Know your rights when it comes to evictions during the current pandemic. . . . → Read More: DC Evictions: Fact vs Fiction
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Developer Geoff Griffis wants to turn a rent-controlled Congress Heights apartment complex into high-end condominiums. Before he can do it, he has to force all of the current residents out. They will not leave without a fight. . . . → Read More: Congress Heights Residents Bring Fight Against Slumlord to Cleveland Park 
According to DC law (specifically the District of Columbia’s First Source Employment Agreement Act of 1984), city residents should be given priority for new jobs created by municipal financing and development programs. Because of this law, DC residents have since 1984 received more jobs particularly in construction and the hospitality industry, right? Not according to the numbers. Originally, the law required that 51% of all new hires on any government-assisted project or contract must be District residents. However, amendments to the original law exempted contracts under $300,000 and job categories if skilled workers within those categories are not available. Not surprisingly, very few, government contractors actually comply with the 51% new hire regulation, as the chart below illustrates. So much for the notion that development (i.e. gentrification) spurs job growth for DC residents. What can be done? Join ONE DC’s First Source Jobs Action and find out. Cross-Posted from ONE DC written by Claire Cook Come and rise up with ONE DC in action to hold the Mayor accountable to District residents who want to work. This action is a next step in raising awareness about the lack of enforcement around the First Source Law and the city’s broken workforce development system. We plan to get the attention of Mayor Bowser and have her meet our demands. Join us at Freedom Plaza (closest Metro Station- Federal Triangle) where we will have a teach-in about direct action followed the action at the Wilson Building. Wednesday, July 22, 2015 9am – 1pm Freedom Plaza 1455 Pennsylvania Ave NW Washington , DC 20004 United States Demand economic and racial justice! Hold our mayor, DC public officials, developers and companies accountable to First Source! Join the fight for a truly equitable city! Sign the petition For more information contact organizer@onedconline.org or call (202) 232-2915 
Cross-Posted from ONE DC In a town rife with Non-Profits that seemingly have all the answers for what ails longtime D.C. residents as they face gentrification-fueled displacement, ONE DC’s July 26th meeting was a much needed breath of fresh air for me. I asked permission to record the meeting for my radio show This Light: Sounds For Social Change, thankfully permission was granted to me to do so. The meeting opened with a visual recap of June’s meeting. A 1950 to present timeline of redlining and economic cycles that lead to displacement hung on one of the walls. An adjacent wall held a visual that had the word “Concentrated Poverty” written in the center, surrounding those words were some of the commonly held beliefs about people who live in poverty; rampant drug abuse, crime, apathy. We all sat in a familiar “meeting circle,” introduced ourselves and said how long each of us has lived in D.C.; there was one man who has lived in D.C. since birth, 60+ years. Next we were led to do an exercise in which attendees were asked to present a physical movement that represents their perspective of gentrification and displacement. Some of the poses and movements included a young white woman who stood with her back to the rest of the group as she covered her eyes, blind to what was going on just behind her. A few people held stances of defiance, arrogance, indifference and helplessness. For the second part of the exercise, we were asked to physically represent empowerment, action and change. I was most struck by what one Shaw resident, who happens to be a black woman, did; she held an invisible protest sign high above her head, two young white participants quickly stood in support behind her holding their invisible placards up. What these three participants represented to me is the need for community lead, driven, and sustained movement for equity in housing, work, and education. Before the meeting, I interviewed longtime community activist Linda Leaks who handed out Terms of Empowerment, a seven page glossary of housing-related terms in which residents should become familiar when trying to remain in neighborhoods besieged by gentrification. I also interviewed Patricia Trim, a 40+ year Shaw resident. During our conversation Ms. Trim told me how her mother would come to D.C. during the week for her job with the Federal Government and leave her with relatives in Virginia. Ms. Trim’s mother couldn’t afford to have her stay here in D.C. until she was sixteen years old. Ms. Trim and her mother moved several times, Champlain Street in Adams Morgan, 18th and Wyoming, 17th and T Sts., each time staying in apartments until the rent was raised to a prohibitively high amount. Ms. Trim recently drove to Columbia Heights to see a dentist on 14th Street. As she drove to her appointment she realized she was in the neighborhood where she grew up. After her appointment, she decided to drive around a bit and was astonished at and dismayed by all the changes that have taken place in recent years. She couldn’t bring herself to drive down Champlain Street the street where she first lived when she and her mother moved to D.C. When she arrived back home that day, she went to her bedroom to pray. She tearfully asked “What I have done to fall so far from grace to be treated less than a human being.” I fear too many D.C. residents people are asking that same question. 
