More than 7,000 DC residents were housed under DC Department of Human Services (DHS) programs for the homeless as of September last year.
The figure is from the DHS report “A Path to Ending Homelessness,” which chronicles growth in the agency’s voucher programs since 2016.
“Over the past two years, the District has expanded its housing voucher program for people experiencing chronic homelessness by more than 100%,” said the report. Under the U.S. Housing and Urban Development definition, the chronically homeless have been continuously unhoused for a year or more, or four times in three years. They also struggle with one or more of the following conditions: substance abuse, mental illness, and physical or developmental disabilities.
DHS administers two programs: Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH) and Targeted Affordable Housing (TAH). Those are further broken down into services for individuals and for families.
The PSH program serves people who have been chronically homeless. Such renters need intensive services – which they can refuse – but caseworkers must check in at least twice a month, at least one of those times in person.
The DHS voucher holders in the TAH program are a much smaller group. They do not need such intensive services, and only quarterly check-ins are required.
The DHS report notes that these two programs accounted for one third of the 20,000 residents housed through DC voucher programs by the end of calendar year 2022. The Department of Behavioral Health Services (DBHS) also provides permanent supportive housing to the previously unhoused. (DBHS and voucher renters from other DC programs were not included in the DHS report.)
Ward 3 tenant leaders have been seeking building-by-building data on voucher renters since 2017, when larger DC rent subsidies led to an influx in Ward 3 apartment buildings. One of their chief concerns is that residents in the PSH programs are not getting behavioral health and other services they should be receiving, or that residents who need far more intensive supervision are being placed without enough assistance. They believe that has contributed to an increase in threatening behavior and assaults on residents and staff.
They have also documented increases in noise and domestic disturbances, and more police calls. In 2021 and 2022, MPD referred four Van Ness apartment buildings to the DC attorney general’s nuisance properties division.
“It is next to impossible to get a complete picture of the huge growth in the use of housing vouchers in our neighborhood,” said Harry Gural, the president of the 3003 Van Ness tenants association. “The Bowser administration has provided only partial data. The DC Housing Authority has repeatedly rejected requests for data.”
Gural and other tenant leaders have done some additional data collection of their own. Long before the HUD audit of DCHA, they found evidence that DC was overpaying many of the landlords receiving rent subsidies.
“The public deserves to have substantial, accurate information about the city’s housing voucher programs,” Gural told Forest Hills Connection.
When Forest Hills Connection first started digging into “A Path to Ending Homelessness,” we intended to include data from the accompanying “DHS Voucher Program Map” (see the screenshot below), which seems to drill down into neighborhood-level voucher numbers. But we discovered discrepancies. The first version of the map showed 36,000 total voucher renters in the District, which did not match the 22,000 figure in the report. DHS responded to Forest Hills Connection’s request for clarification by notifying us that it had adjusted the map data. It now shows about 3,400 voucher renters DC-wide, another figure with no match in the report. The agency did not answer our initial questions about what the numbers on the original map represent. On Tuesday, June 6th, we sent DHS additional questions about the old and new map data and are awaiting its response.
Harry Gural says
Thanks to Marlene Berlin and the Forest Hills Connection for covering this very important issue.
To be clear, I strongly support providing housing for those who have experienced homelessness. I also support the use of housing vouchers as one way to help provide adequate housing to those with low incomes.
However, the District is using housing vouchers in ways that grossly violate HUD guidelines, and which are designed to benefit the rental housing industry, not the poor. Instead of using vouchers to deconcentrate poverty, they are being used to highly concentrate poverty in certain buildings and neighborhoods, among them, a dozen or more apartment buildings between Woodley Park and Forest Hills, where apartment buildings are being “converted” into publicly funded, privately operated, quasi-public housing.
The DC Housing Authority and the city vastly overpay for these apartment units, $500-$1,000 per month above market rates, providing windfall profits to some of the industry’s most predatory landlords. According to HUD, such overpayments waste U.S. taxpayer money, squander funding needed for affordable housing, and drive up market rents via increased demand. Moreover, these extreme overpayments incentivize landlords to discriminate against non-voucher recipients, ignore maintenance and security concerns, undermine rent stabilization, and selectively harm long-time senior residents.
The city is accomplishing this with little transparency, debate or accountability. Thanks to the Forest Hills Connection for having the courage to cover these important issues.
