DC's Mayor Bowser Has A Feasible Plan to End Homelessness – Maybe.
I would like to congratulate all
homeless advocates, non-profits, council members and administration
officials who had anything to do with the city committing at least
$22.16M to housing at least 2,431 homeless DC residents in Fiscal
Year 2017. If the calculations that I list below are correct AND
if we were to maintain the same level of funding through the end of
Fiscal Year 2020 (adjusting the baseline budget for inflation),
then the city could conceivably house 9,724 homeless people in the
next four fiscal years (FY 17 thru 20). That's 1,374 more than the
8,350 homeless people that DC had as of January 2016. THAT'S
PROGRESS!!!!!
I calculated that as many as 1,122 of
the 2,431 people that the city could house in FY 17 are able-bodied
adults. Most or all of these adults would need to use the services of
the Dept. Of Employment Services'
Project Empowerment program. However, Project
Empowerment served 585 people in FY 15 and not all of them were
homeless. This represents A CAPACITY PROBLEM.
DC Government has several reasons to
want to bring the housing efforts of DHS
together with the employment efforts of DOES, not the least of which
is the federal legislation known as the Workforce Innovations and
Opportunities Act or WIOA.
This legislation requires municipalities to do better at connecting
hard-to-employ people to jobs. This group includes the homeless.
Another reason for DC Government to
want to adjoin these efforts is that doing so would increase the
likelihood of the able-bodied people whom the city houses in 2017
will remain housed for a long time thereafter. Let's not forget that
connecting capable people to housing-wage jobs which they maintain
for many years thereafter is just “the right thing to do”.
Other reasons include the fact that
several administrations since
2004 have worked on ending homelessness. Additionally, the most
recent 5-year plan to end homelessness (adopted in 2015) states
that in
DC a housing wage is $28.25 per hour for the
average-priced rental – c. $1,500/month. (I would add that this
figure is for a full-time worker who is not supporting
a spouse or children.) What's more is that the city now has a
deputy mayor of greater economic
opportunity and she is working hard to connect poor people to
living-wage ($13.85 per hour) or housing wage jobs – which I'm
not entirely sure. I don't think anyone in or connected to the social
service arena wants DC Government to fail in this capacity. I sure
don't.
When I get the updated figures
concerning the percentage of Project Empowerment program participants
are homeless, then I'll be able to give a figure at to the total
number of clients that the program would need to have a capacity to
serve annually in order for DOES to fulfill its role of connecting
recently-housed A-bods to living/housing-wage jobs. If
we assume that two-thirds of PE clients are homeless, then PE would
need to have a capacity to serve at least 1,683 people per year
in order to keep up with the rate at which A-bods are connected to
housing.
Housing for those
who make a “living wage” but not a “housing wage”:
which implies that
they're living somewhere other than in housing...
which means they're
homeless while employed...
It is not realistic to think
that the majority of the 1,122 able-bodied homeless adults who might
get connected to employment in FY 17 are going to make at least
$28.25 per hour or afford a $1,500 rental. It has been brought to my
attention that there are single room occupancies and 400 sq. ft.
units that can go for
$650 per month which is one-third of $1,950. A person working 160
hours per month at $12.50 per hour makes $2,000 gross monthly pay.
This might be a more REALISTIC EMPLOYMENT/HOUSING GOAL.
Short-Term
Asks and Considerations:
With 1,122 of the 1,547 or
72.53% of the homeless adults who will be housed in 2017 being
able-bodied, this is indicative of a systemic shift toward splitting
our attention and housing resources between the most vulnerable and
least vulnerable homeless as opposed to focusing only on the former
group – the able-bodied parents of course having vulnerable
children. Now that the administration is beginning to do things that
I support and have (along with others) called for over the past 10
years, I am committing myself wholeheartedly to doing all that I can
to help and to push things to the next level.
It is with that idea in mind
that I offer this write-up in its entirety and the simplified asks in
this section as a template for our efforts over the next year ending
on June 9th, 2017. Since the FY 17 budget for housing the
homeless looks positive but the city's ability to make able-bodied
homeless people self-sufficient seems to be insufficient, this
combination of truths plays right into the focus of myself and some
of my associates who are currently emphasizing living-wage jobs and
affordable housing for able-bodied homeless people. Our short-term
goals should be as follows:
1 – PROGRAM CAPACITY:
Beginning now (June 9th, 2016), look at the capacity that
DC Gov's Dept. Of Employment Services (DOES) has through the Project
Empowerment Program and
other programs to connect homeless people to jobs that will
enable them to remain housed (without further government assistance
thereafter). Consider the prospects for increasing the capacity of
all such programs so that they can absorb homeless A-bods as they are
housed (while continuing to assist people who are not known to have
experienced homelessness). I'm guessing that at least 1,683 people
would need to be served through project Empowerment annually in order
to meet our goals; but, am prepared to have my figures disputed.
Maybe item #1 could be
a topic at the June 21st meeting at DOES (for which
participation is limited to those who received invites to the May
18th meeting).
