District of Columbia residents seeking public housing may soon be out of luck.
The Washington Post reports that the D.C. Housing Authority (DCHA) is considering the indefinite closing of its public housing waiting list in order to determine how to improve its functionality. More than 67,000 households are currently on the list, but the DCHA says that people seeking a one- or two-bedroom apartment currently face waiting 20 years for either a vacancy in the 8,000 DCHA-managed units or for one of 10,500 federally funded vouchers.
‘We're talking about suspending the list in order to fix the problems,’ says Dena Michaelson, a DCHA spokesperson. ‘We need to increase transparency, we need to manage expectations and we need to enhance choice.’