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.
The following is the latest television news coverage from the District’s local networks regarding the Bennett Vaughn vs Union Station Redevelopment Corporation lawsuit.
One of the District’s poorest neighborhoods is fighting City Hall’s proposal to the ground around historic Crummell School into a tour bus parking lot.
Judge Judith Macaluso came to see Ivy City with her own eyes. It’s one of the District’s poorest neighborhoods fighting City Hall’s turning the ground around historic Crummell School into a tour bus parking lot.
“They always did what they wanted to do to Ivy City and I hope they put a stop to it,” says Brenda Ingram-Best. The city already parks hundreds of school buses here, plus other city vehicles. Residents complain they’ll now have fumes from tour buses. “I have siblings who have respiratory problems,” says Stephen Scarborough. “I’m totally against the idea.” “My daughter is asthmatic. Literally yesterday she had dark circles under her eyes,” says Peta Gay Lewis.
Judge Macaluso would not answer questions. “It’s not a press conference,” she says. “This is just a viewing so I can understand the content in the courtroom.”
Activists have taken up the cause. “They went ahead and started construction,” says Parisa Norouzi. What if the city loses in court? “Let’s see what happens,” says Mayor Gray. “It’s pending at this stage. I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to comment on it until this has been settled.”
Judge Macaluso will hear the case again in her courtroom Thursday.
A DC Superior Court judge left the bench to take a tour of Ivy City as residents near the historic Crummell School are fighting the bus depot lot being built.
A D.C. Superior Court judge visited the northeast D.C. neighborhood where residents are fighting the building of a bus depot near the an historic school.
The Alexander Crummell School near Okie and Kendall streets, built in 1911 and abandoned in 1980, is on the register of historic places, but its expansive yard off New York Avenue is being paved over for the District to use as a tour bus parking lot beginning in March.
Neighbors — some who went to the school — want a job center and community place for the mostly poor and struggling Ivy City neighborhood. They’ve gone to court to block the parking project.
“We were to get the building ready for the neighborhood,” said 82-year-old Remetter Freeman, who graduated from the school in 1941 and helped get it on the historic register. “We wanted to put in job training, lots of things. For the kids, a library.”
“There’s a lot of people around here that are sick and have respiratory problems,” former student Jeannette Carter said. “Then there’re the little kids. They don’t have nowhere to play but in the street. And when I was going to school, we used to have fun right there in the evenings and stuff, all kinds of programs and things we had to do.”
D.C. Superior Court Judge Judith Macaluso took a walking tour of the area to see what neighbors are complaining about. The suit in part alleges the city failed to follow city laws and the heavy bus exhaust is unsafe.
“The city government hasn’t done anything by way of surveys, assessing the problem in the community,” lawyer Johnny Barnes said. “People have lived here forever, and they’ve just been dumping on them because they’re low income and they haven’t voted in the past.”
Neighbors and activists say there’s already too much industrial use in a neighborhood where about 1,200 people struggle to live every day.
DC Judge Oversees Temporary Bus Depot Lawsuit Visits Ivy City
WASHINGTON -A D.C. Superior Court judge left her courtroom on Monday to get a good look at an issue that has many D.C. residents upset.
Judge Judith Macaluso toured the Ivy City section of Northeast D.C. It involves a case concerning a temporary bus depot that is being built in Ivy City. Members of the community have filed a lawsuit asking Judge Macaluso put a stop to it.
Residents believe the pollution created by the buses parked in the bus lot will cause health problems for those living nearby.
The temporary lot will store as many as 65 buses, which are typically used to travel the New York-D.C. route. The lot will be used until bus storage is created once Union Station undergoes a multi-billion dollar renovation.
When the temporary lot is complete, passengers will be picked up and dropped off at Union Station. The buses will then head to the temporary lot to be parked and give drivers time to rest.
As wave of projects begin to sprout, so do disputes
Cross-posted from theWashington Post Written by Jonathan O’Connell
New apartments and shops are spreading into neighborhoods across the Washington region, with developers looking to capitalize on a better-than-average economy and a massive influx of young adults.
