So, Empower DC went to Mayor Gray’s One City Citizen Summit last Saturday. In the mayor’s invitation to the residents of the District of Columbia, he described the summit as “a frank and open conversation about what needs to be done to create Washington, DC as One City.” He also promised that we would have the opportunity to:
• Learn about current efforts to grow our economy, improve our schools, create more jobs, and other initiatives underway to move our city forward
• Discuss some of the biggest challenges that prevent Washington from becoming truly One City
• Share your views in small group discussions and listen to neighbors from every part of the District
• Vote on specific priorities for action in the coming year
• Brainstorm new ideas about how the D.C. Government can work more effectively with its citizens
• Identify ways you can be more involved in future efforts to create a more unified city that works for everyone
In keeping with those lofty goals, Empower DC put together two fact sheets, one with information about the school closings that are likely to occur and the other about the loss of affordable housing in the city. As it turns out, those hand outs were considered so subversive that many of Empower DC’s members were threatened with arrest should they distribute those materials in the summit. So much for a frank and open conversation Mayor Gray! Although, many felt the summit was genuinely participatory, others though Gray was using the summit as an opportunity to present his plans to the public in the hopes that they would simply rubber stamp his agenda. One such voice was Empower DC education organizer Daniel del Pielago who is quoted in the Washington Post. Only time will tell if any of the independent ideas generated in the small group discussions will actually bear fruit. We will explore some of those independent ideas in future posts related to this subject. For now watch the video. Decide for yourself if it represents the real-time grassroots democracy that Mayor Gray believes the summit achieved.
At the risk of offending the Gray Administration, who seems to think they have a monopoly on how to improve the city despite rhetoric that says the exact opposite, here’s a link to Empower DC’s “subversive” literature the Citizens Summit Hand Out, which was the cause of all the above controversy. In it we suggest that the 55 percent rise in the cost of housing since 2007 should prompt the Mayor to use funding from the newly found $240 million surplus to fully fund the housing production trust fund in order to protect and preserve low and moderate cost housing. Actually enforcing the Inclusionary Zoning Law which REQUIRES developers to include low and moderately priced housing in their high end developments wouldn’t hurt either. Or that because most DC families who have an income less than $2500 a month are paying over 60% of that income on housing, maybe Mayor Gray should use funding from the newly found $240 million surplus to fully fund (ERAP) Emergency Rental Assistance Program to help prevent the evictions of low-income residents. Should the Gray Administration be afraid of our suggestion that the IFF study is flawed and that a moratorium should be placed on all school closings? Download and judge for yourself.
School closing + the loss of affordable housing = DISPLACEMENT
That’s the equation that is behind the loss of many of DC’s low- and moderate-income residents to the suburbs. Empower DC exposed this equation for displacement in an Info and Action Summit, Saturday February 4, 2012. Over a hundred DC residents, all concerned about school closings and DC’s affordable housing crisis participated in the event. The result was a plan to have an organized presence at Mayor Vince Gray’s Citizen’s Summit on Saturday February 11, 2012, where we will bring the concerns of DC residents who are most vulnerable to the threat of displacement to the mayor’s attention. For more information contact Daniel del Pielago at 202-234-9119 ext 104 or email Daniel@EmpowerDC.org.
Prior to the action planning component of the day, Empower DC conducted a popular education exercise which revealed many of the factors that lead to displacement. Some of them, like the a new Metro station or a Riverwalk, certainly sound like good things but far too often we don’t think about how these developments will impact residents who can’t afford the rising property values that accompany these changes. Everyone wants access to public transportation, clean parks and recreation facilities, not to mention libraries and good schools in their communities. Why is it that in Washington DC, these things seem reserved only for those who can afford the highest rents and mortgages? The question we should be pondering is how can we have development without displacement? I hope you’ll consider that question as you ponder the following factors most of which relate to the Riverside Community, which is facing a school closure and heightened interest from developers. Even though these factors relate to Riverside, notice how similar they are to development happening in other neighborhoods that are facing school closures.
School Closings
CHARLESYOUNGELEMENTARY SCHOOL (820 26th Street, NE)
Young is located right next to the Langston Dwellings (public housing) and Spingarn High School, Charles Young Elementary sits atop a hill overlooking Langston Golf Course and the PEPCO plant. Young was closed in 2008 and the city is now planning to surplus this property.
SPINGARN HIGH SCHOOL (2500 Benning Rd. NE)
Spingarn High has been identified as a Tier 4 school in the recent study commissioned by the District (IFF study) and is recommended for closure or turnaround. Spingarn is right next to Charles Young elementary which the City plans to surplus and the Langston Dwellings (public housing).
