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”]
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.
Today is emancipation day here in the District of Columbia. It marks the day when the enslaved residents of the District of Columbia were granted their freedom. The Civil War was already underway when President Lincoln signed the Compensated Emancipation Act for the release of certain persons held to service or labor in the District of Columbia. That was nine months before he signed the Emancipation Proclamation. I’ve always found it ironic that enslaved African-Americans in the District of Columbia were the first in the nation to receive their freedom, and yet their descendants still don’t have representation in Congress. Go figure. That was the message of a video about Free DC’s Emancipation Day celebration that I produced three years ago, which I’ve posted below.
It also seems meaningful that these reminders of our second-class status here in the District of Columbia should come just before tax day. We pay taxes here in the District despite the fact that we don’t have representation in Congress. We do have city representatives. The mayor, members of the city council and the advisory neighborhood commissions are all elected by DC residents but do they really represent our wishes? Mayor Gray’s proposed budget would cut over $20 million from the city’ s affordable housing programs, despite the fact that the citizens at Mayor Gray’s One City Citizens Summit put the need for affordable housing at the top of their list of priorities that District government should address. Mayor Gray also wants to cut $5.7 million from the subsidized child care program. Certainly this does not represent the wishes of the more than 300 parents who will lose their vouchers and possibly their jobs as well, because as any good parent of young children knows, you can’t work and raise your children without affordable and preferably quality child care. The mayor’s cuts to school budgets will mean increased class sizes, loss of librarians, special education coordinators and other “non-mandatory” staff. Whose wishes do these cuts represent? Are DC students complaining about librarians and counselors? I don’t think so. Low and moderate income residents pay 7 – 10% of their income in taxes. A family of 4 earning $26,300 a year pays $2,630 in taxes. Relatively speaking, that’s a HUGE chunk of money.
Which is why Empower DC members will be engaging in the following action:
Tax Day Delegation to Fight Budget Cuts Tuesday April 17, 2012 Meet on the steps of the Wilson Building @ 10:30 AM. We will visit our council members and give them the following message–
Dear City Council: WE PAY TAXES Don’t SCREW US in the Budget! Put My Tax Dollars Towards Affordable Housing, Childcare & Education!
For more information about tomorrow’s Tax Day Delegation contact Daniel@empowerdc.org or call 202-234-9119 ext. 104.
Ivy City is a neighborhood in northeast DC. Bordered on one side by Gallaudet University and Mt. Olivet Cemetery on the other, it’s a little off the beaten path. Not being within walking distance of a Metro subway line, development and it’s not so welcome counterpart displacement have not overwhelmed the area. For those in the neighborhood whose incomes cause them to fear the harsh winds of gentrification this is both a blessing and a curse. Nearby Trinidad, which is just a little closer to the H Street Corridor, has gotten a state-of-the-art recreation center along with its increased property values and higher-income neighbors. Ivy City on the other hand can’t get a library kiosk or a basketball court but it has gotten a youth detention facility. This is in keeping with the slow decline of Ivy City which was one of those DC neighborhoods where African-American families were able to thrive despite segregation during the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s. Unfortunately, like many low-income and working class African-American neighborhoods, it began to decline in the 1970s and ’80s. Many Ivy City residents site the closing of Crummell, the community’s elementary school, in 1972 as marking the downward trajectory of the neighborhood. For more than thirty years, the Crummell School Alumni Association has tried to convince the District Government to turn Crummell into a community center or a recreation center or a workforce development center, anything that would be a positive investment in the community and uplift its residents. The following audio documentary produced by Empower DC as part of their Ivy City History Project gives you a good idea of how much work has gone into the effort.
We Act Radio’s Live Wire: Empower DC Community Hour 2-27-12 – Ivy City Audio Documentary [haiku url=”http://www.grassrootsmediaproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Ivy-City-Audio-Documentary-2-27-12.mp3″ title=”Ivy City Audio Documentary”]
This version of the podcast varies slightly from the original as we broadcast it on We Act Radio’s Live Wire: The Empower DC Community Hour. Unfortunately, this was to be our last episode of the radio program as the Grassroots Media Project is already stretched beyond our limited capacity. We are continuing to produce radio features to air on WPFW, and hopefully We Act Radio as well, but a one hour broadcast each week is not possible at this time. With that in mind, I’d like to invite anyone out there in radio land who would like to help us build our capacity to a…
Grassroots Media Project Open House
Meet the Director of the Grassroots Media Project &
Find Out How You Can Contribute To The Work of Empower DC’s Media Corps.
