Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser announced a new initiative to end homelessness in the city this week and she’s asking citizens to do their part in helping out by signing this vaguely worded pledge.
Bowser launched her “bold effort to end homelessness” at a meeting of the city’s Interagency Council on Homelessness Wednesday, and promises there will be no homeless veterans in D.C. by the end of the year, and in five years all homeless people in the city will be eradicated. All people need to do is just trust her and sign her pledge.
“I stand with the Mayor to achieve these goals because I believe that homelessness in DC is not an intractable problem – it can be solved,” the pledge reads.
The pledge goes on to say that whenever one person is homeless in a community, all people in that community suffer, and everyone in the city has a stake in supporting homeless people.
“We are Washington, DC, and together, we will end homelessness in our nation’s capital,” it concludes.
While the pledge lacks any actionable items for citizens to end homelessness, the mayor has that part covered, to the tune of a $150 million funding increase in this year’s budget for homeless support.
Bowser’s plans to end homelessness include using hotel rooms as transitional housing for homeless families throughout the entire year, instead of just during cold winter months.
In the past, the city has housed homeless families only on the coldest nights, when the temperature drops below freezing. The Washington Post, however, reports that the city has expanded this program to include the rest of the year.
During the months of June and July, the city housed nearly 150 families in hotel rooms across the city, the document shows, and the city increased the number of homeless housed in hotels in August.
D.C. is one of just a few cities that give homeless people the right to shelter when the weather drops below freezing. The right-to-shelter law obligates the city to provide “temporary emergency housing” to anyone who seeks it when conditions are forecasted to reach 32 degrees or below.
Bowser also wants to shutter the city’s largest homeless shelter and instead build 250 smaller housing units throughout the city with shared bathrooms and living areas.
The shelter is currently at capacity with another 350 families residing in hotel rooms and more than 1,000 homeless people are sleeping in nightly shelters paid for by the city.
A recent survey showed that there were close to 12,000 people without permanent housing in the city.
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