Amy Schussheim says
It seems no one is willing to admit that some individuals due to mental health or addictions challenges are unable to live independently without 24/7 clinical supervision posing a risk to themselves and others they live with.
This jeopardizes the voucher program for the vast majority who can constructively benefit from the program.
One individual walks into Connecticut Avenue panhandling endangering herself and then walks around Connecticut House with a knife threatening those who won’t give her money.
As a clinical Social Worker and the guardian of a family member committed civilly to St Elizabeths I can unequivocally say that this is dangerous for all concerned and jeopardizes the program for the thousands that are benefitting from it.
Green Eyeshades says
Nothing in this new blogpost, in the contradictory and changing data being released by the DC government, or in the two comments shows that voucher contracts are a threat to tenants in rent-controlled apartment buildings in our neighborhood. There is also still no evidence of “extreme overpayments” by either DCHA (for voucher contract) or the DC government (for the PSH and TAH voucher programs run by DC DHS).
Finally, the new evidence that this new blogpost does provide still shows that total vouchers in use in DC are much smaller than the number of tenants living in rent-controlled buildings in DC. There are 70,000 to 80,000 tenants in rent-controlled buildings, according to DC Council discussions during last week’s votes on capping rent increases in rent-controlled buildings. Compared to those 70 thousand or 80 thousand tenants living under rent control, this new blogpost shows only a total of 8,539 DHS vouchers of both types (PSH and TAH). We know from Washington Post’s investigation that it examined 16,000 DCHA voucher contracts, which the Post claimed represented all of DCHA’s voucher contracts. Adding 8,539 (DHS vouchers) to 16,000 (DCHA vouchers) equals just under 25,000 vouchers (24,539).
To understand the arithmetic correctly, I added the total population of voucher renters (24,539) to the total population of renters in rent-controlled apartments (70,000 to 80,000). The total population of renters is therefore 94,539 to 104,539. (There are obviously thousands more renters who pay full market price and don’t use vouchers, but they are not part of the rent control universe.)
If there are only 70 thousand tenants in rent-controlled apartments, they constitute 66.96 percent to 74.04 percent of the total population of 94,539 to 104,539. If there are as many as 80,000 tenants in rent-controlled apartments, they constitute 76.53 percent to 84.62 percent of the total. So the percentage of tenants in rent-controlled buildings ranges from a low of 66.96 percent to a high of 84.62 percent of all renters (voucher users plus tenants in rent-control).
By the same arithmetic, the 24,539 vouchers issued by DHS and DCHA city-wide represent only 15.38 percent to 33.04 percent of the number of all tenants (excluding tenants in market-rate buildings). The highest percentage of rentals paid for with vouchers is just one-third of total rentals (excluding market-rate buildings), and could be less than one-sixth!
Tenants in rent-controlled buildings are two-thirds to five-sixths of total rentals (excluding market-rate buildings). The number of tenants covered by rent control is two times to five times as many as voucher users.
I still don’t see a threat to rent control from a population of voucher users that is only one-fifth to one-third as large as the population of tenants in rent-controlled buildings.
And nobody has identified in our neighborhood any “apartment buildings … being ‘converted’ into publicly funded, privately operated, quasi-public housing.” Where are they? Please name those buildings.
Green Eyeshades says
CORRECTION: The next-to-last paragraph should say:
I still don’t see a threat to rent control from a population of voucher users that is only 15.38 percent (one-sixth) to 33.04 percent (one-third) of the number of all tenants (excluding tenants in market-rate buildings).
Harry Gural says
Contrary to what Green Eyeshades says, there is ample evidence of extreme overpayments to landlords who rent to voucher recipients, who are charging up to $2,648 for a one-bedroom apartment in northwest and some other parts of the city, regardless of whether that exceeds the market rent on those apartments. Along Connecticut Avenue, landlords frequently charge $2,648 for one-bedroom apartments that would normally rent for $2,000 or $2,100.
Also, the Washington Post published an entire investigation finding that the DC Housing Authority overpays by about $1 million per month citywide: https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2023/02/15/dc-housing-authority-overpays-landlords/
Green Eyeshades says
The “$1 million per month” rate of overpayment happened among slightly more than 4,000 DCHA voucher contracts out of the 16,000 DCHA voucher contracts that the Post investigated. That means only one-quarter of all of the DCHA voucher contracts had such overpayments, a very minor portion. In other words, three times as many of those 16,000 contracts did NOT have overpayments (75%), according to the Post.
