With Jenny Gathright
There’s a history in D.C. that replacing deteriorating public housing buildings begins by displacing many of the residents who live there. Though many are generally eager for better housing, they feel rooted in neighborhoods they’ve lived in for years and would prefer to stay nearby.
But residents of Barry Farm didn’t wind up near that development in Southeast. And most of those who lived in Temple Courts were displaced from the NoMa neighborhood when their buildings were razed.
The Park Morton project in the Park View neighborhood was supposed to be different. This time, the District said, there would be a new place underway for residents to live nearby before the existing housing was torn down. Park Morton was called a “shining star” for the city’s New Communities Initiative, an ambitious approach to overhauling public housing in four D.C. neighborhoods.
It hasn’t quite worked out that way.
Once again, the city is preparing to demolish the homes of public housing residents before new units are ready for them. More than 100 families who remain at the public housing project are getting ready to move, after the Housing Authority began offering them vouchers this fall. Some residents say the choice was a difficult one: stay in housing that’s become uninhabitable, or risk leaving a neighborhood they love — where some have lived for decades.
“Some of us, we want to stay,” Park Morton Resident Council President Shonta High said at a protest last week. “I am one of those people, because I fought for this place. I helped clean this place up, and I put up with a lot to be here.”
DON’T PUSH US OUT. That’s what several hand-painted signs affixed to balconies at Park Morton read in an Instagram post from late last month.
The obstacle this time is that a group of residents in Park View don’t want a new mixed-housing project at a nearby park, as planned. So construction has been delayed in a years-long legal fight. And now the Housing Authority has decided to push forward with demolition at Park Morton.
‘Residents Would Remain in the Same Neighborhood’
As federal funds for public-housing revitalization waned in the early 2000s, New Communities emerged as a possible solution. It was supposed to meet multiple challenges at some D.C. public-housing sites, including dilapidated units plagued by mold, lead and vermin, a concentration of poverty, and crime. The city set out to revive residences in four neighborhoods with a mix of private and public funds, in a partnership between the D.C. Housing Authority and the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development.
These new developments would follow four precepts: ensure one-for-one replacement of homes, give residents the chance to stay in the community, create mixed-income housing and begin new construction before the original housing was demolished — a concept known as “build first.” The city’s emphasis on keeping residents in their neighborhoods was, in part, a response to the problems of Hope VI, a federal public-housing revitalization program launched in 1992 whose funding was losing support from the Bush administration.
Yet the challenge of meeting these goals has proved daunting, stretching a project once slated for completion in 2015 into a new decade.
At Barry Farm, residents were given housing choice vouchers and asked to move before their homes were torn down and rebuilt. At Temple Courts, residents were promised they could return to a revitalized neighborhood. More than 10 years later, some former residents have moved into replacement units in the neighborhood, but the planned complex with 211 homes for these residents is still a parking lot.
Just a few years ago, it seemed like Park Morton residents would fare better. The housing project — built in 1960 and comprised of 12 garden-style buildings with 174 two-bedroom units — had been slated for redevelopment through the New Communities Initiative since 2008.
“While all of the New Communities Initiative projects were supposed to be build-first, this one actually had an approved plan to do build first and in a way that residents would remain in the same neighborhood, a couple blocks away,” said Danielle Burs, counsel for a firm that filed an amicus brief in 2018 in support of one of the project’s build-first sites. “And that is huge.”
An initial build-first property, The Avenue, was completed in 2012 across the street, and about a third of its units — 27 all told — were designated for Park Morton residents. But the city dropped the development team behind that property a couple years later, after it struggled to secure land for another build-first site. The developer urged the city to reconsider, saying its ability to develop at its chosen site was not at risk.
In 2014, with a new master developer — the Park View Community Partners, comprised of the Community Builders, Dantes Partners and architect Torti Gallas + Partners — the city selected a park down the street as a new build-first site. Bruce Monroe Park, a three-acre stretch of green space and public amenities, opened a decade ago on the site of a former elementary school by the same name. In 2017, the zoning commission approved plans to build a mixed-use development with 273 homes, including some 90 replacement apartments for Park Morton residents and a smaller park, on the Bruce Monroe site.
Nearly three years later, developers still haven’t broken ground at the park, stymied by litigation from a group of Park View neighbors.
The Park Problem
Bruce Monroe Park, a spacious green space along Georgia Avenue across from an Ethiopian restaurant and a barber shop, sits about a half-mile down the street from Park Morton. It’s bordered by row houses interspersed with new construction and provides area residents with a playground, tennis court, basketball courts and a community garden.
In 2017, two months after Bruce Monroe was greenlighted for Park Morton redevelopment, four Park View neighbors sued the zoning commission, petitioning for a review of its decision. They and some other Park View residents had concerns about the build, including its impact on traffic, available green space and the neighborhood skyline.
