Last Thursday, January 17, the DC Housing Authority (DCHA) Board of Commissioners held an emergency meeting to consider Resolution 19-01: “To Adopt a Framework for the Stabilization and Repositioning DCHA’s Portfolio of Properties.” The resolution was drafted in response to the agency’s findings that the vast majority of public housing units are in critical need of repair, 2500 of which are “nearly uninhabitable.”

The resolution proposed to the Board clearly indicated that the agency already had a preferred solution to the problem. In particular the agency asked the Commission to: “Affirm that, in light of the Federal Government’s historic defunding of public housing operating support and capital funding, the most effective, available tools for addressing immediate conditions, and insuring longer term financial and physical viability would involve shifting properties from traditional public housing subsidy… to a voucher (HCVP) funding platform…” (emphasis added).

At the meeting, numerous advocates pushed back on this assumption, and instead advocated that the agency come up with a detailed plan to repair and maintain public housing without losing public housing units. The Commission agreed to amend the resolution to indicate that transitioning to a voucher-based was one option, but not necessarily the “most effective” option, and to require the agency to develop a detailed plan for seeking local money for repairs.

The agency also committed to releasing additional data to the public about its findings and to meeting with advocates and public housing residents to solicit input on the future of DC’s public housing stock. See below for the testimony provided by Legal Clinic attorney Amber Harding at the meeting. We will continue to update you as we learn more.

We agree that public housing is in a serious state of disrepair. I don’t need to tell you how many public housing residents have testified before this very Commission about outstanding work orders and terrible public housing conditions, and how many have gone down to the DC Council to share their stories. This is not a new problem. In fact, we were the lawyers who brought a class action against DCHA in 1992 that put the agency into receivership over its failure to maintain its public housing stock. That receivership lasted until 2000.

We also agree that the federal government has failed to adequately invest in public housing infrastructure. We were there when that disinvestment began, and we partnered with this agency to fill the holes in its operating budget with local dollars (for public safety) at least a dozen years ago. When community organizers like Empower DC began to raise alarms about significant repairs needed in public housing, the Fair Budget Coalition (FBC) advocated for local investments in repairs to public housing. We might have been more successful in that advocacy if DCHA had been as transparent about the crisis as it is being today. Instead, DCHA leadership often claimed that it could make do with much less and, even when it received local money for repairs, had to be heavily pressured to use it to abate health and safety risks.

Now DCHA says it needs $343 million this year to temporarily relocate residents and make needed repairs to 6695 public housing units. That means 84% of the public housing stock is in urgent need of repair. That’s not a problem that develops in a month, a year or even 5 years. That’s gross negligence on a massive, unprecedented scale.

Nevertheless, here we are. After decades of mismanagement, negligence, and ignoring the pleas of public housing residents, the question comes down to: what can be done?

Unfortunately, at an emergency meeting with no opportunity to engage the community, you are being presented with a false choice between leaving thousands of public housing residents in dangerously deplorable conditions and eradicating a large portion of DC’s public housing stock and displacing thousands of households.

You have a better, far more obvious choice. Ask the Mayor and the Council for the funds you need to make these repairs. We’ll support you in that ask. While the amount seems large, it is not unprecedented for DC to invest this kind of money into infrastructure and capital improvements. Just last year, DC chose to increase the sales tax to raise $178.5 million per year in dedicated funding to improve Metro infrastructure. (According to Mayor Bowser: “With this commitment, we will get Metro back to a state of good repair so that Washingtonians have access to a safe and reliable Metro system for years to come.”) DC has also invested $3 billion to modernize and renovate our crumbling public schools. Public housing is just as critical of an infrastructure investment as schools and transportation. DC has the money to do this. In 2017, DC had a surplus of $287 million—extra money DC put into the bank for a rainy day. We don’t yet know the numbers for 2018, but DC is likely to have enough surplus in 2019 to get DCHA most of the towards its needed FY19 expenditures.

It is important that, when developing its options for resolving this crisis, that the DC Housing Authority consider the important and distinct role that public housing plays in DC’s housing ecosystem. Many public housing households could not secure units in the private market that meets their needs whether because there are too few large family units, too few wheelchair accessible units, or too few landlords that accept applicants with poor credit. If 2500 public housing households are forced to use a voucher instead, how many of those households will have to leave DC to secure housing?

We do not support leaving people in uninhabitable apartments or in homes where their health is at risk. But we also cannot support what feels like the death knell for public housing—converting thousands of units to vouchers or redeveloping those properties into places our clients will never be able to return to. We urge you to require DCHA to: 1) develop an option for fully funding the repairs and renovations of all the units without losing any public housing stock and 2) ensure that there is a meaningful input process for public housing residents about the future of their homes. We look forward to working with the agency to develop such a plan and to advocate for its funding.

Judging merely by the number of emails caught up in our spam filters, the frenzy of the holiday shopping season is full on. There are so many enticements to buy this gadget or order that trinket… things that your family and friends couldn’t possibly live without! We are constantly lured into embracing the notion that allocating our resources to purchase such non-essential items is the best way to express our affection for friends and loved ones.

