Release From Prison Doesn’t End the Punishment

I spent most of a recent Friday at a conference on returning citizens. The Washington National Cathedral organized it to develop an agenda for actions that would help them re-enter the community after their release from prison — and perhaps keep so many from having to make the journey back.

I’ve been trying to digest the insights and impressions I gained. There was a lot coming at us from a lot of different angles.

And all the while, I keep thinking about what my tablemate Cathy, a recently returned citizen, said to me before the conference began. “I will live with this for the rest of my life.”

The “this,” I think, was partly the reason she was incarcerated to begin with — a nonviolent offense that involved no personal gain. She feels the charge was unfair.

She’ll live her whole life with a sense of injustice — and payments to the government for restitution in excess of $1 million.

The bigger part of the “this” are other consequences. Her family disowned her. And the case manager at the halfway house she was transferred to did nothing to prepare for the time she’d be released, though she’d have no home to go to.

“I would have been on the streets,” she said, if an acquaintance hadn’t found her a space in a shelter — a fortunate, if temporary solution to a common form of neglect that often leaves returning citizens stranded.

Top of the “this” list, however, is the red flag employers see.

Cathy has substantial work experience and in-demand skills. She got hired, criminal record notwithstanding, shortly after her release. But the company let her go, without notice or explanation. She assumes because some higher-up learned of her record.

She’s had a number of interviews since. But they’ve netted nothing — and in some cases, ended as soon as she’s disclosed her criminal conviction. The human resources person just “shuts down,” she said.

Well, Cathy is very capable and very determined. And there are people looking out for her interests, including some of the leaders at the conference.

So I believe she’ll find work. But her experience in our criminal justice system has inalterably changed her life — and in some ways, her very self, I gather.

Some would say, well, this is justice. An impartial judge decided she’d done something wrong. She was punished for it. And if the punishment lasts beyond her time in prison, so does the wrong. She can’t go back in time and undo it.

Set aside the particularities of Cathy’s case, where the question of wrong seems at least debatable.

I can’t help feeling that the justice our system purportedly metes out is enormously wasteful, both in dollars and in human lives. And the judgments commonly made about people with criminal records make the waste worse.

We incarcerate far more people than any other country in the world — nearly 1.6 million in 2011. We pay, on average, $34,135 a year for every one of them we’ve got locked up.

More than one in four released from state prisons are back within three years, draining funds that could be used for other purposes, including services that could keep them from going back through the revolving door.

“If any other institutions in America were as unsuccessful in achieving their ostensible purpose …, we would shut them down tomorrow,” says Professor James Gilligan.

The indirect costs of our propensity to imprison are greater than what we pay to lock up people who pose no risk of harm to anyone — and then to marginalize both them and formerly dangerous returning citizens who’d like nothing better than to lead ordinary, law-abiding lives.

A data analysis by two of the Pew Charitable Trusts’ projects found, among other things, that:

• Former male inmates earned 40% less than they would have if not incarcerated — a loss of nearly $179,000 by the time they reached age 49.
• Those whose earnings put them in the bottom fifth were twice as likely to be there 20 years later as low-earners who hadn’t done time.
• They were thus earning less than $7,600 in 2006 — about 46% of the federal poverty line for a family of three.

We must also consider the collateral damage to those who’ve done nothing wrong at all. More than half the people behind bars in 2008 were parents of minor-age children — most of them fathers.

Two-thirds of them were in prison for non-violent crimes. More than half had been the primary breadwinners for their families.

So families become poorer and more unstable — not only while the parent is behind bars, but afterwards.

For these as well as other reasons, children whose parents have been incarcerated get into more trouble in school. One study found that 23% whose fathers had served time were suspended or expelled, as compared to only 4% whose fathers hadn’t.

Their “prospects for economic mobility become significantly dimmer,” the Pew authors say — a fine understatement. They may, in fact, as the American Civil Liberties Union says, be in the pipeline to prison.

These are all quantifiable costs — not only to the returned citizens and their families, but to our economy as a whole.

How do we measure the psychological damages to children whose parents are taken away — not only those that result in the kinds of behaviors that get them suspended, but anxiety, depression and the like?

The psychological damage to the parents themselves? “People are coming out traumatized because of what goes on inside,” said one of the returning citizens at the conference.

How do we measure the contributions people like Cathy might make if their job opportunities weren’t constrained by their records?

Or the loss to her godchild, whose parents have severed connections?

Why Is the Chained CPI in the President’s Budget?

