POST Local

It’s likely that fewer veterans are sleeping on the streets or in vehicles in the District than earlier this week.  

On Wednesday, the D.C. Housing Authority successfully matched 80 homeless veterans and their families with permanent housing, boosting the number of veterans who receive free or subsidized housing vouchers in the District to 744.

File photo of a homeless war veteran washing dinner dishes at Central Union Mission, which provides emergency shelter for homeless men in Washington, DC. (Jahi Chikwendiu - WASHINGTON POST)

Using part of a $1.5 million grant from the federal Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing Program, the agency held a daylong housing fair where eligible veterans were placed with pre-screened landlords. 

As in other District housing programs, qualified recipients receive a voucher that averages $15,000 annually to use secure an apartment.  Recipients are expected to match the voucher with 30 percent of their incomes.

 “They receive a voucher, with a voucher they can go anywhere they want and rent an apartment,” said Dena Michaelson, a spokeswoman at the Housing Authority. “Many of these folks, since they have had issues, and have been homeless, their income is zero, so it’s totally subsidized.”

District correction officials on Wednesday categorically denied that D.C. Council member-elect Kenyan McDuffie visited the city jail to convince inmates to vote for him in the May 15 special election, squashing rampant rumors and online listserv chatter about his alleged campaign tactics.

Kenyan McDuffie, candidate for the DC Council Ward 5 , voted at Mt. Bethel Baptist Church in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday, May 15, 2012. He is holding daughter Jozi, 2. (HO - Tony Ponds/Courtesy of Kenyan McDuffie campaign)

“Please be advised that there is no truth to the allegations made regarding Kenyan McDuffie’s visits to the D.C. Jail as a council candidate,” said Sylvia Lane, a spokeswoman for the D.C. Department of the Corrections. “We have fully reviewed our visitation records and found without question, that he has not been in the facility. “

 McDuffie, who won a landslide victory to replace former council member Harry Thomas Jr. (D-Ward 5), will be sworn in May 30 after his election is certified.

But in the days since his victory, McDuffie’s has been dogged by continued gossip that he may have improperly pressured inmates at the jail to vote for him by absentee ballot.

D.C. activists may not have a vote in Congress, but they do have props and sarcasm, and they brought plenty of both to a protest outside Rep. Trent Franks’s office Wednesday.

D.C. Vote organized the rally outside the Arizona Republican’s office in the Rayburn Building in response to the hearing Franks held last week on his bill that would ban all abortions in the District after 20
D.C. protesters came to Rep. Trent Franks’ office Wednesday, but he wasn’t there. (AP Photo/Matt York)weeks’ pregnancy. Local leaders view the bill as an intrusion on the city’s self-governance, while Frank, a strong abortion opponent, has pointed out that the Constitution grants Congress the authority to “exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever” in the District.

In that case, the protesters reasoned, Franks must be interested in solving all kinds of other local problems. But when they went to his office Wednesday to ask for help, the door was locked. The phones went straight to a full voice mail box. With the House on recess this week, Franks was likely out of town.

Sulaimon Brown, the former mayoral candidate who said he was paid and promised a city job by Mayor Vincent C. Gray’s campaign, thanked federal investigators for their “hard work” Wednesday — a day after a friend of the mayor pleaded guilty to providing funds to Brown and destroying the evidence that showed a record of the payments.

“I was not looking for vindication for truth need not be vindicated,” Brown released a statement by e-mail. “I was seeking justice.”

The House approved a non-binding measure late Thursday night calling for active-duty military personnel to be exempt from the District’s gun laws, the latest in a series of issues that have divided Congress and local leaders.

(Ricky Carioti) The “Sense of Congress” resolution — offered by Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.) as an amendment to the massive Defense authorization bill — has no force of law and passed by voice vote, without a roll call. But it still drew a harsh response from Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D), who was already smarting from being denied the chance to testify Thursday at a hearing on a measure that would ban late-term abortions in the District.

“If Representative Gingrey believes that active duty military personnel should be exempt from federal or state or local firearms laws, why did he not offer an amendment that would apply nationwide?” Norton asked on the House floor Thursday night. “Perhaps he did not offer such an amendment for the same reason that the Republican sponsor of the bill to ban abortions after 20 weeks in the District of Columbia did not introduce a 20-week bill that would apply nationwide, either. They pick on D.C. because they think they can.”