By Schyla Pondexter-Moore, on December 5th, 2012 
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 . . . → Read More: My Experience at the Comprehensive Housing Strategy Task Force Public Forum
By Liane Scott, on October 9th, 2012 Come Learn About the Threat to Public Housing and How We Can Fight To Preserve It!! Empower DC’s Affordable Housing Campaign Will Be Hosting a Public Housing Information Session Where: 1419 V Street NW When: Thursday, October 11, 2012 6:30 – 8:30 PM For more information, contact Schyla Moore-Poindexter at 202-234-9119 ext.101 or housing@empowerdc.org. ONE DC (Organizing Neighborhood Equity) is also putting the word out about a community meeting in Ward 8 this Saturday, October 13. The video below, shot by Judith Hawkins of It Is What It Is Mobile Talk Show, goes into the details.
By Liane Scott, on May 16th, 2012 
Don’t tell me you can’t fight city hall. Yesterday (May 15, 2012) advocates fighting to maintain and improve essential social services in the District of Columbia, packed the city council hearing room as they voted on this year’s fiscal budget. As a result, the city council passed the Budget Request Act with $25 million restored to affordable housing programs. A victory without question but more needs to be done. The final vote on the budget won’t happen until June 5, 2012. Between now and then, council members must be convinced to use fiscal reserves and/or raise more revenue to fully fund TANF (Temporary Aid to Needy Families), homeless services, the subsidized child care program and more. For more information on what programs still need support, which council members need to be lobbied, etc., go to the Fair Budget Coalition’s campaign website Make One City Possible.
For more on what’s at stake should the city continue to cut social services, check out the fabulous video below from the Day in the Strife protest, produced by Laura Gwizdak. I don’t know where the mainstream media was that day. The halls were packed with DC residents actively participating in the political process. Personally and professionally, I call that news.
By Liane Scott, on May 1st, 2012 
Sam Ford Interviews Homeless for ABC 7
April 17, 2012, at his Ward 7 budget town hall meeting, Mayor Vince Gray said, “Just so people are clear. We’re not cutting those things. People will tell you anything. Sometimes they even think they’re right. We’re not cutting homeless services, we’re not cutting affordable housing, we’re not cutting Medicaid, we’re not cutting TANF (Temporary Aid to Needy Families) and we’re not cutting the Summer Youth Employment Program.” Despite this, advocates for social services and affordable housing programs, like the Fair Budget Coalition who’ve been organizing around these issues, will assure you that the mayor’s proposed budget will in no way meet the growing need of DC’s low- and even moderate-income residents in these difficult economic times. In particular, the homeless families living in DC General, whose numbers continue to grow, do not believe maintaining an increasingly tenuous status quo represents their needs or wishes as taxpaying citizens of the District of Columbia. These families made their feelings known at the DC City Council Budget Hearing on April 30, 2012. Only two elected officials, Council Chair Kwame Brown and Ward 8 Councilmember Marion Barry were present at the hearing. ABC 7’s Sam Ford and the Washington Times’ Andrew Harnick covered the story.
The above videos make clear that DC’s safety net isn’t meeting the needs of many of our residents, but given the time constraints of a local news broadcast, it doesn’t go into much depth. For more insight, it doesn’t hurt to follow the analysis of folks like Howard University professor David Schwartzman, who routinely follows the DC budget.
Cross-posted from The Mail @ DC Watch written by David Schwartzman
Our Mayor proposes another DC budget balanced on the backs of the poor; should we be surprised? On April 20, we learned that our former mayor, Anthony Williams, has been appointed as Chief Executive of the Federal City Council, the leading local think tank of the 1 percent, or is it the 0.1 percent? (Note that Frank Keating, the former Republican governor of Oklahoma and now president and CEO of the American Bankers Association, is the FCC president). Anthony Williams served on Mayor Gray’s transition team and was also just appointed to head the new Tax Revision Commission. As CFO of the Control Board, Anthony Williams was a key architect of the Urban Structural Adjustment Program that balanced our budget on the backs of our poor, while favoring the wealthy with tax cuts (the Tax Parity Act). The Control Board regime closed DC General Hospital, privatized municipal functions, cut the so-called safety net, and increased our income gap to record levels, while setting the course for Mayor Fenty’s agenda that brought this assault on our working and middle class majority to a new level. And Mayor Gray has not unexpectedly continued along the same road.
