The Need for a Green New Deal for Housing in DC Reaching Critical Point; Ongoing Discriminatory Displacement of DC’s Lower Income Communities Must Be Ended Now

2020 US Census : Ward Level Displacement Analysis

Washington, DC – In October 2022, more than 100 DC residents spent more than eleven hours in the Council chambers (virtually) to speak in favor of DC adopting the Green New Deal for Housing bill.  

This Green New Deal for Housing legislation would help keep working class families and lower income residents in their existing homes and into truly affordable new homes under an alternative housing model — Social Housing.

Social Housing veers away from market-based profit commodification and avoids the purposeful neglect and pitfalls of DC’s existing public housing system. So what’s happening with it?

The Green New Deal bill has stalled in Council committees for almost two years without a clear reason expressed by city officials as to why.  Meanwhile, public properties are still being handed over for $1 by the city to developers to continue a privatized trickle-down market-housing approach using DC’s dwindling land and assets and it's not having the results we expected (Most new “affordable” units are studios/one bedrooms affordable for single professionals making $85,000/yr).

As shown below, the Social Housing solution can be sped up as the stalled legislation may not be needed at all for this alternative housing model to be implemented through existing agencies, zoning, and political will.

The Green New Deal for Housing, referenced as “Social Housing” is not public housing. 

Unlike public housing residents, Social Housing tenants will not make the annual sojourn to the DC City Council telling of the horror stories and begging for better treatment from the DC Housing Authority (DCHA). DCHA will have no role whatsoever in any Green New Deal housing units at all.

Public housing wallows while waiting for federal monies to maintain the properties. Private market-based housing rents/housing income inures to absentee private owners/corporations that spend the monthly income as they want, likely not at the properties in DC. 

Social Housing Isn't Public or Private, It's the People: Social housing has its upkeep and routine costs covered largely by the rent/housing costs paid for by the people living there. Social Housing buildings have their own democratically elected board with a direct stake in the success of their buildings and the people living there. And, Social Housing won't concentrate poverty or wealth as this Green New Deal for Housing model makes the units affordable to the people living there whether they make $100,000/yr or $20,000/yr.

Under the Social Housing model, tenants pay no more than 30% of their income towards rent/housing costs. That means even if someone gets a better job or made more income they would not have to move and instead would just pay a reasonable increase in rent/housing costs commensurate with their increasing income.  The same is true if their income decreases. 

If you lived in a Social Housing building and you make $20,000/yr, you would pay $500/month for your studio/one bedroom unit.  If you make $100,000/yr, you would pay $2,500/month. A yearly tenant survey would adjust housing costs dependent on your income, but you would never pay more than one-third of your income on your housing.

Considering the massive displacement from DC over the past 20 years (60,000 Black residents have been compelled to leave their Chocolate City), the Green New Deal for Housing represents an alternative housing solution to substantially end the pushing out of longtime DC residents.

The market-based trickle-down housing model in DC has rocketed housing costs to extreme levels (In Washington, DC, a family of four needs to make $275,000/yr to live “comfortably”).  Simultaneously, DC housing policy is broken, setting “affordability” at prices so unacceptably high that most of DC’s “affordable” units are out of reach for working-class residents and families.  

The vast majority of DC's “affordable” units have been built for single professionals making 80% of the Area Median Income, this means for people making $85,000/yr. DC's minimum wage is $17/hr or about $33,000/yr. DC's so-called affordable housing is simply not affordable for most people making less than $55,000/yr. And, the AMI keeps going up annually thus reducing “affordability” in DC year over year.

DC's broken “affordability” policy is why folks are demanding the city pilot the Green New Deal for Housing at public sites currently being threatened with privatization for more of the same trickle-down market-rate housing.

For example, at recent zoning hearings for 1617 U Street, NW (current home of the Third District MPD station and Engine 9 fire station) witness after witness testified in support of a social housing model instead of a market-based ground lease/air rights sale for any proposed redevelopment at these 2-acres of public land.

During hearings, experts argued that a customized special use zone could be remapped at this public site to essentially require the parameters of a Green New Deal for Housing model — 70% of the units deemed affordable at a diversity of affordability levels and to include many family sized units.

On Social Housing, Director Colleen Green of the DC Department of Housing and Community Development said to At-Large Councilmember Robert White: 

“[We] … could … establish sort of the goals of social housing, by policy changes [or] if we’re … continuing to use the RFP [process] … we [can] request projects that meet the [social housing] goals of what we’re talking about … that band that we’re not meeting … the 0- to 30% [AMI], the lowest income bands built. … It’s a matter of our policy direction, are we going to put more money in, are we going …  to fund at this [60-80%AMI] level or we’re going to fund at lower income levels.”

The director was hinting that we don't need a whole new bureaucratic agency for social housing, we just need the political will and funding (and possibly special use zoning) to do it.

The displacement of DC's long time neighbors and established communities can begin to end once the Green New Deal is deployed in DC. It's past time for a Social Housing pilot program and residents are asking for that at 1617 U Street NW.

Social housing or, as it is called in DC, the Green New Deal for Housing,  was recently profiled by DCist's Morgan Baskin who put out a report on January 17, 2024 entitled, “There’s A Growing Push To Develop Social Housing In D.C. What Is It?” https://dcist.com/story/24/01/17/dc-social-housing-green-new-deal/

Do you agree we need to decomodify housing to end displacement and to build truly affordable housing around the city? 

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