On a sunny, spring day in May of 2025, Playtime Project’s Executive Director, Jamila Larson, and former Playtime participant, Kamari Felton, smiled for group photos with Barbara Duffield of SchoolHouse Connection and other community partners. This panel had just finished testifying in front of the DC Board of Education on the realities faced by students experiencing homelessness. Kamari, a 21-year-old man who towered above his fellow panelists, had attended Playtime’s Teen Program at the former DC General Family Shelter. He was the only one on the panel who had personally experienced homelessness as a student. This made his soft-spoken words carry even more weight. “What’s important to remember about homeless youth is a lot of us do need and want help. We just aren’t used to having anyone there. So showing that there are genuine people who can support us and want to be there goes a long way.”
From the beginning, we have believed that serving is not enough without social justice. Therefore, we are committed to advocating on behalf of specific Playtime children and families to help break down barriers they should not have to face alone.
Playtime's three core components are weekly play programs in DC and Prince George’s County, summer and spring break camps, and family supports. However, our “whole family” approach means we show up for Playtime families in a number of ways. That might include providing grocery and transportation gift cards, helping families move out of shelter and into permanent housing, and referrals to legal, housing, and food assistance programs. From the beginning, we have believed that serving is not enough without social justice. Therefore, we are committed to advocating on behalf of specific Playtime children and families to help break down barriers they should not have to face alone.
When the latest DC budget proposal included cuts to housing vouchers and the possible return to congregate shelters, we knew Playtime’s decades of experience needed to be heard. Playtime ran a program in the former DC General Family Shelter for years, as well as CCNV and DC Village—all congregate shelters. We know how this structure creates an unsafe and unhealthy environment for residents.
As Jamila told the DC Council Committee of the Whole in June, “[Policies supporting congregate shelters] led to warehousing families without trained, supervised, and credentialed case managers, where, at its peak, more than 600 children and their families lived. So many children, and some were lost along the way. Literally. Relisha [Rudd] was not the only one who was so undervalued, so dismissed and disregarded that she literally wasn’t missed when she disappeared.”
Playtime’s over 20 years of experience with the homelessness landscape in Washington, DC and Prince George’s County should not be kept secret when it can be used to make life better for families. Playtime’s mission—cultivating resilience in children experiencing housing insecurity—is served when we, and our families, use our voices to shine a light on the families, the “hidden homeless” who deserve safety, stability, dignity and joy.
