Council roundtable examines whether behavioral‑health supports in housing vouchers are meeting residents’ needs

Councilmember Matt Fruman, chair of the Committee on Human Services, opened the joint roundtable on Nov. 6 saying the purpose was to determine whether behavioral‑health supports tied to the District’s permanent supportive housing and voucher programs are working for participants and their neighbors. “PSH clients work with case managers to develop personalized treatment plans, and they are supposed to have at least 2 monthly contacts with case workers, including a home visit,” Fruman said during opening remarks.

Committee Chair Christina Henderson (Committee on Health) said the hearing was not about whether services exist but whether they “actually work” in practice. She and Fruman pressed administrators from the Department of Human Services (DHS) and the Department of Behavioral Health (DBH) for details about case‑management intensity, program fidelity, and whether high‑need residents are being given the right level of care at intake and as needs evolve.

Witnesses across panels agreed that PSH succeeds for most participants but that a small subset with very high behavioral‑health needs struggles to remain stable in scattered‑site apartments. Pathways‑style experts urged stronger fidelity to Housing First principles and earlier access to assertive community treatment (ACT) teams. Local providers recommended lower caseloads where acuity is high (many providers cited target ranges between 12 and 18 clients per case manager for higher‑needs populations).

Residents and neighborhood representatives described chronic quality‑of‑life problems in several buildings along Connecticut Avenue, including repeated police responses and serious incidents that have strained neighbors and property managers. Marilyn Lance, president of the Brandywine tenant association, told the committee that her building’s calls to MPD rose from occasional to “one, sometimes two visits a day” over recent years and listed incidents including assaults and public drug use.

Acting DHS Director Rachel Pierre and DBH Director Barbara Basron described a new DBH‑contracted outreach and hotline pilot run by Community Connections that began in May to re‑engage residents, provide landlord mediation and onsite case managers in eight high‑incident buildings, and return hotline calls within two hours on business days. Basron said the program has capacity to serve about 500 people and that Community Connections had already returned 84 hotline calls and connected 31 people to behavioral services in the first months.

Fruman and Henderson asked for follow‑up briefings on data definitions (for example, how DHS counts “opt‑outs” of case management and whether opt‑outs are successful graduations or service refusals), and both chairs signaled they would pursue additional oversight and budget reviews to target gaps identified during the roundtable.