Apartment hunters have wider options, more residents have grocery stores in their neighborhoods and, with dozens of new restaurants and bars, Washington has begun to change its reputation as a gray-suit government town.
Many residents are celebrating the changes. But others aren’t.
And as this new wave of development rises, a chasm between its champions and its skeptics is beginning to show.
In Northeast D.C., Ivy City residents have sued to try to prevent Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) from relocating a bus depot for dozens of private buses into their neighborhood to make way for upgrades at Union Station.
In Washington Highlands, one of the poorest parts of the District, public housing residents sued the D.C. Housing Authority out of concern that they would be permanently displaced from their homes when their units at Highland Dwellings were refurbished.
It isn’t just the low income or disenfranchised who are fighting back. In Wheaton, residents turned away a mixed-use proposal pushed by Montgomery County Executive Isiah Leggett (D). Residents in Reston have formed an advocacy group, Rescue Reston, and say they have gathered 650 signatures opposing the possible redevelopment of Reston National Golf Course.
There have always been battles between residents and the developers, planners and city officials proposing alterations to neighborhoods. But with the economy gaining steam and apartment construction booming, disputes that faded during the recession are beginning to boil again.
“I think in many ways it’s the same, but now we have many more examples of how these communities are getting screwed over,” said Parisa Norouzi, director of the community organizing group Empower D.C.
‘No trust’
Empower D.C. battled former mayor Adrian M. Fenty’s attempts to close excess schools and lease the buildings to developers, projects that Norouzi said were driven by “gentrification or private profit.” She says those battles have better prepared residents and organizers for disputes such as the bus relocation, which Empower D.C. and residents are fighting in D.C. Superior Court. “At this point, there is really no trust in the process,” she said.
A hearing on the case is expected Tuesday. A Gray spokesman declined to comment.
In other instances, the opponents to zoning changes or development are the well-heeled. Neighborhoods in wealthier parts of Northwest D.C. are raising concerns about parking shortages under proposed changes to the District’s zoning code, while in Reston the concern is a lack of green space should the golf course’s owner try to build a project to capitalize on the construction of two Silver Line Metro stations nearby.
Some Wheaton residents rejected plans to create a mixed-use downtown project because it might resemble the redevelopment of Silver Spring — a success to some but not others. “We know how many small businesses struggled and went out of business in Silver Spring,” Bob Schilke, owner of the Little Bitts Shop of cake supplies, told the Montgomery County Council in February.
Sometimes even the terms used to describe development have have taken on widely different meanings. The D.C. Housing Authority became the envy of other cities in winning seven grants under the federal HOPE VI program, which enabled the District to overhaul blighted public housing projects into mixed-income neighborhoods.
The agency’s renovation of Highland Dwellings, east of Bolling Air Force Base, isn’t a HOPE VI program and no market rate units are even being built. But spokeswoman Dena Michaelson said the agency could have done a better job making that clear to avoid the lawsuit it faced (and since settled).
In a David and Goliath story, the tiny Ivy City community, a low-income African-American neighborhood settled originally just after emancipation, has filed suit against the Mayor and USRC to halt plans to divert hundreds of polluting charter buses into their community for the next 10 years while Union Station undergoes a billion dollar redevelopment.
When residents learned that the Mayor, in the midst of attending ribbon-cuttings and congratulating new homeowners, had authorized the Alexander Crummell School be turned into yet another parking lot for diesel-spewing buses, their outrage turned to action and attorney Johnny Barnes was retained and lawsuit filed to halt the construction. Built in 1911, the school, now in neglected shape, is a national landmark added to the historic registry 10 years ago.
“We will do whatever it takes to stop this parking lot,” said third generation resident Andria Swanson, a plaintiff in the case and President of the Ivy City Civic Association. “We demand that the city stop treating Ivy City as its dumping ground, because we deserve better.”
The Ivy City case has city-wide implications as it will set precedent in areas of law relating to the requirement that Advisory Neighborhood Commissions (ANCs) receive special notice and their views be considered with “great weight.”