These neighborhood residents declined to speak with WAMU. However, Marc Poe, writing on behalf of his fellow appellants, said in an email to WAMU that some neighbors felt their voices weren’t being heard as development plans moved forward.
“The Mayor and DMPED [Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development] viewed the green space as an opportunity to develop, without fully considering the ramifications of allowing private development in public land,” Poe wrote. “The proposed development is inconsistent with the needs of our neighbors and the larger Ward 1 community.”
To those who might ask if there is a class-based or racial component to these neighbors’ objections to development of the park, Poe wrote “the city wouldn’t get away from taking away 64% of a park in a more affluent neighborhood.”
“We are disheartened by the reduction of dialogue, on complex and important policy matters such as affordable housing and urban planning, to accusations of bias or bigotry,” Poe said. “Some of the proponents for the development were all too willing to portray the matter as a false choice between supporting affordable housing for low-income residents, and green space for affluent gentrifiers.”
Last year, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser and the D.C. Council approved amendments to language in the city’s planning documents, a move that could make it harder for people to fight new developments in the city. Thousands of housing units have been delayed by appeals from activists and community members who oppose development.
Activists who use the appeals process to oppose development say it is a crucial check on developers who are accelerating gentrification and displacement in the city. Residents of Barry Farm, another New Communities project, used the appeals process to delay redevelopment of their community; a judge who sided with them said city officials had failed to consider how displacement would affect residents.
Some proponents of public-housing redevelopment underscore the role these types of delays can play in displacing low-income city residents.
“Under no circumstances do we want people’s right to participate in the process be curtailed. That would be a negative,” Burs said. “But some of these cases in regard to [planned unit developments] in particular, have what we would consider spurious claims, and the amount of time that we lose every time one of these cases has to go through the entire process can really mess up any development project, but particularly an affordable housing development project.”
As residents and housing officials await the court’s decision on whether to allow development on the park site or shut down the plans, Jose Sousa, a Housing Authority spokesperson, told WAMU the agency is hopeful the suit will soon reach a resolution. But he said it can’t count on the space opening up, and is moving forward with demolition at Park Morton in the meantime.
Preparing To Move
About two dozen Park Morton residents and activists organized a rally last week, opposing a process they consider forced displacement. They brandished signs reading “Build First Not Later” and sang the spiritual and civil rights anthem “We Shall Not Be Moved.” The Housing Authority said it gave residents choices but that relocating residents off the Park Morton site is necessary to move long-promised redevelopment forward.
The agency gave residents three options. One was to move to a different unit at Park Morton that isn’t yet scheduled for demolition (the Housing Authority said 24 such units are available). Another was to move to another public housing unit in the city. And a third was to take a housing-choice voucher that offers rental assistance to privately owned housing developments. A plurality of residents chose to move offsite, according to Sousa.
“We won’t always see eye-to-eye,” Sousa said about the rally at Park Morton last week. “But there’s nobody that can deny that we’ve been meeting with residents regularly … and working hand-in-glove to provide meaningful options for them.”
While residents at Park Morton are concerned about the big picture — namely, a city where some quickly developing neighborhoods have lost about 30% of their low-income population — they also face tough individual choices about whether to stay in their neighborhood’s aging public housing or take a chance at finding something better with a voucher.
Park Morton resident Candice Smith said she applied for a voucher because she needs more space. She lives in a two-bedroom apartment with her five children. Smith also worries about the effect of lead on her young kids — she said her apartment had been treated for lead twice in the last two years. (The Housing Authority, which is legally required to deal with lead problems, conducted interim controls for lead hazards at Park Morton last year, at a cost of $4.5 million.)
The Housing Authority said it will help residents find new homes. Sousa told WAMU the authority offered Park Morton residents almost 400 apartment referrals and has sponsored bus tours of buildings in the city.
But Smith has heard about how hard it can be to find housing with a voucher in desirable neighborhoods such as quickly gentrifying Park View. “It does seem like they’re trying to push us out, in a sense,” Smith said.
Build First: A Complex Enterprise
Sunia Zaterman, executive director of the Council of Large Public Housing Authorities, said residents in some communities prefer vouchers because they offer more mobility. But, she added, “concerns about the effectiveness of the voucher in D.C. are clear, because we have a very tight market.”
Zaterman, whose organization includes members like the D.C. Housing Authority, said the authority’s build-first strategy is a way of respecting concerns about vouchers, and the connection D.C. residents have to their neighborhoods.
But Zaterman said building first is difficult and expensive to accomplish, particularly in a situation like the Park Morton redevelopment, where zoning exemptions were required to proceed with the planned construction.
