Testimony to the Interagency Council on Homelessness (ICH)

To whom it may concern, wherever the buck stops, including the Mayor:

Imagine if you will, a nice, sunny day in Washington, D.C. You’ve just got off Metro and you’re walking downtown to work drinking your latte and you run into a man asking you for change. You walk on by like you don’t even notice him. As you continue walking, you see a woman sleeping on the sidewalk. You keep going.

After work, on your walk to the Metro, you see the same people you saw earlier. The woman sleeping on the sidewalk, the man asking you for change. There are a couple others just outside the Metro entrance before you step on the already crowded Rush Hour escalator.

You arrive home to your neighborhood finally about on your way home down the street. Just before you walk to your apartment, condo or house you see a woman and her baby begging you for change. Before you make it down the block, you run into someone else asking for change, then you see a family camped out in a messy car and their stuff set out on the curb staring at you. Then another guy asking for change, another and another. Then you find some guy sleeping in your yard! Before you even put your keys in the door, you can’t get the door open and close it behind you fast enough!

Welcome to the reality of homelessness when it comes to your neighborhood. It’s one thing when it’s downtown around businesses, but what if it’s your backyard? Or on your nice wood deck patio?

You watch the news and find out that the woman and her baby you saw earlier was raped and beaten on the street because she was refused shelter? How about the disabled man you walked past that was asking for change? He died because when the hospital let him out, he had nowhere to get the proper rest, care, and nutrition he needed. Your neighbors family that’s camped out in their car fell on hard times and wasn’t able to get help paying the rent because the ERAP program was cut. How many people will the media keep reporting that died on the streets because they were refused shelter? What if these were your family members about to die from hypothermia because the shelters would not let them in? Your nieces and nephews? Sisters and brothers? Aunt and uncle? Mother and father? Cousins?

So if the homeless are no longer allowed downtown and they’re not welcome in your neighborhood, where are they going to go? Oh, that’s right. You expect the police and Homeland Security to come and keep arresting homeless people under vagrancy and loitering laws. The plan is mass incarceration of the homeless. Just like with another denomination in Nazi Germany. It seems that history is repeating itself with the same draconian laws and tactics.

Madam Mayor, congratulations. You are a shoe-in for reelection unopposed. With this bill, you can be assured that your gentrification plans are complete. Your true constituents, Jemal Douglas Development, and the gentrifiers will make sure you are reelected. You are just a better looking, watered-down version of Trump. You’re Trump’s Lethal Weapon II and you both just happen to reside together right here in the Nation’s Capitol.

I am a nobody who then-Councilman Tommy Wells was Chairman of the Human Services Committee back in 2009, took me under his wing and gave me a job with his staff. I learned quite a bit about the politics of this city. I’d never thought that I’d be homeless once again talking about this issue. The plan back then was “Homeless No More” by 2012. Great strides were being made back then. With my help, the Shelter Monitoring Unit was created and given more enforcement powers to help protect the rights of the homeless and make sure providers are actually providing services to the homeless. Now, six years later, what happened? We have a mayor and a city council who are puppets of the developers and gentrifiers.

Homeless Lives Don’t Matter especially in D.C. The Nation’s Capitol. If our lives don’t matter, Mayor Bowser and those who support this bill political career won’t matter. As Officer B. Tolson of Pro50 Security at the New York Avenue shelter said, “If you don’t like how we do things here, you don’t have to come here.”

If you don’t like us in your neighborhoods, you don’t want us at the ballot box ensuring the set time limit of your elected positions. Yes, the homeless can vote and we have long memories. I am but one voice. As it is stamped on the coins, “E Pluribus Unum”. When many voices rise up, it can change the tide of history. If those who are in power use their voice to vote YES on this HSRA Act of 2017 bill, our voices will rise up to make sure they’re refused entry into the mayor’s office and their council offices when their time limit is up.

Then you all will be nobodies again and homeless too.

Thank You for this opportunity to say these few words.

 

Homeless Services Cut and Restricted

Mayor Bowser is doing for the homeless people of Washington, D.C. what was done for the Jews of Nazi Germany.

On September 20, the DC Council Human Services Committee will vote on whether to move forward a bill called the Homeless Services Reform Amendment Act of 2017 (HSRA Act 2017). Many groups, including Bread for the City, Break the Cycle, Fair Budget Coalition, Children’s Law Center, DC Coalition Against Domestic Violence, DC Fiscal Policy Institute, Legal Aid Society of the District of Columbia, Neighborhood Legal Services Program, and the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless have testified in June 2017 about the harm that could come from this bill.

How come nobody knows about it? It was never on the news. The Mayor’s office never mentioned it.

In the midst of DC’s affordable housing crisis, this bill…

• Defines people out of eligibility for housing, emergency rental assistance and homeless services.
• Demands that homeless families and youth overcome unreasonable bureaucratic barriers to get emergency shelter on freezing nights.
• Puts the health and safety of DC residents at risk, particularly youth and children.
• People who have been in hospitals or jails or other institutions for more than 90 days won’t get shelter or permanent supportive housing anymore.
• People in transitional housing and rapid re-housing could be terminated for any reason especially if they’ve reached a set time limit.
• Emergency terminations could happen even when there is no immediate threat (a full day later) and for a much broader category of “offenses.”
• People could be terminated from any shelter or housing program at any time if a provider learns of any new or relevant information that impacts eligibility.
• Greatly expands the power of shelter and housing providers to put people out.

… and does NOTHING to actually end homelessness.

How is this solving the problem of homelessness?