While our mayor and council deserve credit for their liberal policies regarding sexual orientation and immigrants rights, their economic and public education policies should brand them as Republicans posing as Democrats. For example, our mayor just endorsed new DCPS school closings based on an IFF study funded by the Walton Foundation (Walmart), opening up new opportunities for the semi-privatization of public education. Colbert King just characterized conservative Democrats one hundred years ago as favoring “the wealthy, to whom much has been given, have no stake in anybody else’s success,” http://tinyurl.com/6twrwpf, an apt description of most of our local Democratic elected officials, and of course the Republican posing as an Independent, David Catania. When will these Democrats follow President Obama’s example by at least claiming to go on an “Offense Over Taxes on the Wealthy,” a headline from the New York Times?
Now to address the DC budget process. For FY 2013, Mayor Gray has proposed even more hurtful budget cuts in low income programs, amounting to roughly seventy million dollars, which include programs involving health care coverage for low income residents, affordable housing, homeless services. and cash assistance for families with children (for details go to http://www.dcfpi.org). This proposal comes on top of $239 million already cut from low income programs since 2008, according to the DC Fiscal Policy Institute’s budget data. And while the mayor and the council squabble about where to spend the $79 million surplus, specifically whether to pay back city employees for their four-day furlough taken at the beginning of 2011, the elephant sitting in the Wilson Building remains unnoticed, the under-taxed, now growing income of the top 5 . . . → Read More: Another DC Budget Balanced on the Backs of the Poor?
By Guest Contributor, on April 24th, 2012 
Crossposted from DC Independent Media Center, Written by Luke
On the 18th of April, the City Council held hearings on Mayor Gray’s budget, the one with tens of millions in housing cuts and a proposal to infest DC’s road intersections with compined speed/red light cameras. The housing cuts in the proposed budget drew a substantial protest outside, even as the hearings continued inside.
The rally outside the Wilson Building while the hearing continues.
The Amazing Disappearing Budget
Kwame Brown at Housing Rally
Raw Audio of April 18 Housing Budget Rally: [haiku url=”http://www.grassrootsmediaproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/housing_budget_rally_4-18-2012_raw_audio.mp3″ title=”April 18 Housing Budget Rally Raw Audio”]
Table of contents of raw audio:
Disappearing Housing Budget Kwame Brown Formerly Homeless #1 Formerly Homeless #2
Yes, you heard that: Kwame Brown, who has previously voted against services like libraries, put the hearing in recess so he could speak at the protest to float his proposed modification to the budget: Take half the money to be used to pay back 4 days of unpaid furloughs against DC government workers and put it back into the housing programs.
The demands of the rally were as follows:
Fully fun the Housing Production Trust Fund
Fund permanent solutions to homelessness
Maintain the Home Purchase Assistance Program at its current level
Countering Kwame Brown’s partial proposal based on the current budget surplus, here’s a proposal of my own:
The housng crisis is due in large part to the invasion of DC by upscale white-collar types. An increase in the income tax on DC’s wealthy would either fund the Housing Production Trust fund and other housing programs, or else drive some of the wealthy out of town, reducing the incentive to destroy affordable housing for condos. At the same time, increase the gas and/or pay parking lot taxes by $30 million in expected gross revenues, using that money to offset cancelling the intersection speed/red light camera program that Mayor Gray proposed as a revenue item in the FY 2013 budget.
|
Subscribe to Blog via Email
|
