“We are basically homeless now. We’re homeless.”

It’s been nearly two weeks since a gas explosion forced Angel Requeno from his Columbia Heights apartment, and he says many of his neighbors are worried about what’s next.

“We have only had enough time to take out personal belongings, like clothing, medications,” he said

The blast on September 20 left the apartment complex too dangerous to be inhabited.

And in the days following the explosion, Requeno and his 16-year-old pitbull, Peggy, were forced to sleep in his car, and his beloved birds left out in the elements.

District leaders say dozens of families were forced from their homes.

Wednesday evening, those residents got some answers about what’s next, with reps from several agencies holding a town hall.

The District says currently 100 displaced residents are staying in hotels, and they will cover those rooms until October 17.

“Where can we go? You know a lot of places we go, the rents are from 1800 to over $2000 and you know for us to provide that type of rent, we are going to have to literally work day and night,” Requeno said.

The Department of Buildings says it is the owner’s responsibility to make those repairs, but damage to the complex is so bad, it will take months before it’s safe enough to turn on utilities. That’s if the landlord doesn’t appeal, and officials say they have been “less than responsive.”

“We have rights as tenants, and they pointed that out,” Requeno said. “However, the landlord is not responding.”

In the meantime, the District is helping residents with supplies and transportation to move their stuff into storage, as well as a long list of resources to find temporary housing.

Requeno says thankfully, he and Peggy are now staying in a hotel. But he says he doesn’t know what he’s going to do once that time is up.

“Only God knows,” he said. “Only God knows.”

The emergency action on Tuesday aimed to reduce the burden on housing providers in crisis due to an influx of unpaid rent and delayed eviction cases.

ERAP is a government program that provides low-income residents with subsidized housing. People earning less than 40% of the area median income receive government assistance for overdue rent, late fees, and court costs for households facing evictions, according to the District of Columbia Department of Human Services.

Tweaks made to the program in 2022 prohibited landlords from evicting tenants who held unpaid rent if they had pending applications for ERAP funds and placed heavy restrictions on judges’ ability to weigh in on eviction appeals from landlords.

Council Chairman Phil Mendelson said this week that, under the ERAP policies, housing providers have run into a wall of financial challenges.

“What we are seeing is, on an aggregate basis, these affordable housing providers are carrying tens of millions of dollars in uncollected rent, and that is not sustainable,” Mendelson said.

With landlords losing millions of dollars in unpaid rent, the council’s emergency legislation reversed eviction policies, empowered courts to process eviction proceedings even if a tenant had a pending ERAP application, and allocated $80 million in Housing Production Trust Fund money as bridge loans to prevent subsidized affordable housing providers from declaring bankruptcy.

The council’s legislative action is a temporary measure. However, the mayor’s office is seeking permanent actions to remedy the housing fiasco.

“Comprehensive, permanent legislation and continued robust investment in the system will be needed to protect our investments and progress,” Mayor Muriel Bowser said Tuesday evening.

The district’s affordable housing market is facing a “looming crisis,” according to a June report published by the Apartment and Office Building Association of Metropolitan Washington. The report found that ERAP policies had put affordable housing providers “on the verge of financial insolvency.”

Earlier this spring, Laura Green Zeilinger, the director of the D.C. Department of Human Services, the agency that oversees ERAP, worried that the program was not a sustainable solution to the housing affordability crisis. She warned that the injection of federal funds into ERAP during the pandemic “created an expectation that [DHS] cannot meet.”

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“ERAP is never going to have a budget of $300 million, and we need to be honest with residents that they need to do everything they can to pay their rent,” Zeilinger said.

The ERAP announced this year that due to its funds being “exhausted,” it is closing the application portal for new beneficiaries for fiscal 2025.

D.C. public schoolteachers would get a raise and more planning time as part of a tentative agreement with the city on a new five-year union contract.

The tentative agreement, which both the Washington Teachers’ Union and Mayor Muriel Bowser announced Monday night, comes after over a year of negotiations. It still has to be ratified by the union’s members.

The union’s last contract took over three years, and the one that preceded it took about five, WTU president Jacqueline Pogue-Lyons said. She called the fact the most recent agreement took only about a year “something to celebrate.”

The contract includes a raise for the union’s members, but Pogue-Lyons didn’t elaborate on the structure, because members haven’t yet had a chance to review the terms of the agreement, she said. But many other protections are tied to working conditions for teachers, which Pogue-Lyons said are essential to attracting and retaining educators.

“There’s so much competition to get great and knowledgeable people,” Pogue Lyons said. “So we want to get them, but we also want to keep them. We don’t want a revolving door, because we feel the longer we keep our teachers, the better they become as educators.”

She added that the deal includes a memorandum of agreement (MOA) on achieving and keeping diversity in schools and an MOA on climate, which is tied to ensuring classrooms have enough ventilation and that air quality is good.

The agreement has details on controlling class size and will enable teachers to keep their vision and dental insurance, which they feared they might lose. It features more planning time, Pogue Lyons said, and the assurance that special education and other teachers won’t be pulled out of their classrooms to perform other duties.

“When those things happen, we’re not able to meet the needs of the students that were tasked to teach, especially our most vulnerable population,” Pogue Lyons said.

In a joint statement, Pogue-Lyons, Bowser and Chancellor Lewis Ferebee said the agreement “shows what can be achieved when we work together with a common goal of putting students first. With this agreement, we are reaffirming our commitment to investing in our young people and making D.C. the number one city for teachers.”

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