DC is a magnet for the homeless
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Anonymous
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DC's policies have made it the dumping grounds for the Mid-Atlantic's homeless:
http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/DC-Homeless-Population-Has-Jumped-14-Percent-Survey-Says-379011131.html In DC, homelessness has gone up 14%, while decreasing everywhere else |
Anonymous
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Don't blame Arlington. Our numbers went down because we got homeless veterans off the streets and because we are moving more families straight into permanent housing so that they never hit the shelters. It's the Housing First model.
Also you need to understand how this survey works. If you are in a shelter or some transitional housing, you get counted. If you can't get access to the shelter and you and your kids end up on someone's floor, you don't get counted. Well, DC just increased access to shelters. So the numbers go up even if the number of people in trouble in DC does not change. So don't assume that your issue is that you are importing the poor. More likely, you are finding more of them than before. If you want to get them off of your homeless books, move them into permanent housing or set up eviction prevention programs. |
Anonymous
| These communities idea of getting the homeless off of the streets and into shelters consists of shipping them off to DC. The article reflects that a lot of DC's homeless came from VA and MD. |
Anonymous
That is untrue. You don't know what you are talking about. I read the report. |
Anonymous
| everyone who has a full time job cannot afford housing |
Anonymous
| Is this the gentrification effect? |
Anonymous
No. Gentrification comes with new construction and DC keeps having developers set aside a huge percentage of new housing as affordable housing (I forget what the number is, 20 or 30 percent). |
Anonymous
?? Nope, this is people from outside DC coming to DC. |
Anonymous
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No one comes to DC because they are homeless. They become homeless because DC is so expensive. MD's numbers have gone down because they don't turn anyone away from shelter in the winter.
Go to Miami Beach, where it's warm all year round, and then report back. That's where people actually migrate to if they're already homeless.... |
Anonymous
| You should check out San Francisco sometime. |
Anonymous
Yeah, but MD turns down people in the Spring, Summer, and Fall. The article specifically states that DC is the only jurisdiction in the area that provides year round shelter. It also states that some of the homeless are from MD and VA and DC does not care when providing the shelter, especially in the Winter. |
Anonymous
Yes, it is. Everything is free in DC. |
Anonymous
| What is the deal with the tent community that has formed on the under passes behind the Kennedy Center (Whitehurst Freeway ramp)? |
Anonymous
Read the article, and see the light. "D.C. officials attributed the jump to the District's policy of providing year-round access to shelter for families. D.C. is the only jurisdiction in the area where people cannot be turned away from shelter during cold weather, and families never are turned away. While D.C. has a residency requirement for shelters, it rarely results in people from Maryland and Virginia being turned away." |
Anonymous
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I work in social services, and we talk about this a lot.
There are a lot of reasons for DC's high numbers of homeless people - children and adults. I blame the lack of affordable housing in DC. You can hem and haw all you want, but the reality is that there is almost no affordable housing for families in DC, especially not in safe neighborhoods. It doesn't exist, and people become homeless every day because of this. Mental illness and drug addiction are responsible for homelessness in many instances. Many addicts are not able to work. Not all addicts are single adults - some of them are young people with children. Many communities have strong cultural aversion to treating mental illness because it's believed to be a character flaw, so people resist treatment that could otherwise help them to stabilize. I don't find it particularly useful to separate our various jurisdictions into totally separate entities. A homeless person from Montgomery County can step across Carroll Street in Takoma Park and instantly become a homeless person in DC. A homeless person in Virginia can walk across the Key Bridge and become a homeless person in DC. One of the things that one of my colleagues who works with homeless veterans told me that I thought was interesting was also that DC has a lot of mentally ill homeless people come here because it's the capital - not because they heard that things are hunky dory for homeless people in DC, but because they have a fixation with Obama, or Congress, or whatever else that is unique to this city. As for the policy shifts, I think some posters may be a bit confused. By law, DC must provide shelter to FAMILIES seeking shelter year-round. Mandatory shelter for individuals is only in effect during hypothermia season. It's not that anyone anywhere can get any kind of services they want in DC just by asking whenever they want to. |