Advocates, volunteers and District leaders conduct the annual point-in-time count to track demographic information about the city's homeless population.
Last year’s D.C. count reported 347 families, made up of 1,007 people, and 3,403 single people were living on city streets, in emergency shelters or transitional housing, according to an official from the Community Partnership, one of the sponsor organizations.
Bowser repeated an oft-used argument that the District’s prosperity should be used to “transform the system” to help “end homelessness in the District.” The mayor said her administration has been able to drive down family homelessness by 78 percent and to decrease chronic homelessness by 47 percent.“I am so, so proud of the work that we have done as a city, the amount of resources we have put on the table and our commitment to living up to our values,” Bowser told the group. While the number of people experiencing homelessness has decreased over the time, the issue remains visible as city and federal officials have publicly removed tents, tarps and encampments that multiplied across the city, particularly from 2020 to 2021. The Bowser administration implemented a $3.9 million pilot program to permanently clear homeless encampments and offer one-year leases to encampment residents through a rapid rehousing program. In a brief interview at Wednesday night’s event, Department of Human Services Director Laura Green Zeilinger said that city officials would maintain their outreach and engagement to people dealing with homelessness, and may also continue removing tent cities.“The clearing of encampments by itself is not the policy, our policy is to connect people to housing and address health and safety issues, and sometimes that also involves clearing encampments,” Zeilinger said. “But it does first and foremost involve outreach, engagement and a number of other decisions.” Christy Respress, the president and chief executive of Pathways, said in an interview that advocates could not predict what they may find, but recent evidence shows that across the country more seniors have been forced into shelters and more tents have been erected as the coronavirus pandemic continues. Volunteers will seek “key demographic info” such as age, race, what led people to be without a house and how long they have been experiencing homelessness, Respress said. Respress cited existing data that shows that the city’s population of homeless is 85 percent Black, though the group only makes up 46 percent of the citywide population. “That number alone is staggering and that tells us that’s not a personal failure of the people,” she said. “This data tells the story of racism in our country.” In McPherson Square, a hooded man whose face was shielded by a ski mask asked Florence B. Rozario what she and her Pathways to Housing DC colleagues were doing in the Northwest Washington park on a dark and rainy night.The outreach program manager politely explained their purpose and asked the man if he would participate. Rozario scrolled through an app on her phone designed to help record the data as she ticked off each question in the script. She asked basics, such as his name and age; more probing questions, such as how long he had been experiencing homelessness; and more intimate questions, such as gender identity, drug use and if he had mental health issues. A few people remained huddled in their tents and asked that their temporary housing not be disturbed. Others willingly participated, especially as word spread that a gift card was on offer.Heather Moehle, 35, quickly answered each question posed to her while she shivered a bit in wet jeans that clung to her in the rain. In an interview, the former Alexandria area resident explained that she had been on and off the streets, mostly living out of a car in Virginia, for the past several years and most recently arrived in the District in September. She lost her last apartment in Fairfax County as the global pandemic shut down the Adams Morgan bar where she worked and left her without rent money.Her journey had her bouncing around the city. Moehle lacks a tent of her own and managed to stay warm and dry by bunking in shelters, with friends at an apartment or in tents at McPherson Square park. “Down here the people come, they donate food, they donate clothes. It’s as good as it can be for being homeless in the park. There’s a lot of people who take the time to care,” Moehle said. The former bartender said she hopes to work more closely with Pathways to Housing advocates to help her find more permanent conditions and was happy to help the survey process. “It’s good. It gives more information for the resources and all to come out and help. It gives an accurate idea of who’s out here an all,” Moehle said.
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