She said it can be easier in some other jurisdictions, where public housing complexes have larger areas of what’s called “underutilized land” — in other words, parks on the property, or large parking lots.
For example, New York City’s housing authority plans to demolish and rebuild some of its public housing in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood by using a parking lot at the complex for the first phase of construction. Still, residents and activists have pushed back against the plan, because they fear residents will be displaced after the city turns the public housing into private mixed-income developments.
Zaterman emphasized that ambitious redevelopment projects are complex for private developers, and even more complex for city housing authorities, which need to be responsive to a wide array of interests.
“There are a lot of constituencies … that the Housing Authority must answer to: residents, the neighborhoods, the city council, HUD [the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development], the real estate development community, the planning council, zoning laws,” Zaterman said. “I could go on.”
The agency must also contend with the fact that it does not have the budget to fund repairs to its stock in full, a public-housing portfolio that totals some 8,500 homes, 96% of which were built prior to 1970. It has estimated that $2.2 billion would be required over the next 17 years to get D.C.’s public housing back into suitable shape, including $45 million to $50 million in city funds per year that would be leveraged with private funds.
Last year, the D.C. Council voted to allocate about $25 million to public housing repairs for this fiscal year, and to set aside more money for repairs next fiscal year. But the money for this fiscal year will only help address conditions at 400 of the 2,600 units it says are in “extremely urgent” condition, with issues like mold, lead and rodent infestation.
‘We Made A Promise’
On-site construction at Park Morton could begin as early as the end of this year and is projected to take two years, according to the District’s deputy mayor for Planning and Economic Development. Of the 148 homes planned in the phase-one building, 43 are designated for Park Morton residents. (If redevelopment ultimately moves forward at Bruce Monroe, the new units will total 462, with 147 replacement units between the two sites.)
While residents who want to remain on site during construction are allowed to move to a different part of the complex, residents from about 130 households thus far have been offered housing choice vouchers. More than 100 of those families have chosen to move forward with applications for vouchers — which subsidize rent on the private market — with another eight planning to move to other public housing units in the city and a handful relocating to Park Morton buildings not yet scheduled for demolition, Sousa said.
A layout of potential construction for Park Morton.Torti Gallas Urban / Courtesy of the D.C. Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development
“Leaving the area, it’s kind of bittersweet for me,” said Brian Pratt, who accepted a voucher because his mother has trouble climbing stairs and wants to move to housing with elevators and other accessibility.
Yet finding an affordable home in a city contending with a housing shortage is no easy feat. There’s also a pattern of discrimination among some D.C. property managers, particularly based on income source and for those with disabilities. The D.C. Council is considering a bill that would penalize landlords for discriminating against voucher holders. And the D.C. attorney general’s office has taken some of these landlords to court, including for ads that explicitly turn away voucher holders.
As the city moves forward on the partial demolition of Park Morton, the deputy mayor’s office said it “remain[s] committed to build-first principles wherever possible.”
While the vast majority of residents wait for their new buildings, many are forced to tolerate dangerous living conditions, or get emergency vouchers to move out.
“The idea of a voucher might be comforting, because conditions here are pretty bad,” said Ward 1 Council member Brianne Nadeau at the Park Morton rally last week.
The Housing Authority plans to significantly renovate or demolish at least 10 properties over the next two decades, a decision it made after an audit revealed that a third of the city’s public housing was unhealthy or unsafe. One of those properties is Richardson Heights, a part of the fourth New Communities neighborhood development plan known as Lincoln Heights. While the Housing Authority considers demolition at Richardson Heights, it still hasn’t announced a master developer for the Lincoln Heights New Communities plan.
Nadeau recently introduced a bill to clarify rights for relocated public-housing residents, legislation she wants passed before the Housing Authority moves forward with ambitious redevelopment plans that could impact nearly 2,000 families.
At least one of the properties the Housing Authority plans to demolish — Greenleaf Senior & Gardens — has a plan that includes build first. According to documents it recently submitted to the D.C. Council, the Housing Authority is considering build first at more sites but has yet to finalize its plans for those projects.
“I can’t dismiss the fact that there’s going to be a lot of anxiety, and in some cases, residents will have to temporarily relocate,” Housing Authority Executive Director Tyrone Garrett told The Kojo Nnamdi Show last year. “But our goal is to bring everyone back.”
Nadeau said she was still trying to understand how the Housing Authority’s outreach at Park Morton led so many residents to opt for vouchers.
“We made a promise to the people of Park Morton that they wouldn’t have to move if they didn’t want to,” Nadeau says. “And that is still the promise.”
A large mural, its paint cracked and chipped away, blankets a wall just outside of the Bruce Monroe community garden. Commissioned by the city a decade ago, it’s titled “Cultivating the Rebirth.”