Residents at Museum Square‘s sister property, Mount Vernon Plaza, received letters mandating a $500+ a month rent increase. Azieb Tesfamariam, a recent immigrant from Eritrea and single mother of three, was looking for housing early last year. She couldn’t afford her yearly rent increase of $50 a year so she went out searching for something more affordable. She found Mount Vernon Plaza. Even though she laments that many Americans cannot understand her Eritrean accent, she carefully explained to the leasing consultant in April 2013 that she needed a housing unit that had little to no annual rent increases a year. He assured her that Mount Vernon Plaza had an excellent affordable housing program that would not exceed her budget. Mount Vernon Plaza–one of only two affordable apartment complexes remaining in DC’s Chinatown. She moved into the unit on April 1, 2013, paying a little over $1000 a month for her two-bedroom apartment. On December 16, 2013, she received a letter from Mount Vernon Plaza’s Associates telling her that her rent will no longer be affordable. She will have to start paying $1624.50 a month starting March 31st 2014. Confused, she took her letter to all of the government-sponsored housing assistance agencies in the city. She asked them how is this possible. She’s a single mother who works at a nearby hotel cleaning rooms; paid work is never a certainty since she does not have seniority yet. “Why did the management ask me to move into this apartment, if they were going to end the program that year,” she questioned? Over the Christmas holiday instead of worrying about what gifts to purchase for her children, she was desperately searching for affordable housing. By January 31st, the final date the management demanded a decision about whether she will leave or stay, she signed a new lease with the MVP. Dejected and financially broke, she currently spends all of her money on rent, occasionally asking family members to help when she can’t earn enough money from her part-time job. Eventually, someone referred her to Organizing Neighborhood Equity, a long-time organizing group that organizes residents around their right to affordable housing and good living-wage jobs. ONE DC and Mount Vernon Plaza residents discovered they are not covered by project-based Section 8 protections, unlike MVP’s sister property, Museum Square. MVP residents are not guaranteed a voucher or even the right to purchase when the building goes on sale or when the project-based section 8 affordability ends. Residents under this program must either pay near or at market-rent or move out. This is the reason the Mount Vernon Plaza’s owner/lawyers gave when residents cried foul. But MVP residents insisted something sinister and unethical is going on. Not only is the same owner moving to demolish its sister company, Museum Square, the owner refuses to be transparent with the MVP residents about their now-expired LIHTC program. When residents moved in, the management company gave no indication that the program would end in 2013 or that they would have to move or pay exorbitant rents after the program expired. “The management had to know that the program would be ending in 2013; why did they leave us in the dark for all this time?,” Trayawn Brown asked. “And they still haven’t told everyone in the program that the program is over. I think they are just trying to avoid mass vacancies.” Instead, they were given a two-month notice and expected to pay for units that many residents argue are in various states of disrepair. In state of panic, residents have been moving out left and right; some are moving in with family members, becoming essentially homeless. Through organizing, residents realized that there’s a bigger –citywide—problem. The city has almost universally relied on LIHTC to produce “affordable” housing in the city. Yet this type of affordable housing goes by income that’s based on the Area Median Income (DC’s AMI currently stands at $108,000 for a household of four). LIHTC is generally priced at 60% AMI or 80% AMI. As the general income of DC and the surrounding areas rises, so does the LIHTC rents—which now hover around over 1000 for a one bedroom, when priced at 60% AMI. Without a voucher and supplemental income, residents like MVP renters cannot find comparable housing in the quickly gentrifying areas of NW, where many of them have lived for close to two decades. But more than that, LIHTC has no provision mandating affordability after the tax credits expire. In 1990, . . . → Read More: Is Museum Square’s Owner on a Mission to Displace All Affordable Housing Renters? |
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