2 – Also beginning now,
DOES could work with DHS to develop a more intentional and well
thought out “housing first” initiative that focuses on housing
A-bods and then guarantees that DOES will connect them to living-wage
jobs within a reasonable time frame. This differs from Rapid
Re-housing insomuch as the client doesn't have to prove that they
have the ability to become self-sufficient within 18 months,as is the
case with RRH. It instead puts the onus on DOES to adjust the
department's programs so as to guarantee that DOES has the ability to
adequately help the homeless A-bods.
3 – Implement any changes
that can be implemented in the remaining months of FY 16 –
expansions and improvements of program models. Document the successes
and failures of these programs. Determine what additional resources
and permissions are needed from the DC Council and the mayor,
respectively.
4 – Ask the mayor for such
permissions ASAP and prepare any necessary pertinent budget requests
and adjustments beginning now and going into the 2017 budget season
for the FY 18 budget.
*The items listed above
are just ideas that are meant to get the conversation moving.
Quickly.*
Below
are explanations as to how I arrived at the above figures and of the
facts that I gathered from other sources in order to do my math.
[End of quote]
I, Eric Sheptock,
juxtaposed figures from the aforementioned quarter sheet with
numbers from the 2016
Point-in-Time Homeless Enumeration Fact Sheet (not to be
confused with the
regional figures) and did some additional math using the latter
document so as to figure out that:
4,667 members of homeless
families minus 2,722 children equals 1,945 adults, the latter
comprising about 41.68% of the total homeless family make-up.
4,667 family members
divided by 1,491 families comes out to about 3.13 people per
family.
Budget Math:
$6.8M divided by 425 people is
$16,000 per (disabled) person.
$1.7M divided by 141 people is
$12,056.74 per person.
$3.9M divided by 200+ families is
less than $19,500 per family (less than $6,500 per person).
[$12,056.74 times 350 individuals
is about $4.22M
$19,500 times 284 families is
about $5.54M
“Maintained funding” was
about $9.76M.]
If so, the total is about $22.16M.
Number of People Served:
As per the homeless point-in-time count, there are about 3.13 people
per family, up from 3.07 last year. That means that 200 families
translates to 626 people and 284 families translates to 889 people
for a total of 1,515 people in families that will be served by
the FY 17 budget.
With 41.68% of homeless family members being adults of which a
negligible percentage are disabled, that means 631 of the 1,515
family members are able-bodied adults.
The total number of people housed by the FY 17 budget is 2,431
of which about 425 are disabled. That means that 631 A-bod parents
plus 491 A-bod individuals give us 1,122 people who will
need some assistance finding housing-wage jobs in 2017.
DOES needs to more than double its capacity to assist 1,100+
homeless people in one year through Project Empowerment, if they are
going to be part of the mayor's 5-year plan to end homelessness. (Not
all of the 585 were homeless.) I'm assuming that the city will try to
connect all of the A-bods it houses in 2017 to jobs in that same
year. It kind of makes sense. This goes to what we often say at
meetings about "connecting all of the dots”. If
DHS is going to house 1,100+ A-bod homeless people in one year, then
DOES needs to assist at least that many homeless people at getting
jobs as they exit homelessness each year -- at least that many (not
counting the housed/never homeless people they help). How they do it
is another conversation. We have a minimum goal to shoot for.
…..MAYBE:
The title says that “DC has a
feasible plan to end homelessness.....maybe”. As the late,great
fighter Muhammad Ali said, “Every fighter has a plan.....until he
gets hit”. In lieu of the fact that DC has been trying for 12 years
to end homelessness, it would be extremely ignorant of me not to
consider what might go wrong. The grim possibilities include but are
not limited to the following:
1 – There could be a massive influx
of homeless people into Washington, DC between December 2016 and June
2017. There might also be tenuously-housed people from other states
who come here during that time frame and get stuck. 2017 is an
inauguration year and we are poised to have our
first ever female president and openly-Socialist vice president.
There are homeless people who come to
DC in connection to every inauguration as per a recently-retired
outreach worker. I had an interesting interaction with one such
person in 2009 and witnessed her getting surrounded by Secret Service
agents after she told them who she was. I never heard from or saw her
again. Unless Travelers' Aid comes to the rescue, this influx could
drive up the number of homeless people. That's not to speak of locals
who have and will become homeless following the January 2016 homeless
count.
That said, I expect a higher-than-usual
influx of homeless people for the upcoming inauguration – some
coming to congratulate Ms. Clinton and others coming to tell her how
that they believe a woman shouldn't be president. (I personally
promote equality, so long as we don't lower the bar for women. As Ms.
USA 2016 said, “Women are as tough as men”.)
2 – We're counting on the DC Council
to maintain at least the FY 17 baseline budget with adjustments for
inflation factored in all the way through FY 20. This is not
guaranteed.
3 – We're counting on DOES' programs
to keep pace with the number of homeless A-bods who get housed. WIOA
almost guarantees that they'll succeed in this respect. However, it
is a tall order and there are a lot of moving parts to keep up with.
4 – There are a lot of variables
which include the number of people who can be expected to enter
homelessness between now and the end of 2020 as well as the number of
homeless people who can be expected to complete any employment
program.
That said, keep hope alive.
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