My last post took on some of the basic questions raised by the debate over using the chained CPI (Consumer Price Index) to adjust Social Security benefits.

I deferred the question in the headline here because the post was already quite long, and the answer isn’t simple. So here goes …

Social Security and the Deficit

Strictly speaking, Social Security doesn’t belong in the budget at all — at least, not in the package of spending and revenue proposals we ordinarily think of as such.

It has its own revenue stream — the payroll tax, plus an earmarked portion of income taxes paid on some of the benefits it provides. It also has $2.7 trillion in reserves, i.e., the unused portion of these taxes, invested in Treasury bonds, and the interest on these.

That’s all it’s got.

A shortfall would be dreadful, but it would have no impact on the deficit — unless, as seems likely, Congress used general tax revenues to avert a sudden, big benefits cut.

This, however, is an argument for crafting a measure that will keep the program solvent, not for putting the chained CPI in the budget.

Some say that the Trust Fund is just an accounting fiction. The Treasury bonds the reserves are invested in signify money that’s being used to help pay for items in what we ordinarily think of as the budget.

When Social Security starts drawing on its reserves, as it already has, the Treasury Department has to sell some bonds to other investors in order to pay the program what it owes — or use revenues from taxes not specifically intended for Social Security.

This doesn’t mean that Social Security is contributing to the deficit, however — any more than you or I could be said to increase the deficit if we cashed in some savings bonds a grandparent once gave us.

More Revenues Without Tax Reform

The chained CPI is probably in the President’s budget in part because it would increase tax revenues without any rate-raising or loophole-closing at all.

According to Congressional Budget Office estimates, the federal government would gain $123.7 billion* over the first 10 years because tax brackets and other annually-adjusted tax provisions, e.g., the personal exemption and standard deduction, would rise more slowly.

So even a quite small increase in income could get taxed at a higher rate. The amount we’d owe wouldn’t be a whole lot greater than what we’d owe if the Internal Revenue Service continued to use the same inflation measure it’s been using.

But the tax code would be somewhat less progressive because filers at fairly low and moderate-income levels would take the biggest hits.

And at least some low and moderate-income families would get smaller reductions and/or refunds from the Earned Income Tax Credit because the maximum credit is adjusted for inflation, as are the phase-outs that gradually lower the credit when earnings reach some level above the amount eligible for the maximum.

There would be no impact on the refundable Child Tax Credit if Congress makes the current threshold for claiming it permanent, as the President has proposed.

Big if here, since we know that Congressional Republicans have wanted the EITC and the Child Tax Credit to revert to their more restrictive pre-Recovery Act forms.

Political Strategy

The revenues raised would be a small portion of the total increase the President now says he’d settle for. So it’s pretty clear the chained CPI is in the budget mainly for strategic reasons.

The received wisdom seems to be that he’s again striving for a grand bargain — offering Republican Congressional leaders the chained CPI and Medicare spending cuts they said they wanted in the fond hope they’ll agree to a scaled-back revenue-raising plan.

Or if not that, perhaps proving they’re altogether unreasonable and ought to lose their House majority next year so that Congress can get important business done.

This is what Michael Tomasky at The Daily Beast thinks the President is up to — and why he thinks no one should fret about the chained CPI.

The Nation‘s John Nichols thinks otherwise. Look, he says, at how the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee is already messaging the President’s proposal as a “shocking assault on seniors.”

This is likely to depress votes for Democrats next year, Nichols predicts, citing examples from past mid-term Congressional elections.

The chained CPI proposal certainly has complicated life for Democrats in Congress now, even if they ultimately don’t have to cast an up-or-down vote on it — still TBD.

The larger issue, I think, is that the President has, to some extent, legitimized use of the chained CPI as a way to “save” Social Security — and chosen it instead of lifting the payroll tax cap.

So, as Blake Zeff at Salon asks, “How hard would it be for Republicans to push cuts through, when this [the chained CPI] is now mainstream Democratic policy?”

Cuts, I’d add, that could extend to programs specifically for low-income people, which the President’s proposal would hold harmless.

Note how House Majority Leader John Boehner grudgingly welcomes the chained CPI as an acknowledgment that “our safety net programs are unsustainable.”

This implies something far more sweeping than what the President has proposed for Social Security and Medicare, which arguably aren’t safety net programs anyway.

Well, maybe the rumblings and grumblings, mine included, are just worst-case scenarios. But I’m not ready to bet on that.

* The Office of Management and Budget estimates the revenue gain at $100 billion. Differences between CBO and OMB estimates are not unusual.