Spingarn enrolls about 550 students
77% of students qualify for free & reduced lunch
68% of Spingarn students are in-boundary which means it is a neighborhood school
RIVERTERRACEELEMENTARY SCHOOL
In 2010 DCPS proposed the closing of River Terrace Elementary, the community organized and was able to get a year’s extension on the decision to close the school. This past December of 2011 Kaya Henderson/Mayor Gray announced they would close the school at the end of the 2011/2012 school year. The school and the River Terrace community sit directly next to the Anacostia River on a big plot of land, close to the Benning Road entrance of the Anacostia River Walk Trail.
Affordable Housing
Since 2000, the District government has allowed more than 7,500 housing units that costs $500 per month and under, to be lost without an equal replacement.
Prior to 2000, the District of Columbia had approximately 11,000 units of public housing, but between 2001 & 2007 – DC lost 1,300 units of public housing without one-to-one replacement.
Currently, the U.S. Congress want to raise the minimum rent on the lowest income residents who live in public housing and Section 8 housing regardless of their income. In the District of Columbia approximately 4,000 households will be impacted and could be forced into homelessness. Families living in Carver Terrace, Langston Dwellings, the Pinnacle could all be affected.
Youth In DC
Since 2007, 4,000 children have been affected by home foreclosures in the District
In 2010, 16,000 children had a least one parent who was unemployed (15%).
Poverty
23.23% of Carver Terrace residents’ incomes are below the poverty level. In Washington D.C. 20.22% of residents are below the poverty level. In the United States only 12.38% of residents’ are below the poverty level.
Carver Terrace residents have an even lower income than the other residents in their neighborhood of Washington D.C. of $27,019, 36% lower than the United States median income.
Metro
A 2030 Metro map forecasts a metro station in the River Terrace community. According to Metro:
Metro boosts property values—adding 6.8% more value to residential, 9.4% to multi-family, and 8.9% to commercial office properties within a half-mile of a rail station. 1 Property becomes significantly more valuable as a property gets closer to Metrorail stations.
Anacostia River Walk
“The Anacostia river Walk trail Project is a 20 mile multiuse trail that stretches from PG County, MD to the national mall. The river walk project is being lead by DDOT and the DC Metro rail system will interface with the river walk to create a full range of transportation alternative in the region.”
Streetcars
“The streetcar system would increase existing residential property value by $1.0 billion to $1.6 billion. Most property values would increase 5% to 12%, with values likely to rise even higher in areas that have many prime redevelopment sites. The strongest growth in demand for both existing and new development would occur adjacent to downtown:
U Street/Logan Circle/Florida Avenue/NoMa/Howard University/western Rhode Island Avenue
H Street/Benning Road
Buzzard Point
Capitol Riverfront
Other significant increases in demand would occur in Downtown Anacostia, Washington Hospital Center, Takoma Park, and Georgetown
PEPCO
On May 31, 2012, the PEPCO power plant, located on 77-acres along Ward 7’s Benning Road in NE DC, plans to decommission. There have been several bids made on the land to redevelop it as a mixed use space with high priced condos.
If you plan to join us at the Mayor’s Citizen Summit here are the specifics:
Join the Empower DC contingent at the Mayor’s “One City Citizen’s Summit”
Saturday, February 11, 2012
Meet at 11 AM
At the Convention Center
801 Mt Vernon Pl, NW
We’ll meet at the Mt. Vernon Place entrance of the Mt. Vernon Square Metro, across from Carnegie Library. Our plan is to deliver information about the proposed school closings and DC’s loss of affordable housing to summit participants. More about the specific information we’ll be delivering in tomorrow’s post.
Crossposted from Street Sense, written by Mary Otto
Rents could be raised for some of the nation’s poorest tenants under a provision of a bill now working its way through Congress.
A draft version of a bill entitled the Affordable Housing and Self-Sufficiency Improvement Act, released on Jan. 13 would remove a cap in place since 1998, allowing the housing secretary and public housing landlords to boost rents in housing projects and project-based Section 8 apartments.
As Street Sense was going to press on the evening of Jan. 17, housing advocates were expected to convene a meeting at the Southeast Branch Public Library to discuss the possible impact of the bill with public housing tenants.
“I’m going to say to the tenants to go try and meet with the Subcommittee Chairwoman, Congresswoman Biggert, and tell her that there are families who cannot afford an increase in minimum rent, whose housing stability will be threatened by a minimum rent policy that has no cap,” said National Low Income Housing Coalition vice president Linda Couch, a scheduled speaker at the event, organized by the District of Columbia Grassroots Empowerment Project.
