Steve Burns
WMAL.com

WASHINGTON – (WMAL) As costs continue soaring to house the District’s homeless population, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser Tuesday said the District should put an end to housing non-District residents in the city’s homeless shelters.

“If we are serving everybody else’s residents, we can’t serve our own,” Bowser said during a Mayor-Council breakfast Tuesday morning. “We have an obligation to serve our residents, but we cannot serve the entire region.”

City officials say costs are expanding rapidly as the homeless population grows. DHS Director Dr. Laura Zeilinger said the city is paying $80,000 a night in motel costs to house the homeless population that can’t fit in city shelters.

“It is incredibly costly in a way that we are not going to be able to afford in the long run,” Zeilinger said.

The debate exposed what may be a generational divide on the Council, as one newer Councilmember, Robert White, disagreed with the Mayor’s sentiment, comparing the issue to the concept of sanctuary cities.

“We have an obligation to people, even if they happen to sometimes live across the border,” White said. “I think homelessness doesn’t know jurisdictions.”

Councilmember Jack Evans, who is in his 24th year on the Council, said the city has been down this road before in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

“We had people from all over the region using our shelters, we ran out of capacity, and the amount of money we were spending ballooned enormously,” Evans said.

The District went nearly bankrupt by 1995, and was placed under the supervision of a federal Control Board for six years.

“Listen to the history, and understand where we have been,” Councilmember Anita Bonds said. “We can run out of money. Bottom line, that’s what will happen with our government if we try to take care of the region.”

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