Chained CPI and Social Security: Some Questions and Answers

Back in January I said I’d delve into the impacts of using the chained CPI (Consumer Price Index) to adjust Social Security benefits.

Then the President delivered a strong defense of “the commitments we make to each other,” including Social Security. So I put my draft post aside, figuring the chained CPI was off the bargaining table.

The more fool I. As you’ve probably read, it’s among the entitlement “reforms” in the President’s proposed budget.

The White House has taken great care to package it with other changes that would supposedly protect very elderly retirees and others who’ve relied on Social Security benefits for a long time. Also to shield programs that base eligibility on income.

But as economist/blogger Jared Bernstein said some time ago, the danger is that protections like these will all get swept aside, leaving only the benefits cuts.

Here then are some of the basic issues, as I see them. More to follow in a second post.

Why Do Anything About Social Security?

Our federal policymakers must do something about the Social Security retirement and disability insurance programs — and the sooner the better.

The Trust Fund will run out of money long about 2033. If nothing is done before then, the Social Security Administration will have to rely solely on what it continuously receives from payroll taxes.

That would be enough to pay about 75% of the benefits retirees would get if the Trust Fund still had reserves — a devastating loss for the nearly two-thirds who rely mainly or entirely on those benefits.

What Could Prevent the Shortfall?

At the risk of over-simplifying, our policymakers have two choices, not counting just letting the Trust Fund dry up. They could change the system to take in more or pay out less.

A switch to the chained CPI represents the latter approach because it rises more slowly than the currently-used index — the CPI-W. So, therefore, would the benefits that seniors, severely disabled former workers and eligible survivors receive.

Policymakers could instead “scrap the cap” on the amount of wage income subject to the tax that feeds the Social Security programs.

Or they could raise it enough to cover all but the top 10% of income, as it did in 1982 after Congress stepped in to shore up the program — not for the last time, incidentally.

High earners wouldn’t like this, of course. Nor perhaps would employers, since they’re responsible for half the payroll tax.

The National Federation of Independent Business has already said that its small business members “would violently oppose” it. These, as you know, are the “job creators” that our President and Congressional leaders are so fond of.

Is the Chained CPI More Accurate for Cost-of-Living Adjustments

Proponents of the chained CPI claim that it’s simply a more accurate cost-of-living measure because it reflects consumer responses to price increases. If the price of beef goes up, they buy less of it and more chicken. Etc.

Opponents argue that the index isn’t more accurate for seniors because they spend far higher portions of their income on items that aren’t amenable to switches, especially health care.

Even the CPI-W apparently understates their cost-of-living increases.

For some time now, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has maintained an experimental cost-of-living index specifically for the elderly. Over the long haul, it has risen somewhat faster than the CPI-W. And Social Security’s chief actuary expects it will in the future.

We’d probably see similar results from a cost-of-living measure for people with severe disabilities, since many of them also have disproportionately high health care costs.

So if accuracy were the real issue, Congress would give BLS the funds to fully develop its experimental index, as The New York Times, among others, has suggested.

What Other Objections Have Opponents Raised?

The over-riding objection to the chained CPI switch is that it would effectively cut benefits. The loss in any one year would be small. But losses would mount up over time because the base for each cost-of-living adjustment, as well as the COLA itself, would be lower.

The average earner, says the Strengthen Social Security Campaign, would lose a total of $4,631 by age 75 — more than three months of benefits. Another 10 years and the loss would mount to nearly a year’s worth of benefits.

We need to recall that retired workers now get, on average, only $1,261 a month — and former workers in the Social Security Disability Insurance program somewhat less.

For 36% of seniors, Social Security provides at least 90% of income — not surprising, given what we know about retirement savings. It’s the sole source of income for 29% of the most elderly.

As I mentioned earlier, the President’s budget includes a “benefit enhancement” — popularly known as a bump up. It’s supposed to restore the cumulative losses for people who live long enough to benefit.

Most who do would still get less, according to the SSS Campaign.

Those who don’t are just out of luck, of course. And they’re disproportionately lower-income people, for whom every Social Security dollar counts.

UPDATE: After I published this, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities issued a brief that provides more detail on the impacts of the chained CPI on Social Security retirement benefits.

What’s Happening With the Minimum Wage

Virtually every issue I write about morphs over time — new information, a new wrinkle identified, a whole new development, etc.

Nothing unusual about this. It’s how public policy is. But it’s frustrating because the posts I’ve published are out there in the cyber-world — and still read, which indicates continuing interest in learning the latest.

