There are too many homeless families crowding into the city's inadequate shelters. On that, all parties agree. But when it comes to what should be done about it, tempers start to flare.
Earlier today, a group of homeless families from the D.C. General shelter headed to the Wilson Building to protest the amendments to the Homeless [...]

David Berns has one of the harder jobs in District government: Trying to keep people off the streets in a housing market that doesn't leave much room for the poor. As part of a Housing Complex Q&A series with Mayor Vince Gray's cabinet, I sat Berns down with family services administrator Fred Swan to ask [...]

This week, I wrote about the 200-ish families the city is putting up at hotels on New York Avenue NE, in the broader context of an affordable housing supply that's just totally dried out. Obviously, there's much more to the story.
At the end of hypothermia season on March 31, the city is no longer legally [...]

February is usually the worst month for the District's hotel business—a flat lull before cherry blossom season comes along March.
But the Comfort Inn, a stuccoed yellow outpost on New York Avenue NE, is having a great winter. Of course, it's a strange kind of success. One portion of the clientele is just what you'd expect: [...]

During hypothermia season, which runs from November through March, the city is required by law to find shelter for homeless people. Last winter, that meant housing some of them in hotels, since family shelters didn't have enough room—as former City Paper staffer Jason Cherkis reported, around 70 were staying at the Comfort Inn on New York [...]

Tucked away in D.C.'s section of the Senate's draft budget is something homeless advocates have been waiting on for a long time: Enough money to finally replace the recently-closed La Casa shelter in Columbia Heights with a single room occupancy facility to house homeless men. Department of Human Services official Laura Zeilinger confirms that part [...]

This winter may not be as bad as last winter, but it probably won't be gentle, either–especially those without rooves over their heads. The Department of Human Services is projecting ten percent greater need for shelter services, which means scouring the District for appropriate places to put something that few neighborhood residents want on their [...]

Irving Street NW in Columbia Heights has gone through some growing pains in the last decade. Buildings have mushroomed on vacant lots, but haven’t yet filled out—glassy storefronts are still covered with brown paper, even as young people with disposable income pour into the residential towers clustered around the Metrorail station.
One thing hasn’t changed at [...]

The District of Columbia Housing Authority announced this morning that it had recieved a $2,529,288 competitive grant from HUD to find permanent supportive housing units for the homeless. That's great news, especially since the Department of Human Services–which usually secures such apartments–just had its budget cut by $11 million for fiscal year 2011, which was [...]

Last night, neither the Zoning Commission, nor the Office of Planning, nor Donatelli Development knew what was up with the replacement of the La Casa community shelter. This morning, Councilmember Jim Graham said that “we are straightening all of this out right now.” And Michael Ferrell, the executive director of the Coalition for the Homeless—which [...]