It is no secret that there is a housing affordability crisis in the metropolitan Washington, DC region. Average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in our nation’s capital is $2,400 per month, meaning that individuals making minimum wage in D.C. would need to spend a whopping 81 percent of their income on rent alone to live in the city. In 2023, 8,944 human beings in the metropolitan Washington, D.C. region were homeless; 4,922 in DC proper, 2,221 in Northern Virginia, and 1,801 in the surrounding counties of Maryland.