By Mary Otto
Editor-in-Chief

In spite of innovative programs aimed at housing disabled and chronically indigent individuals and struggling families, homelessness has increased in the Washington area during the years of the  economic downturn.

Overall, homelessness in the region has risen 2 percent and family homelessness has increased 9.5 percent since 2007, the year the nation’s housing and financial crisis began, according to the preliminary findings of the Washington Area Council of Governments’ annual homeless count.

This year’s survey, conducted in the last week of January, found 11,988 homeless men, women and children living in shelters, transitional housing and domestic violence programs, abandoned buildings and makeshift encampments in the District and its surrounding suburbs in Virginia and Maryland. The total included 5,315 people living in families, 3,249 of them children. The report showed that 38 percent of homeless adults in families and 20 percent of homeless single people are employed.

Number of single homeless (light gray) versus number of homeless families (dark gray) between 2007 and 2011 in the Washington, D.C. area.

The increase in homelessness would have been steeper without the programs the District and surrounding jurisdictions have put in place to resolve and prevent homelessness, according to Michael Ferrell, executive director of the D.C. Coalition for the Homeless and chair of the council of government’s homeless services committee.

According to the report, permanent supportive housing initiatives across the region have moved 7,702 formerly homeless people into homes and apartments and provided them with services to address the disabilities and other problems that contributed to their homelessness.

In addition, programs such as the Emergency Rental Assistance Program or ERAP, which enjoyed a temporary infusion of additional federal stimulus dollars in recent years, helped prevent homelessness by providing families, elderly and disabled people facing eviction with money to pay overdue rent, Ferrell said.

“The primary reason the count has not gone up significantly is because of permanent supportive housing and the prevention and rapid re-housing money made available through the federal stimulus,” Ferrell recently told a group of local homeless service providers gathered for a meeting of the Coalition of Housing and Homeless Organizations. “Those are the reasons you haven’t had a major increase.”

Such programs are now facing reductions due to budget pressures on the federal and local level. In the District, where 6,546 homeless people were counted, a total virtually unchanged since last year, city officials are struggling to address a $25 million gap in the homeless services budget through a combination of tax increases and “realignments” in resources. Homeless advocates warn that cuts are likely and could be devastating.

“To scale back services for homeless families and homeless individuals while also cutting eviction prevention programs is creating a dangerous combination,” said Ed Lazere of the DC Fiscal Policy Institute, a Washington-based think tank that focuses on policy and public programs that affect low and moderate-income people.

This was the 11th year that the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments has held the point-in-time homeless count, meant to capture a one-day snapshot of the region’s homeless population. The same effort is made annually nationwide, by jurisdictions receiving federal funding to run shelters and other homeless programs. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development reported last year that 643,000 homeless people were included in the 2009 count.

The Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments is expected to release a final analysis and full report on the regional count in May.