Sign up for classes in basic radio & video production and help Empower
DC get the word out about our work!
Saturday April 21 & 28
Anytime between 10:00 AM and 4:00 PM
1419 V Street NW
(2 ½ blocks northwest of the U Street/Cardozo Metro Station, 13th Street Exit)
Snacks Will Be Provided. Children Are Welcome. Please RSVP Liane Scott at 202-234-9119 ext 106 or email Liane@empowerdc.org.
This post has two features. The first is the latest edition of We Act Radio’s Live Wire program, The Empower DC Community Hour, which airs on Monday evenings from 7:00 – 8:00 PM. This week’s show was hosted by Empower DC Afforadable Housing Organizer Linda Leaks and focused on recent proposals by Congress and the Obama Administration to raise the minimum rent that section-8 housing voucher holders are required to pay. This weeks guests were Venus Little from the Task Force to Oppose the Minimum Rent Increase and Diane Hunter from the Perry School Community Service Center, Inc. Please listen and support the show.
[haiku url=”http://www.grassrootsmediaproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Live-Wire-EDC-Community-Hour-3-5-12.wav” title=”The Empower DC Community Hour for March 5, 2012″]
Empower DC Community Education Event
This second is a cross-post from Kathy Baer’s really informative blog Poverty & Policy, from which I took the title of this post:
What Would HUD’s Proposed Minimum Rent Mandate Mean for Extremely Poor DC Residents?
Researching the impacts of the mandatory minimum rent proposal in the President’s Fiscal Year 2013 budget, I asked myself what it would mean for extremely low-income District residents who benefit from the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s rental housing programs.
The answer, I think, is maybe less than for the poorest beneficiaries in most of the country. But it’s hard to be sure because we don’t know how broadly HUD would apply the new policy.
Here’s what we do know.
DCHA (the District’s public housing authority) doesn’t impose a minimum rent, as it could under the current law. It’s chosen — wisely I think — to let the lowest of low-income households conserve their cash for other needs.
These, recall, are households whose adjusted incomes are so low that the usual 30% they’d owe for rent is negligible, except to them.
In one scenario, they’d have to pay $75 a month, as would more than half a million of the poorest households nationwide, though DCHA could grant hardship exemptions for some of them.
But DCHA is one of the 34 public housing authorities that participate in HUD’s Moving to Work demonstration project. As such, it’s exempt from many of the rules most PHAs must comply with.
So it’s possible that DCHA could preserve its current rent policy for most residents who’d otherwise be affected.
According to DCHA’s latest annual report, 12,752 individuals and families had Housing Choice vouchers in its MTW program. It plans to increase the number to 12,784 by the end of this fiscal year.
DCHA says that close to 20,000 additional residents live in public housing units.
If the proposed policy change is like the one in a bill the House is considering — and it does seem that way — then the minimum mandatory rent wouldn’t automatically apply to either the voucher holders or the public housing residents.
Or so I gather from a bill analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
But the minimum mandatory would apply to residents of project-based Section 8 housing, i.e., units that have federally-funded vouchers attached to them.
That, says CBPP, would put 1,273 extremely low-income District households at risk of “serious hardship and even homelessness.”
Cross-Posted from DC Independent Media Center and Direct Action News by Luke
On the 27th of February, Ms Bertina Jones showed up at the DC offices of Freddie Mac, backed up by Occupy our Homes, Rev Hagler, and the same Catholic contingent that took the “Golden Bull” to Congress. By the end of ther day, Freddie Mac had abandoned their planned foreclosure of Ms Jone’s home, agreeing to work with her on a loan modification instead. Direct Action gets the goods!
At the scene, building security locked op the doors as protesters gathered, and refused to admit Bertina Jones or Rev Hagler. They directed those who had business with any of the building’s many tenants to a side entrance, only to be rapidly discovered. Occupy then corked up the loading dock entrance with a detachment from the main rally and the entire building was put on lockdown according to one witness!
Facing the possiblity of a protected siege of the building and ALL of its tenanty by Occupy, Freddie Mac had no choice but to agree to admit Ms Bertina Jones and Reverend Hagler and accept their letter. Tbey refused to make any promises about cancelling the planned and probably illegal foreclosure on her home, but are clearly feeling the pressure after being forced to admit Bertina to their office.
Later that same day, Freddie Mac threw in the towel, the foreclosure is off! Sorry racist bankers, at least one Black woman will keep her home in PG County today!
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