One of the programs targeted for cuts in D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s proposed budget is emergency rental assistance the administration says has been abused by people who don’t really need the help.
Thousands of D.C. residents have been able to stay in their homes thanks to help from the city’s emergency rental assistance program (ERAP), but Bowser proposed slashing its budget from $68 million this year to $20 million next year.
“Our economy is growing more slowly than it did, and we have to make some adjustments,” Bowser said. “Just like families are making adjustments in their own households, they expect us and the government to be smart with our budget.”
She told the D.C. Council she believes some people have been abusing ERAP.
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At a budget hearing Friday, Councilmember Robert White pushed back at those claims.
“What we heard from the mayor this week was that people are gaming the system,” he said. “There is no evidence of this. There is no evidence of fraud. What there is evidence of is that rents are going up much higher than incomes. There's evidence that evictions are up. There's evidence that legal programs that assist people in avoiding eviction are all now overstretched. So, what we are seeing is a housing crisis, not a crisis of people gaming the system.”
“We're going to see more people in shelters, which is going to cost taxpayers more money, and we're going to see more people displaced from the city,” White said.
But Department of Human Services Director Laura Zeilinger, who oversees the program, says White is wrong and there is fraud in the program.
“So, we want to make sure that where we're addressing what we've seen not work in the program in instances like that, and that we're making sure that the people who it's intended for able to access it,” she said.
A significant reason the program is being cut is because millions of dollars in federal funds used in the past few years are no longer available, the Bowser administration said.
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