Annual News Blitz Seeks To Raise Awareness Of DC's Homeless Crisis

WASHINGTON, DC — At least 5,111 Washingtonians live in a state homelessness, according to Street Sense Media, the weekly newspaper sold by homeless men and women in Washington, D.C.

For the sixth year in a row, Street Sense Media is teaming up with other local news outlets for the Homeless Crisis Reporting Project’s annual news blitz.

Fifteen news publishers and broadcasters are dedicating a portion of their resources on Thursday to report on homelessness in the District. Street Sense expects more than 20 stories to be posted throughout the day.

Here are some of the stories that can already be found as part of the 2021 news blitz:

D.C. Scrambled To Shelter Unhoused Residents In Hotels After COVID Hit. What Did We Learn From PEP-V?: Launched more than 18 months ago, the program places unhoused residents most at-risk of falling seriously ill if they contract COVID-19 into hotels leased out by the city’s Department of Human Services — an effort to prevent the transmission of coronavirus in the city’s congregate shelters. (Colleen Grablick/DCist)

With more flooding and excessive heat, extreme weather disproportionately causes health issues in unhoused populations: As extreme weather persists and increases nationally, floods, excessive heat and poor air quality in the District disproportionately harm those living outside, people of color and people living east of the Anacostia River. (Kaela Roeder/The DC Line)

“Black lives are going to hell,” says resident flipping off DC’s Mayor: Mere hours after workers finished laying sod on the last Friday of September, elected officials, government staff, and D.C. residents attended a reopening ceremony for Franklin Park. (Gordon Chaffin/Street Sense Media)

D.C. is in the midst of a housing crisis. Advocates believe it doesn’t have to be.: There are thousands of unhoused people in Washington, D.C. There are also thousands of vacant apartments. For the founders of Vacant to Virus-Reduction (V2VR) the solution seems obvious: offer them the housing. (Margaret Hartigan and Deena Eichhorn/The Georgetown Voice)

After Chaotic Week, DC Program to House Encampment Residents Comes Under Scrutiny: DC plans to evict the residents of the Shaw park encampment next month, so Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services (DMHHS) Wayne Turnage and pilot program lead Jamal Weldon attended ANC 6E’s meeting earlier this week to provide an update on the plans for the park and what will be done to avoid repeating the mistakes made earlier in the week. (Nena Perry-Brown/Urban Turf)

Links to all of the stories from the Homeless Crisis Reporting Project's news blitz can be found on the project's homepage: www.DCHomelessCrisis.press as soon as they are available.

Join the Conversation

Reporters and news organizations will be sharing their stories on Twitter using the #DCHomelessCrisis hashtag. The public is invited to follow the links to the stories and share the tweets with their friends and followers. People are also encouraged to join the conversation on the #DCHomelessCrisis Solutions public Facebook group.

The Hoya mentions Hidden Hostility DC, a project by @AmericanU students to map out all of the "anti-vagrant" hostile architecture in the District. Surely, @CMBrookePinto was asked about her Ward's concentration of anti-human designs. https://t.co/VcpGKUEbIy #DCHomelessCrisis pic.twitter.com/co7s4CzAka
— Street Sense Media (@streetsensedc) October 7, 2021