DC Homelessness Went Down by 2,820 People in One year!!!!! Congratulations!!!!!
DC Government began its efforts to end homelessness in 2004. They came up with a 10-year plan called Homelessness No More. Then-Mayor Anthony Williams signed the Homeless Services Reform Act into law in 2005. I moved to DC on the night of July 31st, 2005. DC's Inter-agency Council on Homelessness held its first meeting in June 2006 -- just days after I began advocating for the homeless -- and I was in attendance. It's been 11.5 years since I began advocating for an end to homelessness. The January 2007 annual Point-in-Time Homeless Enumeration was the first one after I began this work and we counted 5,757 homeless people in the city that year. Ten years later we counted 7,473. I've looked at a lot of numbers to see what messages I could tease out so as to gauge the city's efforts. It struck me recently that there is a number that none of the homeless service providers are talking about, as they "try" to decrease homelessness: 2,820.
I sent the following as an e-mail earlier today and then decided that it should go out to a much broader crowd so as to teach people that the answer to a problem that the city doesn't seem to know how to fix lies in what they did before I even became an advocate. I'm not sure what it was; but the numbers contain a hidden story that needs to be recaptured and told. I also just learned while reviewing numbers from 2003 on THIS SITE that there were 8,325 homeless people in 2001 (7,058 who did the first-ever PIT survey plus an estimated 1,267 who refused) and that the number went down by 857 people to 7,468 in 2002. DC reached its all-time (thus far) high of 8,977 homeless people in January 2005 -- right after a 10-year plan was conceived but before it had a chance to work. So, the 877-person decrease from 2016 to 2017 is not necessarily something about which we should jump for joy.
See the e-mail below. (My apologies for the font carry-over issues):
DC homelessness went down by 2,820 people in one year!!!!! That's awesome!!!!! The homeless population of DC was 8,977 in January 2005. It went down to 6,157 in January 2006. That's the biggest one-year drop DC has ever recorded. It went down by another 400 the next year to 5,757 in 2007. That's the last time on record that DC had two successive decreases in homelessness. Some of the people who currently work [sic] in DC homeless services were doing that work back then -- when it really WAS work, evidently. So, I have a couple of questions that I'm going to ask a lot of people in the coming months -- via e-mail and face-to-face:
BIG QUESTION: Why was DC able to decrease homelessness by 2,820 people from Jan. 2005 to Jan. 2006 and by 400 the following year???
BIGGER QUESTION: What changed and why???
2,820 is more than three times the decrease (877 ppl, 10.5%) from 2016 (8,350) to 2017 (7,473) AND
more than three times the NET decrease in homeless people (780 ppl, 9.45%) from 2004 (8,253) when the 10-year plan was made to 2017.
Please be prepared to answer those questions (now via e-mail or whenever I see you f2f).
BTW, I came to DC on the night of 7/31/05. Had I not, the decrease would have been 2,821. Aren't you glad it wasn't???
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For my new contacts whom I'm teaching about DC's "efforts" since 2004 to end homelessness (and any old contacts who are tired of the systemic failures):
Reggie Black (CC'ed) is the stats/ data guy for advocacy group PFFC (People For Fairness Coalition which meets at Miriam's Kitchen. Hook up with him. I'll put some data below for him to learn and tout 'til he's purple in the face; because, service providers don't want to actually make plans that work off of the date THEY collect.
I've added this e-mail to a 2014 message in which only one of my several questions to a homeless service provider (TCP) was answered and it was a pretty lame answer. I'm sure TCP was telling the truth. It's the system that's lame. The message is about the June 17th, 2014 ICH meeting where, though we'd just learned that DC had an 889-person increase in homelessness, TCP didn't do its usual report-out on what the numbers mean. That was also the first then-bi-monthly ICH meeting since Kristy Greenwalt (not copied, keep it that way) became the first-ever ICH director. Be sure to read that e-mail and get a sense of the system.
Some homeless service providers (who don't want to work themselves out of a job by actually ending homelessness) see me as a naysayer. I see myself as someone who looks at the numbers that these service providers gather and then teases out the messages that lie within. I speak Numberish -- fluently, I might "add". (No pun intended.) The numbers say that, were we to have three or four years like 2005, we'd end DC homelessness.
I didn't begin advocating until mid-June 2006 and couldn't tell you what happened that year to make it the most successful year for decreasing homelessness. I DO know that the HSRA (Homeless Services Reform Act) was signed into law that year; but, it couldn't have done its work that soon. The ICH first met the following year (June 2006). I was there. That year the decrease was one-seventh what it was the previous year. Since the ICH's first full year (2007), we've had two of the three biggest one-year increases in homelessness and we haven't had two successive decreases in homelessness. Go figure.
