How Greenleaf Gardens’ redevelopment is wedded to the DC Housing Authority’s own evolution

The Greenleaf Gardens redevelopment plan has gone through several iterations and false starts. But the push for development now is a product of decades of changes, both meager and monumental, to the owner and manager of the District’s portfolio of public housing— the DC Housing Authority.

Recently, we introduced our series about the prospective redevelopment of Greenleaf Gardens, noting that the push leading to a request for proposals (RFP) in April 2019 was just the latest in a series of attempts to re-envision the community’s existing site.

Now, we are going to delve into how DCHA has transformed over the past two decades and its impact on the Greenleaf community.

Audit inspires overhaul of DC’s housing authority

In 1992, families on DC’s public housing waiting list filed a suit in Superior Court against what was then the Department of Public and Assisted Housing (DPAH). Two years later, the judge on the case appointed experienced public housing reformer David I. Gilmore as the receiver of the agency, ushering in a five-year period of reorganization, democratization, and modernization.

At that time, HUD graded the performance of public housing agencies nationwide. DC had one of the lowest grades, earning a 22.38 on a 100-point scale. This was due to 2,000 units—just under 20% of DC’s public housing stock—being rendered uninhabitable through neglect. Also in 1994, the DC Council dissolved DPAH and established DCHA, further codifying the structure and autonomy of the agency, balanced by a board of commissioners, in 1999.

When the receivership ended in 2000, it had been touted as a success, partly because of the progress that Gilmore was able to enact through DCHA and with federal HUD funding, independent of the city’s government apparatus.

Gilmore executed a number of other reforms including overhauling DCHA’s administrative structure, conducting bi-weekly meetings as open forums for residents, forming a housing authority police force, hiring residents of the properties to maintain their communities, implementing a practice of regular inspections of each unit throughout the year, establishing a property management arm, and creating a city-wide resident advisory board and independent resident councils at each property.

Simultaneously, HUD created the “Moving to Work” (MTW) initiative, which made it possible for housing authorities to take a more active role in designing a creative approach toward developing public housing. As one of a few dozen participating housing authorities, DCHA subsequently formed partnerships with nonprofits like Habitat for Humanity (DCHA’s first partnership) and the Coalition For Non Profit Housing and Economic Development and government agencies like the DC Housing Finance Agency (DCHFA) and the Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD). The MTW designation also exempts public housing authorities under its umbrella from HUD’s performance grading.

DC public housing loses funding as HUD shifts its priorities

In 2000, HUD financing began steadily trending downward for traditional public housing nationwide, an average decrease of 2% annually, according to DCHA. Instead, HUD began promoting alternative vehicles to public housing reform that invest private debt and equity into public housing. Vouchers were also increased in an attempt to shift people from public housing towards the private market. Nationwide, there were over 100,000 fewer public housing units in 2019 than in 2010.

Post-receivership, DCHA has had mixed success with its public-private partnerships, as seen with its HUD-funded HOPE VI redevelopment grants and the New Communities Initiative projects helmed by the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development.

In 2017, Tyrone Garrett was appointed as director of DCHA. That year, the agency hired a third party to conduct an environmental assessment of each of the 41 sites and 6,800 units under the agency’s purview.

Despite DCHA citing an immediate need for $343 million for critical repairs in the 2019 fiscal year, the city approved less than $111.5 million. Meanwhile, a far-reaching audit of the public housing portfolio, completed in late 2018, found that 38% of the public housing units were in “extremely urgent need” of repair. A capital needs assessment explained that the agency needed $2.2 billion over 17 years to bring its portfolio to 20-year viability.

In November 2018, director Garrett wrote a letter to HUD requesting $30 million to make the worst of the units habitable and secure 2,500 additional housing vouchers to help other residents relocate into more suitable units. HUD said no.

The DCHA board of directors voted to approve a resolution in January 2019 affirming that the portfolio was in dire need of repair. And in light of inadequate HUD funding, the agency said that a combination of financing approaches would be necessary, including demolition/dispositions and rental assistance demonstration (RAD). With Resolution 19-01, DCHA also promised to furnish an overview of the repositioning options for the 14 Extremely Urgent properties within 30 days, and a more detailed plan for each by May 1, 2019.

Although an attachment to the resolution stipulated one-for-one replacement of any units affordable to households earning less than 30% of area median income (AMI) and that DCHA would maintain some ownership in any of its redevelopments, the vagueness of the resolution was enough to undermine the tenuous trust of advocacy organizations and, more importantly, the residents who had been awaiting more details about what would happen with their homes following sporadic meetings in the preceding year.

