Empower DC Affordable Housing Organizer Schyla Pondexter-Moore testifying at Comprehensive Housing Strategy Task Force Public Hearing.

In February of this year, Mayor Vincent Gray signed a Mayor’s Order appointing 36 members to the Comprehensive Housing Strategy Task Force 2012.  Task Force 2012 will build upon the work of the previous Task Force (2003 – 2006).  Gray appointed 36 members to the new task force including Harry D. Sewell and Deborah Ratner Salzberg who will serve as co-chairs.

According to Gray, “the goal of the Comprehensive Housing Strategy Task Force is to help city leaders ensure the creation of more affordable housing for residents of the District of Columbia.” To that end, the Gray Administration held two public forums in October and November to get public feedback on how the city should be working to ensure the creation of more affordable housing in DC.  One forum was held in NW DC and the other in Ward 8.  Event organizers asked specifically to get input from DC residents on what the Comprehensive Housing Strategy Plan should look like.

I signed up to testify at both of the Comprehensive Housing Strategy Task Force Public Forums. There were several testimonies about what programs worked for people, what programs didn’t’ work, the need for affordable housing, the steady influx of gentrifiers into the district, and the districts failure to provide adequate affordable housing.  No one but me spoke about the decrease in public housing and the threat to public housing.   No one else in the room seemed to recognize how importance public housing is to maintaining affordable housing or that it should be an integral part of the Comprehensive Housing Strategy Task Force.

Representatives from MANNA Inc testify at the Comprehensive Housing Strategy Task Public Forum. Image re-posted from HousingForAllBlog.org

This attitude was reflected in a video shown by the Task Force at the beginning of both forums called “Miracle at East Lake,” which was about a 600+ unit public housing property in Atlanta, Georgia called Eastlake Gardens.  The residents were forced out, the units demolished, and it was redeveloped with less than 200 public housing units replaced.  There are now about 525 units in East Lake, the majority of which are for market-rate renters and homeowners. The “Miracle at East Lake,” perfectly exemplified what has been part of the District Government’s plan for affordable housing.

The video was such propaganda it made me sick to my stomach.  It first showed footage of how crime-ridden East Lake was back in the 90’s. It showed black people being arrested, being carted into ambulances, having their homes raided by police, and lying in the streets bleeding and dying.  There were comments from people calling East Lake the worst place on earth to live, a hell hole, and images of the units having broken windows and being in slum conditions.  Then they showed how “out of nowhere, a savior came.”  Who was this so-called savior?  None other than Tom Cousins, a white businessman and owner of a golf course next door to the property, who invested his money into the redevelopment of East Lake.

After much praise of this rich businessman with a” kind heart”, the video went on to show how East Lake was transformed into a mixed-income area where everyone’s happy, crime is non-existent, there’s a magnificent Charter School, and only 5% of the residents are on welfare.  As I fumed in my seat, I looked around and saw people in the audience nodding and smiling.  I looked at the stage and saw Harry Sewell smiling approvingly while looking back and forth between the audience and the film.   What hope is there for public housing in the District if this is the attitude of the Task Force co-chair?

I had testimony prepared but that all went out the window.  As I approached the mic, my emotions took over and it all came spilling out.

“That video is nothing but propaganda!!  I am a resident of public housing and that scares me to death.  You are telling me that at any given time, I can be forced out of my home, transferred to another housing property that is in no better condition, if not worse, than where I currently live, and I probably won’t return to the newly redeveloped  “mixed-income” property?  Why doesn’t anyone ever talk about where all of the families who were not allowed to return are?  Did some become homeless?  Why doesn’t anyone ever talk about how the neighborhood and the property got so distressed?  Why doesn’t anyone talk about how there were NEVER any resources put into these communities to make them better?  No jobs, no effective job training, no resources to give children a better education, no upkeep of the property by the landlord (the Atlanta Housing Authority, i.e, the GOVERNMENT!), no community economic development.  The only thing ever consistently put in these neighborhoods was drugs, guns, and liquor stores.  I find it highly disrespectful for the government to say to me, that the only way to make my life better is to put a person with a higher income next door to me to teach me how to live.  I find it highly disrespectful for the government to say that the only way to “de-concentrate poverty” is to evict everyone and make it nice for some other people.  Most importantly, in these redevelopments, the public housing stock decreases each time and some rich developer looking for profit (along with government officials that get kickbacks from these decisions) gets PAID!!  If government wants to genuinely de-concentrate poverty, they need to put opportunities and resources in these communities to revitalize them for the people that already live there.”

I got loud applause.

The name of the current program for these redevelopments is called Choice Neighborhoods (formerly HOPE VI).  Empower DC is working with three communities right now that are slated for these redevelopments.  We are working to ensure that residents know their rights when it comes to tenant engagement and their involvement with DCHA, who is trying to push the Choice Neighborhood re-development plans forward, regardless of how many public housing residents will be displaced.

Despite intimidation by the Housing Authority (residents have been told by DCHA to, “not trust Empower DC because we are ‘troublemakers’”), we are working to ensure that public housing tenants know EXACTLY what Choice Neighborhood means for them.  If they chose to fight it, Empower DC is here to support them.  Many residents have been attending Empower DC meetings and have expressed their frustration with, “not knowing what’s going on.”  We are making information transparent to them. We are working to build power in these communities so that all public housing residents are treated with dignity and not like children.