Street Sense Media: When the housing subsidy ends, what’s next for Rapid Rehousing participants?

Donte Kirby from Street Sense Media covers the ongoing concerns with DC’s Rapid Rehousing (RRH) program and how it impacts numerous families across the city. Year after year, we’ve seen the cyclical nature of the program and how it forces families to go from a shelter to temporary housing and then back into the homeless services system. 

This is the reality for many leaving D.C.’s Rapid Rehousing (RRH) program, a short-term subsidy that pays a portion of a family’s or individual’s rent for a market-rate apartment for 12 months while the participant works on education, job training, or finding employment. While the program brings families out of homelessness, it can also perpetuate the cycle of going from a shelter to temporary housing and then back into the homeless services system. Most people exit the program having made little to no progress toward being able to afford market-rate rent; according to a D.C. auditor report, 79% of families exit RRH without increasing their income.

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Eventually, Davis was able to navigate her unlivable housing conditions with the help of a lawyer through the D.C. Children’s Law Center (CLC). As Davis was exiting the program, her lawyer also advocated for her to receive a Service Prioritization Decision Assistance Tool (SPDAT) test. Widely used by outreach workers to gather information about people experiencing homelessness and determine who needs the most urgent assistance, the SPDAT test is given every 90 days or if a life event that may impact the household’s needs occurs, according to a statement from DHS. The test is not required to be given to a participant at the exit of RRH, but it must be completed within 90 days of program exit. Because Davis’s CLC lawyer pushed for the test when she exited RRH, Davis found she was eligible for a PSH voucher, helping her afford housing long-term. If there was no CLC, however, she thinks it would have been a different ending for her.

“I would be homeless,” Davis said. “Even at the end, I didn’t know where I was going. The only thing I can do is pray and just kept on praying. That’s all I can do, because I knew I was gonna be homeless again with my kid.”