A spokesperson for Congresswoman Judy Biggert, an Illinois Republican, who chairs the House Subcommittee on Insurance, Housing and Community Opportunity, did not return calls for comment.
But Laquita Eddie, a resident and community board president at Faircliff Plaza West, a federally-subsidized project-based Section 8 apartment complex in Columbia Heights, predicted that a rent increase would further stretch poor tenants who are already at the breaking point.
“No good can come out of this,” said Eddie. She works at a grocery store and pays more than the minimum rent at her complex. Yet with two sons to support, the challenge to make ends meet is constant.
“I’m still struggling, buying food and keeping my lights on,” she said.
And many of her neighbors are surviving on less. If the rent of the poorest among them is increased, they could face desperate choices, Eddie said. “You are talking about a mom trying to feed her kids. “
In the District, approximately 20,000 residents live in public housing, according to DC Housing Authority data, but not all of them would be affected by the bill. While the D.C. Housing Authority has the freedom to set its own minimum rents under the federal “Moving to Work” program, residents of the city’s privately-owned project-based Section 8 units would fall under the draft law. As of Nov, 2011, the District had active contracts for 10,457 units of Project-Based Section 8 housing, according to data contained on the website of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD.
Project-based Section 8 tenants typically pay 30 percent of their monthly income toward rent, with rental assistance making up the difference between what the tenants can afford and the approved rent. But even tenants with very little or no income are required to pay something.
Currently, if 30 percent of a tenant’s income is less than $50, he or she can be charged a a minimum rent of up to $50 a month. Under the draft of the new law, the cap on the minimum rent would be lifted. The new minimum rent would be set at at least $69.45, and would be annually indexed to inflation. .
“The current HUD secretary, or the next one could go beyond,” said Couch. With the cap removed, “there is no limit.”
A HUD spokeswoman said she could not comment on the pending legislation. The bill, which may be scheduled for markup in coming weeks, is part of larger ongoing reform efforts that have targeted rental assistance programs run by HUD. Housing officials and lawmakers say the reforms are intended to preserve and expand affordable housing opportunities.
The nation’s public housing system, which currently serves more than 4 million elderly, disabled, homeless, poor and working individuals and families and subsidizes over one million Project-Based Section 8 apartments, is facing an historic level of need, according to Assistant HUD Secretary Sandra B. Henriquez, who testified in June before Biggert’s Insurance, Housing and Community Opportunity subcommittee.
Henriquez said HUD’s 2011 “Worst Case Housing Needs” Study showed a 20 percent increase in renters paying more than half their income in rent, living in severely inadequate conditions, or both, between 2007 and 2009.
“The demand on our rental programs has been steadily increasing as incomes have dropped and homes have been lost to foreclosure,” she told the lawmakers.
At Faircliff Plaza West, Santiago DeAngulo has seen that demand first hand.
“We have a waiting list of over 400 here,” said DeAngulo, a district manager for Eagle Point Management, which oversees the operation of the 112-unit complex. Once run-down and crime-ridden, the apartments underwent an $18 million renovation back in 2005. Under project-based rental assistance, HUD’s subsidy is committed for a contractually-determined period.
As part of Faircliff Plaza West’s upgrade project, financed with the help of tax-exempt bonds and low-income housing credits, the development’s Section 8 contract was renewed for 20 years to help ensure the rents would remain affordable.
But not all such contracts are renewed. In the face of rising property values and development pressure, housing officials and advocates across the country face a constant battle to preserve affordable housing. Tenants at Faircliff Plaza West are lucky to have their apartments, even if their rent goes up, said DeAngulo.
“Most of the families who are in the shelters, they would love to be here even if they were paying 50 percent of their income for rent.”
Both schools have been considered under-enrolled, yet one was demolished and the other completely refurbished. William Jordan, a member of the list serve Concerned for DCPS has some theories as to why. I’ve reprinted them below because I think they are worthy of your consideration.
Posted on the Concerned For DCPS List Serve on January 5, 2012:
Takoma Educational Campus after the Rehabilitation
I would suggest anyone who has followed or participated in the “Bruce Monroe School” over the years to pick up the Wednesday, December 28, 2011 addition of Northwest_Current 12.28.11 . On the front page is an article about the reopening of the Takoma Educational Campus one year after a fire closed the school. The article is relevant to Bruce Monroe because the city and officials, including Councilmember Graham, etc. found a way to address the needs of Takoma doing the very things they told our community and Bruce Monroe stakeholders they could not do months prior to the Takoma fire. It reveals the pattern of dishonesty and political disdain by then Chancellor Rhee and Councilmember Graham toward this community and the population of families and students served by Bruce Monroe.