So here are a couple of updates on minimum wage increases.

A Better Minimum Wage Proposal

As I noted in my post about the President’s minimum wage proposal, Senator Tom Harkin and Congressman George Miller said they planned to introduce a bill that would phase in a larger increase.

Now they have. And, as promised, it would raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10 by 2015, then index it to cost-of-living increases, as the President also proposed.

Like last year’s Fair Minimum Wage Act, the new version would also gradually raise the tip credit wage until it reached 70% of the regular federal minimum — estimated at $7.07 an hour. It would then remain at 70%, thus rising whenever the regular federal minimum did.

Congressman Miller took a stab at getting the bill passed by proposing it as an amendment to the SKILLS Act — a block grant of sorts of all the federal workforce development programs that wouldn’t be killed outright.

The amendment was resoundingly defeated, with all Republicans (except those absent) and six Democrats voting against it.

Not the end of the effort, I’m sure. But it shows how tough the battle will be.

Impatience at State and Local Levels

It took Congress 10 years to pass the last federal minimum wage increase. As one bill and then another stalled, action shifted to the states.

Seventeen states raised their minimum wages higher than the frozen federal level — and in nine cases, indexed them. Several cities did so as well.

A lesson of sorts to Congressional Republicans and business interests fueling the opposition, since the federal bills they were blocking didn’t include indexing.

We’re seeing signs of a similar movement now.

Last November, voters in San Jose, California passed a ballot measure that increased the local minimum wage to $10.00 an hour — and indexed it.

Albuquerque voters also approved a ballot measure to raise and index their city’s minimum wage, with a partial exemption for employers that spend a specified minimum on child care or health care benefits.

The New Mexico legislature has passed a bill that would raise the state’s minimum wage to the same level as Albuquerque’s. Governor Susana Martinez has all but said she’ll veto it, but would approve a smaller increase.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie did recently veto a minimum wage increase, though in a manner that would have allowed the legislature to come back with a phased-in version — and no indexing.

The legislature decided instead to put a slightly smaller increase on the ballot.

In New York, Governor Andrew Cuomo and legislative leaders have agreed to a deal that will raise the state’s minimum wage to $9.00 by 2016. No indexing, however, because Senate Republicans wouldn’t buy it. No increase in the tip credit wage either.

Minimum wage increases are also pending in six other states — some with more hopeful prospects than others. None would boost the wage as much as the Fair Minimum Wage Act would, but all would index.

Mayor Gray’s Budget Would Mean No More Money for Many Critical Needs

As I said yesterday, Mayor Gray’s proposed Fiscal Year 2014 budget provides more money for some, but little more — in some cases, no more — for programs that address low-income residents’ critical needs.

For example …

There will be $700,000 more for permanent supportive housing — reportedly enough to accommodate 45 more chronically homeless individuals and/or families than the program is serving now.

But there probably won’t be money to ensure that homeless families with no place to stay can sleep safely indoors unless it’s freezing cold outside.

Nor will there be money to increase the number of locally-funded housing vouchers they could use to help pay market-rate rents until they can afford the full rent on their own.

This could actually mean fewer of these so-called tenant-based housing vouchers because the DC Housing Authority will get less money for Housing Choice (formerly Section 8) vouchers due to sequestration.

There will be no more money for child care subsidies, though the unreasonably low reimbursement rates providers get account, at least in part, for the fact that parents of some 9,000 infants and toddlers can’t get affordable child care.

In this case, what looks like level-funding — perhaps a small increase even — will mean somewhat over $1.5 million less because sequestration will cut a portion of the District’s federal child care funding.

There will be no more money for adult literacy services — in fact, apparently $734,000 less, though I’m told the budget document may be misleading.

Even without the cut, the District will be investing considerably less than it once did to address a problem that affects not only the job prospects and daily lives of more than a third of adult residents, but the children they’re raising.

Adult literacy programs need more money not only for these “functionally illiterate” residents, but for more proficient high school dropouts, who can get the equivalent of a high school diploma by passing the GED tests.

These tests will get harder next year — and require computer proficiency. Adult literacy programs thus need to invest more in teacher training and equipment to get their students up to speed (literally and figuratively).

One would think that the District’s abysmal 59% GED pass rate would have led the Mayor, who’s so concerned about employment here, to put more money into these programs.

Ditto for adult job training, which the Mayor’s budget would cut by $624,000 — considerably more if measured against what the program will have this year if the DC Council approves his proposed supplement.

