Media Alert
May 21, 2021
Contact Nick DelleDonne
703-929-6656
‘Still Homeless’ – DECAA testifies on end of COVID Services
“Homeless people housed in hotels are still homeless,” says Dan Casey, until recently homeless and a member of Dupont East Civic Action Association (DECAA). He will testify Friday, May 21, at the DC Council hearing aimed at ending COVID services. Living on the streets of DC until two weeks ago, Casey calls attention to the disorganized and inefficient services DC provides for growing numbers of homeless in the COVID-19 global pandemic.
Casey is one of the DECAA members testifying about the urgent need for additional resources to house the homeless and bring order and efficiency to a system that “appears to spend a lot with meager results,” said DECAA President Nick DelleDonne. “We organized a DECAA House the Homeless Committee as homeless encampments proliferated in Dupont Circle,” he added. The DC homeless/housing crisis has racial overtones, especially for the city's extremely low-income residents. In fact, the crisis is contributing to the exodus of Black and low-income residents from the city, as evidenced by the 40,000 Black residents displaced in the last decade. DC needs to find alternatives to the reliance on developer-driven housing development which is bound to fail.
DECAA has lined up witnesses to urge improvements in a city-wide problem in a health emergency. A link to the hearing is here. DC Encoder 1 Room 500 (granicus.com) One of our proposals recently added as an option in the DC Comprehensive Plan is for social housing. Simply expressed, social housing is on public land, with housing built by the city and managed by the tenants. Social housing has proved itself a grat solution and the federal government is proposing a Social Housing Authority to promote it.
Join the neighborhood discussion and action forum, HearUsNow! https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/hearusnow
Visit DECAA’s website and sign our petition. https://www.KeepDupontGreen.org