District officials elected to double the number of tenants at The Aston unhoused shelter after presenting the bridge housing facility’s early success in connecting residents to permanent housing at back-to-back local governing body meetings on Monday.
The Community Advisory Team, a body overseeing The Aston, voted unanimously with one abstention to raise the number of unhoused people residing in the facility on New Hampshire Avenue from 50 to 100, in line with the phased move-in system officials announced in September. An hour and a half earlier, D.C. Department of Human Services Deputy Administrator Anthony Newman said 35 of The Aston’s 50 residents are involved in the “housing process,” working with case managers to secure long-term housing.
“I’ve spoken to many residents and stakeholders around The Aston, many of whom were very skeptical, I’ll say, about the opening starting, and have said, ‘Look, there haven’t been problems,’” Ward 2 Councilmember Brooke Pinto said at the CAT meeting.
The meeting doubleheader came as stipulated in the CAT’s nonlegally binding Good Neighbor Agreement, which outlines the communication locals should expect from DHS, the CAT and the shelter’s provider, Friendship Place. The document states that after two months of operations, DHS would assess the facility and present a report of its outcomes to the community at an ANC meeting, before DHS aims to augment the number of tenants to the building’s maximum capacity of 100.
Division Director of The Aston Jermey Jones said in December that the bridge housing facility admitted 39 tenants in its first month, and CAT member Courtney Cooperman said earlier this month that the shelter reached 50 residents, both reporting smooth operations and a lack of community concerns about the facility.
Newman at the CAT meeting said the number of tenants won’t increase immediately, but the vote kicks off the process where 50 more admittees can be phased in similarly to the first cohort, adding that he is confident in DHS’ ability to streamline the transition to 100 tenants, especially during hypothermia season. Two people experiencing homelessness died from hypothermia or cold exposure in the District last year, per the fiscal year 2025 winter plan by the D.C. Interagency Council on Homelessness.
“Fifty more beds will be 50 more beds,” Newman said. “Any way you look at it is coming out of the system, and mostly from unhoused individuals.”
Newman at the ANC meeting said 10 residents have exited The Aston in the first month, with one moving into Permanent Supportive Housing and the other nine “unexplained” — an account that raised eyebrows among meeting attendees. Newman said DHS will try to do a better job of understanding why residents leave, but Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services Senior Legal and Policy Advisor Sakina Thompson said it’s likely that moving into a facility with structure and “finite goal-setting” after living outdoors “might be too much for some folks.”
“We’re trying to give the opportunity to people who really haven’t had the opportunity before,” Thompson said. “And maybe it’ll take them a couple of times. Maybe it’ll do something down the road. We just don’t know.”
Newman said The Aston has one caseworker per 13 residents, a ratio that will likely increase when the shelter admits a larger cohort. He said much of the case managers’ focuses are on residents who are not matched with permanent housing resources and that for those already matched with housing and have other primary case workers, they operate in a “supplemental perspective.”
The uptick in residents comes after a year of setbacks and debates surrounding The Aston as officials encountered difficulties securing a provider, lawsuits attempted to block the shelter’s opening and a failed building inspection. West End locals withdrew their lawsuit and zoning complaint last week, wrapping up the yearslong legal battle that left the shelter in limbo.
Albert Kramer, a member of the CAT, asked if augmenting by up to 100 participants in The Aston’s bridge housing program was “premature.” He said he is confident in DHS’ ability to oversee the facility but worried the noncongregate shelter model, the first of its kind in the District, might not be ready to move forward without a full quarter’s worth of data.
“I just feel that we’d be doing better and be doing the program a service, if we made sure we were really on solid ground before we went ahead and moved too quickly and had something happen that then potentially cast the program into a negative light,” Kramer said.
CEO of Miriam’s Kitchen Scott Schenkelberg said The Aston fills gaps in the District’s current housing system, which is another reason to open the shelter’s door to another cohort of tenants.
“Even if it weren’t bitterly cold outside, it could be the most lovely day in spring, you know, or months of spring, people are in desperate need of housing right now,” Schenkelberg said. “You know, so I think the bridge housing program is alleviating a lot of strain on the system.”