There will be no money to protect families in the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program from running up against the five-year time limit in cases where the parents have been excused from regular work activity requirements for compelling reasons, e.g., needs to care for a sick or disabled family member, domestic violence trauma.

There will, however, be money to protect long-term TANF families from further benefits cuts for another year.

This is a further indication that the Department of Human Services doesn’t have the resources it needs for its program revamp. Nor will it in the Mayor’s proposed budget, according to the DC Fiscal Policy Institute’s analysis.

Because even if it completes the remaining 9,000 or so assessments that are supposed to produce suitable work preparation plans for TANF parents, there won’t be enough training slots for them.

For a family of three, the reprieve will mean a continuing cash income of $257 a month, instead of the regular $428 — 23.9% less in real dollars than the year TANF was created.

The Mayor might have considered increasing TANF benefits, as a few states have recently done. All he chose to do was replace “lost” federal dollars, which weren’t really lost, but merely funds the District didn’t have left over, as it did the year before.

I understand that the Mayor has competing interests to balance. He wants to make the city an appealing place for higher-income people to live — good for the local economy, essential adequate revenues.

He’s got to worry about the stability and quality of the District’s own workforce.

And he understands that the city’s future hinges in part on how well it educates the next generation — though apparently not that all the early learning opportunities, libraries, modernized schools and the like can’t compensate for resources parents lack to provide for their kids’ basic needs.

Yet his budget truly is, in many respects, what its title says. It’s investing in tomorrow while ignoring investments needed today.

Needed, at any rate, if the District’s prosperity is going to benefit everyone, as the Mayor rightly says it should.

Mayor Gray Proposes More Money for Some, But Not Enough for the Neediest

Washington City Paper‘s headline after Mayor Gray released his proposed Fiscal Year 2014 budget proclaimed “Money for Everyone!” Not altogether so.

There will be money for most, but not quite everyone. There will be more money for some — both businesses and individuals, including some of the District’s lowest-income residents.

But their needs still get shorted, even now that the District is looking forward to $79.7 million more in revenues than the windfall expected for this fiscal year.

So here’s a selective look at who will get more, focused mainly, as you might expect, on spending that will — or at least, could — help low-income residents. Next post will deal with help they won’t get, but could have.

There will certainly be more money for construction companies. The proposed budget bulges with projects for them — public school buildings (new and modernized), infrastructure, recreational facilities, libraries.

If the companies comply with the District’s First Source law, there could be more jobs — hence money — for unemployed and underemployed D.C. residents too.

There will be more money for affordable housing developers, since the Mayor decided to invest the bulk of his promised $100 million in the Housing Production Trust Fund.

This should ultimately mean more money for food, clothing and other necessities for some of the nearly two-thirds of extremely low-income District households who are now paying more than half their income for rent because 40% of Trust Fund dollars are supposed to help finance housing for them.

An additional $5 million will go for housing vouchers that help pay for the operating costs of units designated for the District’s lowest-income residents — an essential complement to the Trust Fund money.

Another $3.1 million will provide more housing for victims of domestic violence.

And there will be a total of $2 million more for one-time and limited-term assistance to families for whom the rent has been so unaffordable that they’ve been evicted — or are about to be.

But — getting ahead of myself here, I know — not a penny more for regular vouchers that homeless and other very low-income residents could use to help pay market-rate rents.

There will be more money for all District employees, who’ll get their first pay increases in at least four years — not only fair, but perhaps job-creating if the employees spend some of their extra cash locally.

There will be more money for some nonprofits because the Mayor’s budget would create a $15 million competitive grant fund for them.

And there will be more money for lots of District residents who’ve got municipal bonds in their investment portfolios.

Current law would impose a tax on the interest these bonds earn, unless issued by the District.

But the Mayor wants to repeal it, giving us bondholders a total of nearly $13 million over the next five years — and the unique privilege of investing tax-free in bonds of no benefit to our community.

The tax giveaway and the values it reflects are among the reasons that there’s no more money for some of the urgent needs of the District’s low-income residents, though there will be more money for other “quality of life” investments like bike lanes.

Nothing against bike lanes, mind you. But I would have put a higher priority on improving the quality of life of homeless families, some of whom will probably again be spending their nights in Metro stations, hospital waiting rooms and the like.

And a higher priority on other programs and services that can advance not only the Mayor’s quality of life improvement goal, but his other goals too.

DC Mayor Slips Harmful Homeless Policy Changes Into Budget Bill

The DC Department of Human Services has a problem. Too many homeless families for the space it’s got to shelter them. And far too many for the permanent supportive housing units it’s funded to give some of them a more suitable place to live.