Further, if just over 4,000 DCHA voucher contracts paid one million dollars per month in overpayments, that is an average of only $250 per contract per month. Overpayments of such marginal amounts do NOT threaten rent control.
Finally, as the Connection just discovered, and as the Center on Budget Policy and Priorities seems to confirm, the DC Department of Human Services (DHS) manages at least 8,539 housing vouchers (main blogpost above) or even as many as 28,100 housing vouchers (according to CBPP) as I pointed out in my comment below on June 16 at 4:54 pm.
For your convenience, I included a link to the CBPP report on that data in my June 16 4:54 pm comment. It appears that the Connection comment software is not allowing the use of links in these comments today.
DHS refuses to clarify these numbers. Even so, it appears that DHS manages 12,100 more vouchers than DCHA does. The 28,100 DHS vouchers are 75% more vouchers than the number that DCHA manages.
You have attacked DCHA’s overpayments in the 4,000 voucher contracts that the Post investigated (out of 16,000), but you have never mentioned the housing vouchers that DHS operates.
Does DHS make the same kind of overpayments as DCHA? Did you ever try to find out?
Green Eyeshades says
The numbers I just posted about the DHS vouchers are wrong and I apologize for correcting my own comments so often.
DHS manages 15,900 vouchers according to the data discovered by CBPP. DCHA manages 16,000 vouchers, according to the Post. So those two separate totals are very similar in size. I wrongly included the DCHA vouchers in the total managed by DHS.
So my arithmetic was wrong when I wrote above “DHS manages 12,100 more vouchers than DCHA does. The 28,100 DHS vouchers are 75% more vouchers than the number that DCHA manages.”
DHS manages 15,900.
DCHA manages 16,000.
Those total 31,900.
Of the total of 31,900, each agency manages about half.
Rebecca Stevens says
Resolving this problem should be Frumin’s top priority!
I am extremely concerned for the other residents of these troubled buildings, especially the seniors who are long time residents..
Green Eyeshades says
More new evidence about voucher programs: three days ago (June 13) DC Council’s budget office tweeted that there are FOUR types of housing vouchers administered by DC government agencies other than DCHA (they don’t mention DHS):
https://twitter.com/dccouncilbudget/status/1668666999705153556/photo/1
A footnote on that very detailed spending chart states that “Actual spending is not yet available for FY 2023 and 2024.”
Another tweet in that thread states as follows, making clear that the four housing voucher programs are in addition to DCHA vouchers:
“This is on top of the federal money the [DC] Housing Authority gets for Housing Choice Vouchers.
“The four largest categories of local permanent housing vouchers are Permanent Supportive Housing, Targeted Affordable Housing, Tenant-Based Vouchers, and Project-Based Vouchers.”
https://twitter.com/dccouncilbudget/status/1668667533870739459
So DC’s Dept. of Human Services needs to cough up all of its data on those four programs, or perhaps the Connection can persuade DC Council’s budget office to tell us how many tenants used (“actual” spending) each type of the four vouchers in previous budget years.
Green Eyeshades says
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities tried to count the number of households in DC that use housing vouchers:
https://www.cbpp.org/research/housing/federal-rental-assistance-fact-sheets#DC
As of January 19, 2022, the CBPP reported at that link that “72,200 people in 38,000 District of Columbia households use federal rental assistance to afford modest housing. 60% are seniors, children, or people with disabilities.”
So the number of vouchers would presumably be 38,000 (assuming one voucher per household). But even CBPP could not account for all 38,000 vouchers. The link above displays a bar graph labeled “Number of Households Receiving Major Types of Federal Rental Assistance in the District of Columbia.”
The bar graph counted the following numbers of vouchers in the following programs:
12,200 Housing Choice Vouchers [HCV]
6,200 Public Housing
9,200 Section 8 project-based
500 Supportive elderly + disabled
Those four numbers add up to only 28,100 vouchers, far fewer than the “38,000 … households” named at the top of the CBPP link.
If 28,100 is the actual count of vouchers in use at the start of last year, that number is at least the same order of magnitude as the “the 24,539 vouchers issued by DHS and DCHA city-wide” counted in my June 15 comment at 11:44 am. But the number 12,200 for Housing Choice Vouchers is smaller than the 16,000 DCHA voucher contracts that the Washington Post investigated earlier this year.
Which number is correct? Who knows? DHS should know and should straighten out this mess of contradictory data.