The suit also hinges on the city’s failure to conduct an environmental impact study for the development of the bus lot, which the Mayor claims is not a “major action.”
Despite not receiving notice, the ANC voted 8 to 0 against the planned bus depot, once they discovered the plan. Other ANCs across the District have joined the opposition by passing resolutions against the bus depot.
Long treated as the city’s “dumping ground,” residents of Ivy City are already heavily impacted by respiratory illnesses exacerbated by heavy truck traffic along New York Avenue and the resulting air pollution. Generations of Ivy City residents have advocated improvements to their neglected neighborhood, and thought better days were coming when the city began investing in new affordable homes and revitalization planning. Yet early this year, the Mayor did an abrupt turn-around, authorizing the purchase of over six acres in the community to consolidate the parking of Department of Public Works’ fleet, on top of several acres of school bus parking already sited in the community.
For decades, the community has sought, and the DC government has promised, the restoration of Crummell School to provide services such as recreation, education and job training programs. Non-profit developers Manna Inc, Mi Casa and DC Habitat bought into the city’s stated goal of revitalizing Ivy City and broke ground on 58 new homes, now nearing completion. New homeowners and existing residents now face potential immediate risk to their health should the Mayor’s proposed charter bus lot move forward. The community is also burdened by overflow parking from Love nightclub, a youth detention center, homeless shelter, a new medical marijuana cultivation site and liquor distillery.
Just last year through the Neighborhood Stabilization Program, the DC Department of Housing and Community Development participated in a study that showed 36% of Ivy City and Trinidad residents lacked a high school diploma or equivalent, and 11% are unemployed. The Crummell School is situated in the heart of the community similar to a town hall, and is the last remaining place available to provide the services and gathering space the community seeks.
“Sitting a polluting charter bus lot across the street from residences is an injustice that the Mayor would never consider visiting upon a higher-income or more politically powerful community,” said Parisa Norouzi, Executive Director of Empower DC, a group working to enhance the organizing efforts of residents.
“By definition this is a case of Environmental Injustice,” Norouzi said. “The Mayor should be ashamed of himself.”
Youth from Ivy City from left to right, Stephanie Chloe, Dedrica (Drica) Clyburne, James Batts, Moniya Walker and Santasia (Tay) Scarborough
This summer, Empower DC hired several youth from Ivy City to help organize their community. What follows are the impressions of a few of the participants and a lovely video of Ivy City’s Annual reunion produced by two of the youth, Stephan Scarborough and Amari McCray.
Dedrica: I loved being the assistant community organizer for Ivy City because I used my voice for a better purpose. I feel Empower DC is doing an awesome job fighting for Alexander Crummell School. I got the opportunity to silently protest Mayor Gray’s plan to park 65 Bolt buses on the grounds of the historic Alexander Crummell School. And I feel I was good at getting people involved and wanting to stand up for the community they call home. I am definitely going to continue volunteering for Empower DC to keep the fight going in the community.
Moniya: One thing that I learned with empower DC is that you can always help with stuff. And that it was good to visit and learn new things. Empower DC changed me. I learned that you can always feel comfortable going and talking to an adult and how to have confidence. What I did not like was talking to people and getting people to come to meetings because at times they were rude. But even though people were rude there was a possibility they would attend the meeting. When I first started I was tired of walking around but I eventually got used to it. And I felt so happy when I would attend meetings and people I made contact with attended.
Stephon “Steph” Scarborough at 3.
Steph: Our amazing organization, Empower DC, has taught me a lot and it was a wonderful experience. Furthermore it was pretty excellent that the program was constructive, positive and productive. Our campaign that we are pursing has a good sense of justice and a large amount of significance. I am looking forward to starting an Empower DC band. The band will aim to reach out to people and tell them about our Ivy City community and all the hardships that we endure. Empower DC has been great to me and I will love to stay for future initiatives.
Amari McCray
Amari: My name is Amari. My summer with Empower DC was good while interning with the Grassroots Media Project. The experience was really good for me because I normally would be out with friends stealing bikes. While working with empower DC I learned how to operate the video camera and learned how to film different progressive events.
