Transforming the District of Columbia's Public Homeless Assistance System

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Abstract

This report is the second of three for our contract to assess the District of Columbia's homeless assistance system. It looks at the system as a whole, including the flow of people into and through the District's emergency shelter system, the overall structure of the system, and the ways that homelessness impacts D.C. government agencies and the programs they have for addressing it. One critical set of findings—that very few people account for a very large number of shelter days while most people coming in to shelter use very few system resource—leads to the major recommendations of our assessment.

Introduction

Homelessness has been a continuing presence in the District of Columbia for almost three decades. It only became a high priority issue for public action, however, when the administration of Mayor Adrian Fenty assumed control of District government in January 2007. As a City Council member, the Mayor had been instrumental in passing the Homeless Services Reform Act of 2005 (HSRA); he quickly made clear that ending homelessness in the District would be among the most important goals of his administration.

Toward this end, the Department of Human Services was authorized to contract with the Urban Institute to conduct an assessment of the District’s homeless assistance system, with the expectation that the results of such an assessment could help guide efforts to transform the system to make it more effective at reducing and ultimately ending homelessness. This assessment began in July 2007. In addition to the present report, it has produced one lengthier report, The Community Partnership and the District of Columbia’s Public Homeless System, which looks at the roles of the Community Partnership and the ways that it has performed them (Burt and Hall 2008a). A summary report, Major Recommendations: Summary Report of the Urban Institute’s Assessment of the District of Columbia's Public Homeless Assistance System (Burt and Hall 2008b) presents the assessments major recommendations, integrating findings from the two longer reports.

This report describes the nature of homelessness in the District of Columbia and assesses the structure of the District’s homeless services. It describes people who use homeless assistance services; the network of providers that offer the services; the ways t hat D.C. government agencies fund homeless services, provide direct services specifically targeted to homeless people, and find themselves impacted by homelessness because homeless people are some of the most frequent users of agency resources. After presenting “what is,” the report turns to “what could be” and “what ought to be” if the District government is going to succeed at one of its stated goals—to significantly reduce or even end homelessness within its boundaries by 2014. For many of the issues addressed, and particularly when describing “what could be” and “what ought to be,” we offer the experiences of some other communities that have faced the same challenges as the District and are seeing their efforts pay off in reduced homelessness.

(End of excerpt. The entire report is available in PDF format.)

The nonpartisan Urban Institute publishes studies, reports, and books on timely topics worthy of public consideration. The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders.

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