Last I checked, there weren’t any residency requirements. That’s why there are more people in the voucher program now than the entire homeless population a decade ago. And the housing voucher program is just one of the many programs D.C. has for the homeless (for example, the people living in the Cathedral Heights shelter are in a different program). All of the money D.C. has put into this over the past decade has only increased the homeless population. Is this surprising? If you tell homeless people, addicts, and criminals that if they come to D.C., they’ll get expensive apartments, no strings attached, seemingly for life, why wouldn’t they come?

What’s insane is that D.C. voters keep voting for this. Goulet’s opposition was pretty mild, saying that if we just dump these people into apartments with no plan to rehabilitate them, they’re not going to get better. He was painted as a racist by the other candidates in the race, the City Paper, and the professional activist crowd, and Ward 3 voters rejected him.

The prevailing political climate in the city seems to be “take everything you can from people who are gainfully employed, give it all to criminals and drug addicts.” The voucher program even specifies that’s who the program is for.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It seems to me that the voucher program (meaning putting people in apartments for free) is only useful for newly-homeless people. Those who have experienced homelessness for less than a year or so because they will be able to better adapt to living in that setting. I suspect most people who have been on the street for a year or more need an intermediate step (something more like a halfway house or shelter) where they can get services they need and learn to live and work independently again. I think we've seen that sticking those people in apartments without extensive services does not work at all. Many of the panhandlers we see in this area are voucher holders. They have apartments but no jobs or sources of income.

Council is raising an alternative or addition to vouchers -- social housing. It's being discussed under Janeese Lewis-George's "green new deal for housing" bill. I haven't seen much discussion on the social housing plan but there seems to be a general idea that it will be better for families and neighborhoods than vouchers. Under the green new deal/social housing plan DC would build or acquire buildings (and perhaps manage them) that would be 30% extremely low income, 30% low income and the rest fair market value.

https://lims.dccouncil.gov/Hearings/hearings/187

What kind of idiot what pay market value for that?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It seems to me that the voucher program (meaning putting people in apartments for free) is only useful for newly-homeless people. Those who have experienced homelessness for less than a year or so because they will be able to better adapt to living in that setting. I suspect most people who have been on the street for a year or more need an intermediate step (something more like a halfway house or shelter) where they can get services they need and learn to live and work independently again. I think we've seen that sticking those people in apartments without extensive services does not work at all. Many of the panhandlers we see in this area are voucher holders. They have apartments but no jobs or sources of income.

Council is raising an alternative or addition to vouchers -- social housing. It's being discussed under Janeese Lewis-George's "green new deal for housing" bill. I haven't seen much discussion on the social housing plan but there seems to be a general idea that it will be better for families and neighborhoods than vouchers. Under the green new deal/social housing plan DC would build or acquire buildings (and perhaps manage them) that would be 30% extremely low income, 30% low income and the rest fair market value.

https://lims.dccouncil.gov/Hearings/hearings/187

Is it realistic for that population to live in a communal type way? I know idealistic grads who did this and it often does not go well and there were not the same pathologies. Are lots of people going to want to pay market rate to live even more enmeshed with dysfunction than is the case currently in apartment buildings? So many of the ideas of the Council seem contrary to human nature. Plus DC can't even manage it's own current public housing. If it could, there would be a lot less need for vouchers.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/13/hud-dc-public-housing-failures/

Anonymous wrote:It seems to me that the voucher program (meaning putting people in apartments for free) is only useful for newly-homeless people. Those who have experienced homelessness for less than a year or so because they will be able to better adapt to living in that setting. I suspect most people who have been on the street for a year or more need an intermediate step (something more like a halfway house or shelter) where they can get services they need and learn to live and work independently again. I think we've seen that sticking those people in apartments without extensive services does not work at all. Many of the panhandlers we see in this area are voucher holders. They have apartments but no jobs or sources of income.

Read the Forest Hills Connection article linked upthread, it describes who gets the vouchers. It's long term homeless, typically also released convicts "returning citizens," the mentally ill or addicts. Your ideas make sense but the tenants of Housing First (thanks CA and George Bush!) are in opposite to them, literally designed that way.

