As D.C. enters its coldest months, thousands of homeless residents prepare for another winter without housing.
City leaders didn’t fund new individual housing vouchers in this year’s budget, stripping away the hope of housing support for single homeless residents. For the hundreds of people who have been matched to a voucher but not yet moved in, processing times still average over 200 days, which forces some to give up the housing search altogether, exacerbating chronic homelessness across the District.
In July, the D.C. Council approved the city’s fiscal year 2026 budget, which, in its final form, appropriated no new funding for Individual Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH) vouchers — a long-term housing subsidy program for those experiencing chronic homelessness. This was the fourth consecutive year the city reduced new voucher funding for single residents experiencing homelessness, and the first in many years with no new vouchers for homeless individuals. Meanwhile, those who received a voucher funded in previous years face improving, but still lengthy, wait times to reach the final stage of moving into a unit, according to residents and housing advocates.
D.C. funded an influx of housing vouchers for homeless individuals in 2022 and 2023, when the budget created an estimated 2,400 and 500 new vouchers, respectively. But the past few years have seen a sharp decline, as District officials funded just 148 new vouchers for individuals in the fiscal year 2025 budget…