Mayor Gray has a solution, tucked into his proposed Budget Support Act — the legislative changes supposedly needed to make his actual budget consistent with District laws.

The changes I’m referring to would amend the Homeless Services Reform Act — the law that, among other things, gives homeless families with no safe place to stay a right to shelter or housing in extremely cold and hot weather.

The amendments would allow DHS to force sheltered families into temporarily-subsidized housing — or out onto the streets if they refuse it.

Families it decided weren’t cooperating with caseworkers assigned to assess their needs could also be kicked out of wherever DHS had temporarily parked them — and with none of the due process protections they have now, as the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless explains.

They’d lose them because the amendments give legal authority to a provisional shelter policy that the Legal Clinic successfully contested last winter.

So they’d be highly vulnerable to expulsions based on subjective judgments that they’ve failed to meet demands, even if they couldn’t or didn’t for good and proper reasons.

Experience with sanctions imposed on parents in Temporary Assistance for Needy Families programs shows this is not a far-fetched concern.

And just to ensure that DHS would have fewer homeless families to serve, the amendments would authorize the Mayor to require that they establish and contribute to savings accounts or the equivalent “as a condition of receiving shelter or supportive housing services.”

As if these families have money to squirrel away — even the vast majority at DC General, who rely on the egregiously low cash benefits they get from the District’s TANF program or are poor enough to qualify.

The amendments would also allow providers of supportive housing to establish time limits on residency — a strange redefinition of what’s commonly called permanent supportive housing.

Even stranger because DHS could bar the doors to its PSH units after residents were away for 60 days, even if they’d been in a hospital.

And there would be a fixed two-year time limit on transitional housing — another form of housing that includes supportive services designed to help residents deal with problems that led to their becoming homeless.

Now, as I said, DHS does have a homeless family problem. But it has neither the authority nor the resources to appropriately solve it.

Not surprisingly, the number of homeless families increased when the recession set in. And not surprisingly, it hasn’t decreased, though the local economy is in a recovery mode.

The unemployment rate in the District is still higher than the still-high national rate. And it’s up in the double digits in the poorest parts of the city.

The larger problem, however, is the acute shortage of housing that low-income District residents can afford. This helps account not only for the rise in family homelessness, but for the difficulties DHS has had in moving families out of DC General so that others can move in.

It insisted that it would have enough units there this winter — perhaps more than enough — because its rapid re-housing program would continuously free up space.

Unrealistic, as predicted — and partly because of problems baked into rapid re-housing.

This program, as I’ve written before, provides families with housing that’s subsidized for, at most, a year. It’s good for families that are temporarily down on their luck, but they’re hardly a majority of those at DC General.

Many have looked at the rapid re-housing offer and sensibly concluded they’d be homeless again as soon as they had to pay the full rent — and perhaps then denied shelter because it wasn’t cold enough.

Some, I’m told, have also refused to be rapidly re-housed because the units offered were potentially unsafe or otherwise inappropriate, e.g., because they lacked accessibility features a disabled member needed.

Now the Mayor wants to deny them shelter or supportive housing if they refuse two offers — regardless of the reasons.

Also, as I’ve said, kick them out of transitional housing at the end of two years and potentially — or in some cases, definitely — out of permanent supportive housing.

Here too support would end with no assurance that residents wouldn’t immediately be literally homeless again.

In the long run, their housing prospects may be better because the Mayor wants most of his promised $100 million put into the Housing Production Trust Fund, which is supposed to spend 40% of its money on housing that’s affordable for extremely low-income residents.

He’s also proposing that all the additional $5 million he’s allocated to project-based and sponsor-based vouchers, i.e., those that help cover operating costs, be used to house families with no safe place stay or individuals referred by District agencies.

But he’s not proposing a penny more for vouchers that homeless residents — and those who are about to be homeless — could use to help pay market-rate rents until such time as they didn’t need subsidies any more.

A nice boost in funding for these vouchers would help solve the problem his punitive Homeless Services Reform Act amendments seek to address — and in a way that would provide homeless families with a safe, stable housing situation suitable to their needs.

He’s instead decided to spring major, coercive policy changes on homeless residents, service providers, advocates and the DC Council itself without notice — let alone opportunities for input.

You’d think he’d at least have run the proposals by the Interagency Council on Homelessness, which is supposed to play a lead role in the District’s strategies and policies for meeting the needs of its homeless and at-risk residents.

But he and some of his representatives on the ICH probably wouldn’t have liked what they’d have heard.