The director of the D.C. Department of Human Services, Laura Zeilinger, announced at a D.C. Council hearing that the agency would be terminating 2,000 families from rapid re-housing by the end of September. We later learned the agency would in fact terminate 2,200 families, by the end of July, and 1000 families next year. The Bowser administration claims they do not have enough money to sustain all those families in housing and that the program has grown too large in recent years. Without significant investment in permanent housing resources and real reform to the broken rapid re-housing program, thousands of D.C. families will lose their housing support and likely face eviction or homelessness. When that happens, we know there will not be enough eviction prevention funds or emergency shelter to support the families.

This crisis was entirely foreseeable and preventable—without resorting to mass terminations and trauma. When the pandemic hit, the Bowser administration rightly put a pause on rapid re-housing exits. When the public health emergency ended, they proposed terminating almost 1,000 families to “right-size” the program. But those families were still struggling, and the gap between income and rent had only widened for most low-income families during the pandemic. We, along with many partners and allies, advocated for families to exit the program only when they could afford market rent or had been transitioned to a more appropriate housing program. That spring, the D.C. Council invested in more housing resources for these families and introduced a bill to reform the rapid re-housing program.

Meanwhile, the Bowser administration continued to grow the time-limited program while failing to fund sufficient permanent housing subsidies. Now, despite resounding support for reform, DHS is proposing a historic number of terminations and the most arbitrary, strictest time limit the program has ever had. (Housing providers no longer even have the discretion to extend a family’s time in the program based on whether the  family just had a baby, whether they just need a few months to recover from a health condition, whether they are about to get a degree, or any other individual circumstance.) Rapid re-housing is now a one-size-fits-all program, not to mention the least successful, most harmful, and most expensive housing intervention D.C. operates.

The reality is that due to structurally created poverty and D.C.’s systemic lack of affordable housing, most families placed in rapid re-housing simply cannot grow their income enough to afford market rent in 12 to 18 months. (Recent data provided by the agency shows that less than 1% of families in the program can afford market rent at exit.) Terminating families for reaching a time limit when the agency knows the program has done nothing to support the families in increasing their income enough to afford market rent is unfair, unjust, and will lead to disproportionate harm to low-income Black families, who make up 97% of the participants in the program.

Please take action to ask the D.C. Council to prevent the mass displacement of D.C. families and to end the cliff.