Ward 6 Councilman Tommy Wells is planning to introduce emergency legislation Tuesday morning that would limit access to the District’s homeless shelters for families to only D.C. residents.
Wells’ chief of staff Charles Allen said the bill will not affect shelters for single men and women. The bill is being introduced because Wells recently found that 10 percent of the homeless families who obtain shelter from the District come from other jurisdictions. The city is faced with a $175 million budget shortfall and Wells has said the District cannot afford to house other jurisdictions’ homeless.
Families, Allen said, are easier to track than single men and women because their names and other identifying information typically appears on welfare benefits lists or in the school system.
