LISTEN TO PATTY MULLAHY FUGERE & NASSIM MOSHIREE
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On Monday, Ward 6 D.C. Councilmember Tommy Wells held a hearing on Bill 18-1059, the “Homeless Services Reform Amendment Act of 2010.” Wells’ legislation seeks to establish a residency requirement for shelter and homeless services in the District of Columbia. Wells, who chairs the Committee on Human Services, said the act was an attempt to “responsibly ration” District resources in an effort to “prioritize our resources for District residents.”
Patty Mullahy Fugere has served as Director of the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless since 1991. Responding to Wells’ proposed legislation, Fugere said, “It’s a bill that seeks to impose a residency verification requirement before accessing a whole range of homeless services during severe weather. That means that before an outreach worker could give a blanket to someone staying on the street, before a meal program could serve breakfast to someone who is homeless, before somebody who is seeking to come in and spend the night outside of the frigid elements, they would have to prove and verify that they were District residents.”
Fugere said, “[T]he potential benefit of possibly screening out the very small number of people who are seeking to save their life or save their children’s lives by coming and getting shelter in D.C. – the benefit of screening them out certainly is not outweighed by the harm that stands to be caused when we’re keeping D.C. residents out on the street because they can’t show that they’re verified as resident of the District of Columbia. People who are street bound don’t have documentation… There are folks who won’t come into a program that requires them to show identification. And they’ll be left quite literally out in the cold, risking life, potentially risking limb. We hear about hypothermia deaths, we don’t often talk about the injuries that occur when people get frostbite or hypothermia, people lose limbs, and that’s a real risk.”
Nassim Moshiree is a staff attorney with the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless. She said, “This bill would end up harming D.C. residents. It would end up keeping more D.C. residents, I feel, from being able to access resources in the winter when there’s a risk of dying of hypothermia… Hypothermia shelter is an emergency service and the reason the law is the way it is right now for the winter shelter is because it saves lives. So we’re basically, with this bill, scaling back the right to shelter at the time when D.C. residents need it the most. And I want to add that no other major metropolitan city has any kind of residency verification requirement like this one. New York city has a right to shelter year-round and they don’t have a verification requirement like this.”
Fugere said, “[W]e’re talking about life-saving services for our no- and low-income neighbors who are struggling day-to-day to survive. Could you imagine an EMT asking somebody who has suffered a heart attack to prove their residency before providing life-saving CPR? What’s the difference really in terms of bringing in someone from the cold so they don’t freeze to death at night?”
Update: Friday, the New York Times took the unusual step of weighing in on legislation that D.C. is considering, calling Wells’ legislation “another example of how budgetary pressures can lead to very bad public policy.”