Why DC Is Seeing an Increase in Family Homelessness—and Why It Reflects Progress, Not Failure

Each year, the District takes a careful, honest look at homelessness in our city through the annual Point-in-Time (PIT) Count. I’m proud to say that the District achieved more than 2,220 exits to permanent housing over the past year, the highest number of lease-ups we have ever completed. This progress reflects deep partnerships across our provider network and a shared commitment to housing-focused case management. With that said, this year, the PIT Count data show an increase in the number of parents and children counted in our family system. At first glance, this may appear concerning. But the truth is more nuanced, and far more hopeful. The increase we see today reflects an intentional shift in policy designed to ensure that when families exit homelessness, they exit for good.

Last year, the District made a deliberate and necessary change. We ended the long-standing practice of automatically moving every family exiting shelter into the Family Re-Housing Stabilization Program (FRSP). While FRSP has supported many households and was unquestionably the right intervention for our city at a critical moment, particularly when it enabled every family to leave the unsafe and unfit DC General shelter, our system has evolved. Today, we understand that FRSP is no longer the best match for every family within 90 days of entering shelter. To ensure long-term stability, we must align each household with the intervention that fits their unique needs and circumstances, rather than relying on a single pathway.

For some, an immediate FRSP subsidy may not be appropriate to ensure long-term stability, especially in a higher cost unit. In partnership with providers—and incorporating feedback from the families we serve across the Continuum of Care—DHS redesigned its exit pathways for families out of shelter, diversifying our housing interventions and implementing a more tailored approach that matches each family to a plan better suited to their unique situation. This may include FRSP when appropriate to a unit the family is more likely able to afford at the end of 12 months; DC Flex, which offers flexible, shallow rent subsidies to families; a permanent housing voucher when available; or another safe housing intervention through our Homeless Prevention Program (HPP) that is more appropriate for the totality of circumstance for the family.

We knew from the outset that this shift would have a system-wide ripple effect. When families work to find the right resource rather than the fastest one, their length of stay in shelter might increase. That is what we see reflected in this year’s PIT Count: average stays increased from 90 days to 111 days as families remained in our short-term family housing programs long enough to secure a sustainable exit that best matches their needs. That means during the night of the count, we had more families staying in short-term family housing (STFH) than we had last year.

But this is only part of the story. Even as lengths of stay increased, year to date, 30 percent fewer families have entered shelter compared to last year. That is a remarkable outcome. It signals that our prevention and diversion work is strong, our investments in programs like HPP and DC Flex are paying off, and that our broader focus on housing stability across the human services system is reducing the number of families who fall into crisis in the first place.

At the same time, our short-term family housing programs—modern, service-rich, trauma-informed facilities located across the city—are doing exactly what they were built to do: provide dignified, temporary support while our teams work side-by-side with parents to identify permanent solutions. These STFH sites are hubs of stability and planning, and our goal is that when families finally leave them, they do so with a foundation that gives them the best possible chance to remain housed for the long term.

This year’s PIT Count tells us what we expected to see based on an intentional strategy. Our system is prioritizing quality and sustainability over short lengths of stay in shelter. We are investing in thoughtful, individualized housing placements rather than one-size-fits-all programs.

Homelessness should be rare, brief, and nonrecurring. To achieve that last goal—nonrecurrence—we must be willing to make choices that may temporarily shift our numbers upward but ultimately bend them in the right direction. That is the path we are on today.

While the family system has experienced major policy changes, our single adult system has kept similar policies but added two service-rich, non-congregate bridge housing programs to our portfolio across the last two years—and Mayor Bowser’s proposed budget includes investment in a third. The PIT Count shows our single adult system count remained relatively flat year over year despite strong outflows to housing, an indication the number of people coming into homelessness is the same or more than those that are being housed. Just as we have strengthened prevention and diversion at the front door of the family system, reducing our entries into STFH by 30%, we will be prioritizing a renewed focus on upstream, front-end interventions for single adults in the coming year. Reducing inflow into homelessness is essential to ensuring that our housing investments produce lasting, systemwide reductions.

Today, we are confronting a hard truth: the District’s $1.1B budget deficit has required funding reductions across all agencies, including DHS. Yet, this moment also underscores the urgency and the opportunity before us. The households we serve are counting on us not simply to do more with less, but to lead with clarity, purpose, and innovation. Now more than ever, we must champion exit pathways that safeguard both the long-term stability of the District and the dignity and wellbeing of our residents.

Guided by the community’s shared commitment to ending homelessness, DHS will spend the coming year accelerating solutions that keep people housed, help neighbors move safely out of unsheltered homelessness, and support every family with a path to housing that is truly sustainable. Even in a challenging fiscal climate, our vision remains the same: to protect progress, strengthen what works, and continue driving toward a future where every resident has a safe and stable place to call home.