But for far too many DC residents, basic necessities like food and shelter can feel like a luxury, and they cannot even begin to dream of the day that they get to show their generosity to loved ones in the form of something frivolous.

Many of DC’s elected leaders seem out of touch with that reality when it comes to spending our collective budget. Instead of making sure all of its residents have food, a safe place to live, adequate healthcare, access to justice and other basic necessities, they regularly prioritize spending on “luxury” items first.  We believe that the best way for a city to express its concern for and commitment to its residents is to allocate its resources to the very basic needs of its residents – for food and shelter and medical care and the like – first.

Our belief that values and priorities of a community are made evident by how that community spends its resources is what led the Legal Clinic, nearly 25 years ago, to co-found the Fair Budget Coalition. In 1994, when the District of Columbia was on the brink of financial disaster and elected officials needed to cut $100 million from the DC budget, we worried that those cuts would come largely out of programs that served low- and no-income residents and other marginalized populations…our core client community. We joined with several colleagues and put out a call to every non-profit we knew that served these same community members – legal services organizations, shelters and meal programs, groups that served children or the elderly – to come together to strategize about how best to protect the interests and meet the very basic needs of our mutual clients in this time of looming fiscal crisis.

We crafted a message to our elected officials that recognized the crisis, but recommended that it be addressed fairly. “Don’t pit one vulnerable population against another,” we said. “And don’t balance the budget solely on the backs of DC residents who are least able to absorb program cuts.” We offered steps that could be taken to deal with the fiscal crisis with fairness, making recommendations for budget items that could be cut without causing pain to our elderly neighbors, those who were struggling with homelessness, or low-income children.

And thus was born the Fair Budget Coalition. The Legal Clinic staffed the coalition for its first decade of work, then served as its fiscal sponsor until 2017. During those years, the Coalition’s efforts helped lead not only to the preservation of funding for vital programs such as shelter and mental healthcare, and to the establishment of new programs like the Local Rent Supplement Program and Emergency Assistance, but also to significant change in the advocacy landscape and the balance of power at the Wilson Building. The dozen organizations that came together to address a crisis in 1994 have evolved into a coalition of many dozens of organizational and individual members that has a steady and well respected presence in every debate about how to allocate the District’s resources. All of the Legal Clinic’s budget advocacy work is done in close partnership with the Coalition.

One of the most important things that Fair Budget brings to the table is the voices of low-income community members who are impacted directly by the budget decisions that are being made. The Coalition has always recognized the importance of not speaking for community members but rather supporting them in speaking for themselves. (Does this sound familiar? This is a core value of the Legal Clinic that we were able to infuse into Fair Budget’s early work.) The Coalition has recently ramped up its work in this area, launching a staffed constituent leadership program. Some of our client leaders who also participate in our People Power Action Group participate in this program.

While we’ve made some progress in the last twenty five years, there is still much work to be done to ensure that each DC resident survives and thrives, and much work to be done to convince elected leaders that ending homelessness should be a high priority. You need only look at what happened on Tuesday, when the DC Council expressly rejected an effort led by Councilmember Brianne Nadeau (and supported by Mary Cheh, Trayon White, David Grosso, Charles Allen, and Elissa Silverman) to devote new revenue to ending homelessness and other community needs over a tax break to commercial properties, to see that the need is greater than ever for the work of the Fair Budget Coalition. If you believe, like we do, in the power of people’s stories and the importance of their voice, we hope you will consider responding to Fair Budget’s campaign to ensure that this community engagement work will continue. Together, we have a greater chance of persuading our elected leaders to craft a budget that doesn’t invest in shiny trinkets and gadgets, but rather promotes a more just and inclusive DC.

In addition to financially supporting the work of Fair Budget Coalition, you can also hold your elected officials accountable for their vote on Tuesday (Councilmember McDuffie was absent from the vote). Thank the Council members who voted to devote new revenue to ending homelessness:

Council member		Phone	Email	Twitter
Brianne Nadeau	Ward 1	724-8181	bnadeau@dccouncil.us	@BrianneKNadeau
Mary Cheh	Ward 3	724-8062	mcheh@dccouncil.us	@marycheh
Charles Allen	Ward 6	724-8072	callen@dccouncil.us	@charlesallen
Trayon White, Sr.	Ward 8	724-8045	twhite@dccouncil.us	@trayonwhite
David Grosso	At large	724-8105	dgrosso@dccouncil.us	@cmdgrosso
Elissa Silverman	At large	724-7772	esilverman@dccouncil.us	@tweetelissa

 

Let these Councilmembers know that you disagree with their decision to prioritize corporations over people:

Council member		Phone	Email	Twitter
Phil Mendelson	Chair	724-8032	pmendelson@dccouncil.us	@ChmnMendelson
Jack Evans	Ward 2	724-8058	jevans@dccouncil.us	@JackEvansWard2
Brandon Todd	Ward 4	724-8052	btodd@dccouncil.us	@CMBrandonTodd
Vincent Gray	Ward 7	724-8068	vgray@dccouncil.us	@VinceGrayWard7
Robert C. White, Jr.	At large	724-8174	rwhite@dccouncil.us	@RobertWhite_DC
Anita Bonds	At large	724-8064	abonds@dccouncil.us	@AnitaBondsDC

