in ANC 3F had been referred to the DC Office of the Attorney General’s nuisance properties division for possible penalty.
“Getting something declared a nuisance property doesn’t do it,” Geldart said. “I’m being real. I’m being honest. So we need to change the process.”
Geldart said he had visited 20 buildings over two months in every ward, including one, not in ANC 3F, that “we basically de facto created as a public housing unit because it became all voucher holders…. And we’re running a 120 calls for service in two months for this one building. That’s a problem.”
Geldart said DC officials don’t have a solution ready but they are working on it.
“I can tell you that we’re bringing every agency that can give a voucher out into the room to account for what is happening,” Geldart said.
He also said the new Housing Authority director, is looking at the finance structure of vouchers, which in certain areas were allowed to pay more than market rate rents.
Vouchers subsidizing or covering rent payments are provided through a number of agencies, including the U.S. Veterans Administration, the DC Housing Authority, the DC Department of Behavioral Health, and the DC Department of Human Services, or DHS. As recently as March, the director of the DHS, Laura Green Zeilinger, was denying that there were issues with providing services to its own voucher renters.
“All [permanent supportive housing] clients in Ward 3 have an assigned case manager, who must meet a minimum of two case management contacts/month,” Zeilinger wrote in an email to Ward 3 Council member Mary Cheh. “Case managers/providers and their monitors have been in touch with and reviewed the cases of all Ward 3 residents and there are very few issues that have involved neighbors. Almost all have been resolved in coordination with the case manager, client, and landlord.”
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Bernice says
Yes I’ve been on the voucher section 8 low income for 17 years and I have not got a response yet you’re on you’re still on the listing I asked to speak to a caseworker they say I don’t have a caseworker or it’s nothing available and I’m a senior citizen I’m paying market rental something need to be done
Kathy says
Chris Gedhart also made an important point about the need to improve communication across agencies. Some neighbors have said that voucher holders are not recieving sufficient services. To provide those services in a timely and constructive way, the nonprofit organizations providing case managers for recently housed clients need to be in an effective communications loop with DHS, DBHS, MPD, landlords, etc and have the resources to ratchet up services when needed to keep their clients and their neighbors safe. I look forward to hearing more from DC govt about plans to improve communications across homelessness services.
William L. Hawkins says
This is in response to the above article, which is listed below, in part.
“All [permanent supportive housing] clients in Ward 3 have an assigned case manager, who must meet a minimum of two case management contacts/month,” Zeilinger wrote in an email to Ward 3 Council member Mary Cheh. “Case managers/providers and their monitors have been in touch with and reviewed the cases of all Ward 3 residents and there are very few issues that have involved neighbors. Almost all have been resolved in coordination with the case manager, client, and landlord.”
“A very few issues that involve neighbors?” That just ain’t so either, and two two (2) visits a month, well, that needs to be verified before it gets passed along to a DC Council member.
It is not clear where the ball is getting dropped, but it appears that the case manager and landlord are not following through and communicating with each other.
Green Eyeshades says
Geldart is not Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services (DMHS). He does not have jurisdiction over the multiple agencies he mentioned.
Geldart is the Deputy Mayor for Public Safety and Justice. He has jurisdiction over police (MPD), fire & emergency medical services (DCFEMS), and DC’s version of Homeland Security, known as DC HSEMA (Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency), along with several support agencies like Office of Neighborhood Safety & Engagement (ONSE), forensic services, medical examiner, victims’ services, “911” (Office of Unified Communications), and the agencies in the prison-industrial complex including Department of Corrections, Office of Returning Citizens’ Affairs, Youth Rehab. Services, etc.
This is his official website: https://dmpsj.dc.gov/
These are his “cluster agencies”: https://dmpsj.dc.gov/page/cluster-agencies
Everyone knows various ways to contact MPD, but this their official website: https://mpdc.dc.gov/
Similarly for DC Fire and EMS: https://fems.dc.gov/
You can find DCHSEMA here: https://hsema.dc.gov/
Geldart’s sudden interest in the dysfunctions of the voucher system goes way outside his legal jurisdiction and looks to me more like campaigning for the Mayor’s re-election.
George Hofmann says
Those of us in ANC3F who have been begging for the city to listen to details about these situations have finally been heard, thanks to Marlene Berlin’s persistence. And to ours too!
Thank you!
Green Eyeshades says
I was going to update this blogpost with a short comment about the sharp increase in crime along H Street, Northeast, which police and Chris Geldart are failing to deal with. Washington Post had a story about that last night:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/29/bowser-nightlife-brian-robinson-shot/
But then today City Paper revealed unlawful misconduct by a senior MPD officer (assistant chief) which persisted for years, during a flood of shootings and murders East of the River, which is that officer’s jurisdiction:
https://washingtoncitypaper.com/article/569154/mpd-assistant-chief-accused-of-having-sex-with-subordinates/
So it seems obvious that Chris Geldart is falling down on his job of supervising public safety agencies, including MPD, and he should have been concentrating more on his day job all this year instead of pandering to Ward 3 tenants in the spring about DC’s housing voucher program. He was pandering because he only joined in the complaints about the housing voucher program before the mayor’s re-election in the June primary. Now that the mayor won her primary, Mr. Geldart seems to have lost interest in the housing voucher program.