They are under NO obligation to accept or participate in "services." And with no accountability, vouchers are never yanked, just transferred, change is unlikely to put it kindly. The "services" everyone speaks of - what "services" would turn the man who strangled his girlfriend in front of their toddler and threw her out the window of the Connecticut House, she's paralyzed, what "services" would make that man Mr. Rogers?

The no jobs = a lot of free time = magnet for drug dealers. Visible drug dealing in the neighborhood has significantly increased. Drugs, cash and weapons are crime magnets.

Anonymous wrote:It seems to me that the voucher program (meaning putting people in apartments for free) is only useful for newly-homeless people. Those who have experienced homelessness for less than a year or so because they will be able to better adapt to living in that setting. I suspect most people who have been on the street for a year or more need an intermediate step (something more like a halfway house or shelter) where they can get services they need and learn to live and work independently again. I think we've seen that sticking those people in apartments without extensive services does not work at all. Many of the panhandlers we see in this area are voucher holders. They have apartments but no jobs or sources of income.

Council is raising an alternative or addition to vouchers -- social housing. It's being discussed under Janeese Lewis-George's "green new deal for housing" bill. I haven't seen much discussion on the social housing plan but there seems to be a general idea that it will be better for families and neighborhoods than vouchers. Under the green new deal/social housing plan DC would build or acquire buildings (and perhaps manage them) that would be 30% extremely low income, 30% low income and the rest fair market value.

https://lims.dccouncil.gov/Hearings/hearings/187

It seems to me that the voucher program (meaning putting people in apartments for free) is only useful for newly-homeless people. Those who have experienced homelessness for less than a year or so because they will be able to better adapt to living in that setting. I suspect most people who have been on the street for a year or more need an intermediate step (something more like a halfway house or shelter) where they can get services they need and learn to live and work independently again. I think we've seen that sticking those people in apartments without extensive services does not work at all. Many of the panhandlers we see in this area are voucher holders. They have apartments but no jobs or sources of income.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The back windows of many cars parked on Brandywine and Chesapeake, between Connecticut and RCP were smashed last night. Assume it was looking for valuables in trunk once back seat pulled forward. Pricey to fix and not many houses have garage parking. The glass smasher was confronted and ran into the Owl's Nest property.

You voted for this. Next time do better. We don’t simultaneously need 13 “community activists” on the city council. This is what you get.

Hard to feel sorry libs getting FITA by lib policies.

What policy is that exactly?

Not PP but..

Allen and Nadeau have tweets from 2020 bragging about defunding the police. That got the ball rolling.

Now the voucher policy imported criminals to new neighborhoods.

Those 2 are elected by small areas of the city.

The voucher program has never been put to a vote. It has been going on for 5+ years now. Frumin is one of its biggest cheerleaders. And no, I too, voted for Goulet. The shenanigans @ knocking him all but out of the race in a coordinated D move right before the election (look it up if you don't remember) and the redistricting of Allen's likely challenger suggest to me that there may be sharing of some of that overpayment $ or other incentives. Frumin would not have won on his own and Allen may well have lost had his likely challenger not been redistricted. The system picks winners who will not rock the boat imo.

Even though she’s doing nothing as the city being run into the ground, Bowser was the sanest choice in the last election. I don’t regret voting for her, only that she was the least objectionable candidate.

PP mentioned Allen and Nadeau but there are others who could have been included on that list. Mendo telling Congress this spring we don’t have a crime crisis in DC is an example.

I can’t imagine any improvement under this lot.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The back windows of many cars parked on Brandywine and Chesapeake, between Connecticut and RCP were smashed last night. Assume it was looking for valuables in trunk once back seat pulled forward. Pricey to fix and not many houses have garage parking. The glass smasher was confronted and ran into the Owl's Nest property.

You voted for this. Next time do better. We don’t simultaneously need 13 “community activists” on the city council. This is what you get.

Hard to feel sorry libs getting FITA by lib policies.

What policy is that exactly?

Not PP but..

Allen and Nadeau have tweets from 2020 bragging about defunding the police. That got the ball rolling.

Now the voucher policy imported criminals to new neighborhoods.

Those 2 are elected by small areas of the city.