Bruce Monroe Elementary after the Demolition
The article explains how the city initially planned to make $2 million in repairs but later decided to invest $25.5 million in a complete rehab. Via a bait & switch, Councilmember Graham and Rhee mislead this community into believing that the DCPS capital budget could not be adjusted to do a complete rehab of Bruce Monroe either as part of the redevelopment of the old site or as rehab of Bruce Monroe at Park View as they promised in prior years.
As evidence of what was actually promised, the notes from community meetings in which the future of Bruce Monroe was discussed can be downloaded via the following links.:
Bruce Monroe, Park View & Meyer were closed down as part of the 2008 DCPS Rhee closings supposedly because of low enrollment. It should be noted that Takoma Enrollment was on par with Meyer. However, Bruce Monroe was reconstituted and the students shipped to Park View the least hospitable of all 3 buildings. In fact Park View at the time could have easily been considered dangerous. Despite this Bruce Monroe students were not relocated to the Meyer building which was in much better shape, they went to Park View. In the meantime, Councilmember Graham placed a boxing program in Meyer Elementary, to which he had been funneling earmarks for years with no community or practical oversight. Clearly, Ward 1 closings were not so much about education, but politics and real estate development. Rhee closed schools with minimal responsibility and Councilmember Graham place his political concerns above those of DCPS students or the community at large.
In this case Councilmember Graham and then Chancellor Rhee engaged in operating at one of the lowest political and ethical standards possible under the guise of school reform. To politically punish and breakup the Bruce Monroe school family, they place a school primarily serving working class Latino and African American families in building (Park View) which at the time had become unfit when better alternatives were available. The positive outcome for Takoma when placed in context makes clear the dishonest nature of reform under Rhee, the unethical cesspool that is Ward 1 politics and ultimately the nexus between pay-to-play politics, real estate development and school reform.
On Saturday November 19th Empower DC hosted the 100 Year Anniversary Celebration of Crummell School. The celebration also covered by local media with a video by NBC 4 and an article from the Washington City Paper. The school is located in Ivy City, a historically African American neighborhood in Northeast Washington, DC. The school was established in 1911 and named after Alexander Crummell, an educator, clergymen, and advocate for African American rights. W. E. B. Du Bois devoted a chapter of The Souls of Black Folks to Alexander Crummell in which he writes, “I began to feel the fineness of his character – his calm courtesy, the sweetness of his strength, and his fair blending of the hope and truth of life. Instinctively I bowed before this man, as one bows before the prophets of the world.” Crummell School embodied the determination of Crummell to uplift African Americans through education.
The school was closed in the 70s and Ivy City was left without a vital community center. Rezoning and neglect on the part of the city government led to Ivy City becoming the dumping ground for the city’s unwanted facilities and left this residential neighborhood buried under industrial warehousing and highways. Coupled with the harsh effects of deindustrialization, high rates of unemployment and the mass incarceration of African Americans the heart has been taken out of the neighborhood. After years of struggle and little to show, it seems the community lost the hope to continue the fight against this injustice. But is Ivy City coming back for more?
Alumni, former teachers, and former and current residents came out to participate in the celebration. Crummell School holds a special place in the hearts and memories of a number of people who feel they have their roots in the historic neighborhood of Ivy City and in the education and grounding they received at Crummell.
We aired the latest version of the short documentary “Crummell School: Heart and Soul of the Community” – to be finished in the near future – in order to get feedback and try and involve the community in its production.
The Ivy City community is resurrecting their historic Civic Association (also established in 1911) after a long hiatus. Newly elected Vice President Alicia Swanson-Canty delivered a strong and passionate speech at the event. Residents are beginning to raise their voices a little louder and in unison in regards to what they want to see develop in their community as new housing projects come in. Questions linger over whether the school can be restored as a much-needed community center as part of an ongoing neighborhood revitalization project. The community has spoken, but will they get what they so badly need? This community, and African Americans in historically segregated communities all over the United States, have had to fight for education and resources. This historic struggle continues…
Our hearts are with the people of Ivy City as they attempt to rise from the ashes of long-forgotten struggles for racial equality that still burn with an ugly determination in this divided country. As thousands take to the streets and parks to denounce the brazen greed and indifference of the “1%” it is more important than ever to remember the long and bloody battle for civil rights that have taken place in our local communities for decades and that continue to this day.
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