Conversations That Stay With Me: Part 1

10/29/2025

By Isaiah Franco

As a storytelling volunteer with the Lab, I’ve been spending time speaking with people who are unhoused in Washington, D.C., asking about their experiences, what they see changing in the city and what they wish others understood. What follows are some of the moments and conversations that have stayed with me.

On a grey morning outside of Dupont Circle in the nation’s capital, a man adjusts his jacket. He’s been searching for another in XXL for months, but clothing drives rarely have his size.

He’s a veteran who has been unhoused in D.C. since 2019. Over the years, he’s watched people he knows get placed in housing programs, lose them and cycle back onto the street, sometimes three times in a single year. In that time he’s never been placed in housing once, even with a voucher. When he can, he saves enough money to rent a hotel room for two nights just to get some sleep and a shower, “so I can have a rest day,” he tells me.

“I served the country, but now the country don’t serve me,” he says. He speaks from a place that lands somewhere between frustration and resignation, the kind that comes from years of watching systems move around you but never for you.

“Is there something going on that we don’t know about?”, he says in reference to the presence of the national guard and opacity in housing processes. “Trump or [D.C. Mayor Muriel] Bowser have their own political goals.” To him, no politicians seem to have his interests in mind.

A few blocks from the White House, another man who asked to remain anonymous tells me that National Guard officers recently took the small solar panels he used to charge his computer. He lives on a nearby corner, close enough to hear political rallies and see motorcades pass, but those displays of authority feel distant and hollow. To him, the politicians inside the buildings are “illegitimate” and not truly representative of the people.

He sits on this corner, looking out over a park, and smiles as we speak. Though his possessions have been taken, he is steadfast in his determination to continue fighting and to use his circumstances for good. He spends time speaking to people that pass by him about politics, explaining the legal reasonings behind his belief that the system is corrupt. He doesn’t impose his views but invites conversation with those around him.

In another part of town, a man named Jehovah the Good Reverend Alston offers a different framing. When I ask him to describe the housing situation in D.C., he calls it a “war with the Black neighbors.” Over the last few years, he has felt the city become a more and more hostile environment against Black community members. He believes that the housing system favors others and leaves him behind. For him, his biggest struggle is about competition for visibility, for help, and for survival.

“The government and other people rage through and make messes they don’t clean up,” he says, “then we have to figure that out for them.”

Tyrone, who I met near Union Station, told me a story of how he lived in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, losing his home and fighting to get to safety with his family. After spending some time unhoused, moving between a few cities like Houston, he ended up in D.C. where he now has an apartment. He and the friends he was sitting with told me that although D.C. is a city they love, there’s not nearly enough support for the people who need it.

“It’s too expensive, and there’s not enough of it. It’s both,” one told me about housing.

We spoke at length about the ongoing government shutdown and how they were worried that friends they knew could soon be getting evicted if they couldn’t pay their bills. They were particularly worried about Black community members, who they feared would be left behind if there wasn’t enough help to go around.

Each person I’ve met holds their own unique story and identity, but together their narratives form a picture of a city where policy feels distant and slow-moving, never fully reaching the people that need it most.

Despite recent policy efforts and high-profile statements about housing reform, people like the veteran, Reverend Alston and Tyrone see little change. The churn of temporary placements, constant movement, political spectacle and an increasingly hostile government has left them navigating what feels like a constant battle. In a city defined by symbols of democracy, those symbols can feel unreachable to the people sleeping in their shadow.

As one woman told me while watching tourists pose for photos in front of the Capitol dome: “Everyone comes here to see freedom. They don’t seem to notice or care if that counts for all us.”