The current administration is working hard to tear down homeless encampments/ tent cities so that the former residents thereof will migrate into Downtown and create the image that homelessness is on the rise (which it might be anyway, given the fact that we just had a decrease). This is part of the mayor's plan to portray the image of having failed colossally at her pet project of addressing homelessness. She plans to run again in June and wants voters to step over the former tent city dwellers as they pass through Downtown and as they go to the polls. This is to ensure that the higher concentration of homeless people in Downtown causes voters to see her as having failed at the thing that she worked hardest on, that they doubt her leadership ability and that they vote for someone else. That's a plan. And, if THIS JUNE 2017 ARTICLE is any indication, it's working. (Be sure to read where it says 62% of poll respondents dislike her "work" on homelessness.)
See what I've pasted below and the 2014 message below that:
2004: 8,253 homeless in DC
2017: 7,473 homeless in DC
13 years and a 780-person (9.45%) NET decrease in homelessness in DC
Should have had a 100% decrease by Dec. 2014 -- before Bowser admin
Average annual decrease: 60 people -- a glitch pattern
Hundreds of homeless service providers/ staff members for that average 60-person average annual decrease
Est. time DC will end homelessness: 2142 A.D.
No sense of urgency among service providers to fix glitch pattern
DC Gov and contractors treating all homeless like babies
DC Gov and contractors encouraging homeless to play crazy to get housing
They don't want to draw the working poor to DC
They want [the working poor] who are here to leave
They ostracize me because I'm smart and I see the game
Anyone who wants to confirm my claims can be at Church of the Epiphany (1317 G st nw) between 7 and 9 AM on any given Sunday.
On Monday, June 30, 2014, 3:59:42 PM EDT, Tom Fredericksen wrote:
Eric,
As you may know, TCP (on behalf of the District) reports the District’s Point in Time results to the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (COG) for inclusion in that agency’s report on homelessness in the region. We have a standing agreement with COG to not release our local results until the regional report is released. COG’s regional report was posted on May 14th; I distributed the District’s results via on May 16th (see attached).
The agenda for ICH meetings is set by the ICH’s Executive Committee. A review of Point in Time was not requested for the June 17th meeting.
Tom
Tom Fredericksen, MPP
Chief of Policy and Programs
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From: Eric Sheptock [mailto:ericsheptock@yahoo.com]
Subject: Quick TCP-PIT Count Questions
Quick TCP-PIT Count Questions
Sue and Tom,
I was reading an ARTICLE from 2009 that had to do with the findings of the 2009 Point-in-Time Homeless Count. (I'm writing a piece about year-to-year trends in DC homelessness and was checking my facts.) I see that the results of the count were out in March of 2009. Prior to reading this article, I'd been bothered by the fact that the data was being released later and later each year. I recalled Sue reporting out about the findings during the April 2012 ICH at the old Central Union Mission on 14th and R streets NW. Last year and this year the tabulation came out in May.
I'd also noticed some time ago that TCP went from posting the data on the website directly (which allows it to show up in a Google search) to putting it into a PDF (which doesn't show up in a Google search). I've quietly suspected for a couple of years that this was part of an effort to conceal the District's failure at reducing homelessness.
I also noticed that this was the first year in recent history that Sue didn't report on the findings of the PIT count at the very next ICH meeting (June 17th). Allen Lew watered down my comment at that meeting. I'd said in lieu of the 889-person rise in DC homelessness that we are "failing"; but, he said we're "not failing but facing greater challenges" (which I see are kicking DC Government's ass). I was immediately taken aback by how subdued that meeting was and by the fact that there was no official mention of the PIT count results or report from Sue on the supposed reasons for the increase. (I was almost certain she'd say that we'd just experienced the final wave of economic fallout from the fall of 2008.) so:
1 -- Why is the count coming out so much later???
2 -- Why do you put it in PDF form rather than directly on the website now???
3 -- Why did Sue not report out on the findings atthe June 17th ICH meeting???
4 -- Is there a concerted DHS/ICH/DC Gov effort to conceal District failures toward the poor and homeless???
I'm not accusing anyone of anything. I'm just sayin' "like w'zup wit dat???"
Eric Jonathan Sheptock
Cell phone: (240) 305-5255
Asking an advocate for the poor to be nice is like asking a soldier to fight a war without a weapon.
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Attached WAS The Community Partnership’s report on the 2014 “Point in Time” census and survey of homeless persons living in the District of Columbia.
This project is conducted annually by the Community Partnership for the Prevention of Homelessness, on behalf of the District of Columbia, in accordance with U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development’s (HUD) reporting standards. Point in Time provides an opportunity to look at both the size and makeup of the city’s homeless population on a given day and helps the DC Continuum of Care (CoC) identify gaps in services and plan for the future.
As stated in the report, a total of 7,748 homeless persons were counted during the enumeration in the District; this is a 12.9 percent increase from the 2013 count. For more information on homelessness in the wider metro area, please review the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments’ report here.
If you have any questions about the report or would like to be involved with Point in Time 2015, please contact Tom Fredericksen at tfredericksen@community-partership.org.
Tom
Tom Fredericksen, MPP
Chief of Policy and Programs
The Community Partnership
801 Pennsylvania Avenue SE, Ste. 360
Washington, DC 20003
(P) 202-543-5298 ext. 114
(F) 202-543-5653
tfredericksen@community-partnership.org
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