A Bowser administration official publicly acknowledged that there are problems with the District’s housing vouchers system, including agencies not following up or otherwise providing necessary services to apartment residents receiving housing assistance.
Chris Geldart, the deputy mayor for public safety and justice, told ANC 3F’s April 19th meeting that the agencies that connect clients with vouchers for housing also bear responsibility for following up with those clients and ensuring they are getting services.
“I say all that to say, that ain’t working,” Geldart said.
Neighborhood apartment residents, including voucher holders, have raised concerns for the past few years about disruptive behavior and even violent incidents. In some cases, they said people with behavioral health issues were being housed in their buildings without proper supervision or support.
Landlords have also been criticized for their response to a growing number of police calls from their buildings. MPD’s Second District commander said in December that three apartment buildings in ANC 3F had been referred to the DC Office of the Attorney General’s nuisance properties division for possible penalty.
“Getting something declared a nuisance property doesn’t do it,” Geldart said. “I’m being real. I’m being honest. So we need to change the process.”
Geldart said he had visited 20 buildings over two months in every ward, including one, not in ANC 3F, that “we basically de facto created as a public housing unit because it became all voucher holders…. And we’re running a 120 calls for service in two months for this one building. That’s a problem.”
Geldart said DC officials don’t have a solution ready but they are working on it.
“I can tell you that we’re bringing every agency that can give a voucher out into the room to account for what is happening,” Geldart said.
He also said the new Housing Authority director, is looking at the finance structure of vouchers, which in certain areas were allowed to pay more than market rate rents.
Vouchers subsidizing or covering rent payments are provided through a number of agencies, including the U.S. Veterans Administration, the DC Housing Authority, the DC Department of Behavioral Health, and the DC Department of Human Services, or DHS. As recently as March, the director of the DHS, Laura Green Zeilinger, was denying that there were issues with providing services to its own voucher renters.
“All [permanent supportive housing] clients in Ward 3 have an assigned case manager, who must meet a minimum of two case management contacts/month,” Zeilinger wrote in an email to Ward 3 Council member Mary Cheh. “Case managers/providers and their monitors have been in touch with and reviewed the cases of all Ward 3 residents and there are very few issues that have involved neighbors. Almost all have been resolved in coordination with the case manager, client, and landlord.”