The voucher program has never been put to a vote. It has been going on for 5+ years now. Frumin is one of its biggest cheerleaders. And no, I too, voted for Goulet. The shenanigans @ knocking him all but out of the race in a coordinated D move right before the election (look it up if you don't remember) and the redistricting of Allen's likely challenger suggest to me that there may be sharing of some of that overpayment $ or other incentives. Frumin would not have won on his own and Allen may well have lost had his likely challenger not been redistricted. The system picks winners who will not rock the boat imo.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The back windows of many cars parked on Brandywine and Chesapeake, between Connecticut and RCP were smashed last night. Assume it was looking for valuables in trunk once back seat pulled forward. Pricey to fix and not many houses have garage parking. The glass smasher was confronted and ran into the Owl's Nest property.

You voted for this. Next time do better. We don’t simultaneously need 13 “community activists” on the city council. This is what you get.

Hard to feel sorry libs getting FITA by lib policies.

What policy is that exactly?

Not PP but..

Allen and Nadeau have tweets from 2020 bragging about defunding the police. That got the ball rolling.

Now the voucher policy imported criminals to new neighborhoods.

NP, but may as well toss in how long schools were closed and everything that brought to a population hanging on without those services.

Anonymous wrote:The vouchers are a signature program of the mayor. I don't realistically see them being paused or capped per building. It's been years since the WP series @ Sedgewick Gardens and the program has only continued to escalate. Some of the buildings being designated "nuisance properties" has not put a floor in re: safety either.

It's really unfortunate but it's not an information issue. The mayor, agencies and Council are well aware of the impact, especially on Connecticut and Wisconsin.

The owner/management co at Sedgwick Gardens is awful. They’ve taken a historic property listed in “Washington’s Nest Addresses” and now run it like a slumlord.

The vouchers are a signature program of the mayor. I don't realistically see them being paused or capped per building. It's been years since the WP series @ Sedgewick Gardens and the program has only continued to escalate. Some of the buildings being designated "nuisance properties" has not put a floor in re: safety either.

It's really unfortunate but it's not an information issue. The mayor, agencies and Council are well aware of the impact, especially on Connecticut and Wisconsin.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The back windows of many cars parked on Brandywine and Chesapeake, between Connecticut and RCP were smashed last night. Assume it was looking for valuables in trunk once back seat pulled forward. Pricey to fix and not many houses have garage parking. The glass smasher was confronted and ran into the Owl's Nest property.

You voted for this. Next time do better. We don’t simultaneously need 13 “community activists” on the city council. This is what you get.

Hard to feel sorry libs getting FITA by lib policies.

What policy is that exactly?

Not PP but..

Allen and Nadeau have tweets from 2020 bragging about defunding the police. That got the ball rolling.

Now the voucher policy imported criminals to new neighborhoods.

How about re-fund the police, but place a moratorium on more vouchers?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The back windows of many cars parked on Brandywine and Chesapeake, between Connecticut and RCP were smashed last night. Assume it was looking for valuables in trunk once back seat pulled forward. Pricey to fix and not many houses have garage parking. The glass smasher was confronted and ran into the Owl's Nest property.

You voted for this. Next time do better. We don’t simultaneously need 13 “community activists” on the city council. This is what you get.

Hard to feel sorry libs getting FITA by lib policies.

What policy is that exactly?

Not PP but..

Allen and Nadeau have tweets from 2020 bragging about defunding the police. That got the ball rolling.

Now the voucher policy imported criminals to new neighborhoods.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The back windows of many cars parked on Brandywine and Chesapeake, between Connecticut and RCP were smashed last night. Assume it was looking for valuables in trunk once back seat pulled forward. Pricey to fix and not many houses have garage parking. The glass smasher was confronted and ran into the Owl's Nest property.

You voted for this. Next time do better. We don’t simultaneously need 13 “community activists” on the city council. This is what you get.

Hard to feel sorry libs getting FITA by lib policies.

What policy is that exactly?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The back windows of many cars parked on Brandywine and Chesapeake, between Connecticut and RCP were smashed last night. Assume it was looking for valuables in trunk once back seat pulled forward. Pricey to fix and not many houses have garage parking. The glass smasher was confronted and ran into the Owl's Nest property.

You voted for this. Next time do better. We don’t simultaneously need 13 “community activists” on the city council. This is what you get.

I didn't vote for this.