 

Update: On Wednesday, November 7, the Housing Committee marked up the Eviction with Dignity Act. The only change was to ensure tenants could access their belongings on Saturdays upon request. (Please thank Councilmember Robert White for that amendment.) Now the full Council will vote on the bill on Tuesday, November 13. We are asking Councilmembers to support amendments on Tuesday to make the remaining changes listed below. Contact Chairman Phil Mendelson (pmendelson@dccouncil.us, 202-724-8032) and your Council member (find contact information here) and ask them to support amendments that bring more dignity and fairness to the already traumatizing act of eviction. For more information, read this from our friends at the Legal Aid Society of DC, who have been leading the charge to improve DC’s eviction process. Thank you!

 

Tomorrow morning, the DC Council Committee on Housing & Neighborhood Revitalization will hold a mark-up on the Eviction with Dignity Act of 2018. If you remember, we, along with many of our fellow advocates, testified on September 24 about ways that the new eviction procedure needed to be improved. After the hearing, the Committee convened a working group to talk about those ideas for improvement. We met on October 10. No promises were made that the vision of tenant advocates would prevail, but we did expect to have a robust process to try to reach agreement.

That didn’t happen. We had one meeting. Then we learned that the bill is moving to mark-up with virtually no changes. There’s an emergency bill in effect, so we have no idea why the Housing Committee feels like it has to rush through a bill that the community has raised significant concerns about. We are asking the Housing Committee to make critical changes before marking up the bill, and to commit to a longer process to figure out the best way to store people’s belongings after an eviction if they can’t gather them within the required window.

1. As written, the bill could unintentionally increase the number of evictions in DC.

Problem: The new process only requires 14 day notice of eviction. However, many tenants are unable to get an appointment for Emergency Rental Assistance until they have a writ of eviction, and 14 days may not give them enough time to secure an appointment, bring in necessary paperwork, and receive eviction prevention funds. As a result, evictions that would have been prevented under the old eviction procedure will now move forward.

Solution: Extend the 14 day notice to 21 days. 

2. Tenants are confused about how to access their stored belongings, which will lead to increased disputes and unnecessary loss of belongings.

 Problem: The notice provisions in the bill are not specific enough, leading to varying interpretations across DC. There has been confusion (among both tenants and landlords) regarding how to count the days of storage, and tenants remain unclear about when they have access to their belongings, and who they should contact to arrange for a time to move. If an eviction needs to be rescheduled, the tenant doesn’t know when it will happen. It is also unclear what a tenant is supposed to do or what the tenant is entitled to if a landlord does not comply with the notice or in-unit storage requirements.

Solution:

• Notices should be written to provide tenants with all of the information that they need to access the unit and move their belongings.
• The bill should require specific notice elements, including: the dates of both the eviction and the expiration of the in-unit storage period and contact information for the tenant to gain access to the unit.
• When an eviction is rescheduled, the tenant should receive a new 48-hour notice.
• There must be meaningful enforcement language that says what the remedy is for violation of these sections.

3. Without any public storage option, tenants need more time to access and move out their belongings.

Problem: Although many people testified about the need for a public storage option, the Housing Committee’s working group had no conversation about storage before scheduling a mark-up (despite stating that it would be on the next meeting’s agenda). Without public storage, tenants need more time moving and transporting their belongings somewhere safe.

• The bill only allows tenants 7 days of in-unit storage. This is not enough if tenants have no way of moving their belongings into a storage unit.
• The bill does not state that any of the 16 hours that tenants have to move must occur at night or on the weekend, upon the tenant’s request.
• The bill does not recognize that seniors and persons with disabilities may need assistance or additional time to move their belongings

Solution:

• Extend the 7 day in-unit storage period to 10 days, which is the amount of time in the bill introduced by Councilmembers Anita Bonds and Trayon White.
• Require landlord to offer a portion of those 16 hours on evenings and weekends.
• Require landlords to provide additional accommodations to tenants who are elderly or disabled upon request.

4. Not all residential tenants will be treated equally: DC’s lowest-income tenants, for instance, will have fewer protections.

Problem: The bill exempts from the in-unit storage requirement public housing tenants, some transitional housing tenants, and other tenants based on the legal claim raised in eviction court. Exempting certain types of residential evictions will only cause chaos and confusion.

Solution:  All provisions of the bill should apply to all residential evictions taking place pursuant to an order of the DC Superior Court as well as the DC Housing Authority.

Tell the Chair of the Committee, Councilmember Anita Bonds (abonds@dccouncil.us, (202) 724-8105):
Do not to move forward with the Eviction with Dignity Act until it contains key improvements to make eviction less traumatic.

If you email Councilmember Bonds, copy the other members of the Committee as well:  bnadeau@dccouncil.us, esilverman@dccouncil.us, rwhite@dccouncil.us, and twhite@dccouncil.us.