The Washington Post: Families sue D.C. for ending housing aid in unprecedented case

In a collaborative piece from the Washington Post, reporters Marissa Lang and Meagan Flynn report on three families who are seeking certification for a class-action suit that could benefit 816 families who were removed from rapid rehousing between April and June of this year, in a controversial shake-up of a city program meant to help those facing homelessness.

The lawsuit, filed by attorneys from the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless and D.C. Children’s Law Center, among others, asserts that the District’s blanket removal of families that had overstayed the program’s allotted time span violated the law by denying individuals the ability to be reconsidered on a case-by-case basis and deprived participants of their right to due process.

“Instead of considering extension requests and determining — individually on a totality of the circumstances basis — whether the petitioners should receive an extension,” the lawsuit states, “DHS improperly decided that all Petitioners would be summarily denied that opportunity.”

The suit also alleges that officials’ claim “that ‘funding is not available’ for extensions was factually inaccurate, and instead, represented an arbitrary and capricious decision” by the government to use available money to onboard new families rather than to support those already in the program.

Photo Credit: Eric Lee, The Washington Post