DC Council increases funds for housing authority

The enormity of the problems and costs identified in the capital needs assessment, in part, inspired another suggestion to restructure the DC Housing Authority. In February 2019, Ward 1 Councilmember Brianne Nadeau introduced a bill to fold DCHA into the executive branch, similarly to how the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development operates.

Co-introduced by Chair Phil Mendelson, then-councilmember Jack Evans, and Councilmembers Charles Allen, Elissa Silverman, Robert White, David Grosso, and Brandon Todd, the District of Columbia Housing Authority Amendment Act of 2019 was meant to expedite interdepartmental cooperation, and to increase transparency over the authority’s practices and spending to ensure they align with the city’s overall goals of creating and preserving affordable housing.

At a hearing for the bill, however, public housing residents and allies expressed concern over the proposed reorganization, citing the potential for cronyism, high turnover, and worsened relations with residents and resident councils. The bill has since stalled in the committee on housing and neighborhood revitalization.

Shortly afterward, as the committee considered budget allotments for the 2020 fiscal year, committee chair Anita Bonds noted that the Office of the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) had identified cash reserves DCHA had on-hand that could go towards its funding needs.

Ultimately, the city approved an over $145 million subsidy for the agency for FY2020, a 30% increase over the approval for FY2019.

Transparency, or lack thereof

Throughout legislative hearings about DCHA, residents and advocates have questioned Mayor Bowser’s commitment to public housing, calling for the housing authority to have dedicated annual funding like the Housing Production Trust Fund.

As witnesses see it, the funding should be attached to accountability measures codified in writing and should include the following: enhanced due process protections for residents; established standards for redevelopment, including build-first, permanent affordability, and right-to-return; and metrics to enforce agency standards. They have also requested for tenants to have more input throughout the decision-making process rather than being surveyed afterward.

In many instances, DCHA’s lack of transparency and preemptive engagement has undermined relations which, in other areas like maintenance responsiveness, may have otherwise been an improvement over past regimes.

Greenleaf residents sulk in decades of uncertainty

While touting the progress made over his tenure in the 90s, Gilmore described Greenleaf as “the most notorious public housing in terms of drugs and crime.”

Nearly two decades later, Greenleaf residents are among those calling out DCHA’s lack of transparency, which has left them dealing with the opacity surrounding the future redevelopment of their homes.

At the February 2019 hearing on the DCHA amendment bill, Greenleaf senior resident Linda Brown testified about the toll housing insecurity has exacted on her and her daughter, who is disabled. “At Greenleaf, DCHA has been talking about a redevelopment for the past 10 years that I’ve lived there. However, I’m still not clear on what will happen and when it will happen. For me, this is very stressful, and it causes me anxiety, which has resulted in health challenges for me. As I’ve mentioned, my daughter has multiple disabilities, and not knowing what will happen in the future could be very traumatic for her.”

While the RFP was released in April 2019, DCHA’s first town hall with Greenleaf residents specifically covering the document did not occur until mid-July.

A preliminary report released the month before the town hall identified Greenleaf as the largest and most valuable of the 14 urgent developments, with 493 units on land worth an estimated $97.9 million. The audit of these units showed 89 vacant units and prevalent housing code violations, including lead paint and water damage.

Despite a request for build-first sites included in the RFP response requirements, Director Garrett was hesitant to guarantee development would happen that way, cautioning that build-first often takes longer and would prolong the time residents spent in poor living conditions. “If there is a build-first opportunity for the housing authority, we will take advantage of it….we’re not going to continue to put band-aids on properties.”

DCHA and representatives from the final four teams vying for co-developer presented their proposals to the community in December; there hasn’t been a meeting with residents since.

Later that month, a two-alarm fire at the Greenleaf senior building injured seven people and displaced five households. “We still don’t know how that happened,” Brown explained at an oversight hearing in January. “If you don’t have any relief in your day-to-day life with this, this is not about a plan. People are living this every day, so we can’t just talk about something that we’re going to do.”

What’s next?

In September 2019, DCHA made available to the public its 20-Year Transformation Plan—the most detailed overview of the agency’s plans for each of its properties to date. The DHCA Board of Commissioners is expected to vote on the plan this summer, although it is unclear to what extent the COVID-19 pandemic measures will impact this timeline.

In the meantime, the DC Council has put forth another bill to provide residents some measure of security: On January 27th, Councilmember Nadeau, along with Councilmembers Allen, Grosso, Silverman, Todd, Trayon White, Robert White, and Mary Cheh, introduced the Public Housing Preservation and Tenant Protection Amendment Act, which requires DCHA to give the council 45-day notice before requesting support for any HUD demolition-and-disposition application. If enacted, DCHA would also be required to submit legally-binding plans for how residents will be relocated.

It also remains to be seen how the city will treat the housing authority during the budget debates for fiscal year 2020, particularly since the COVID-19 pandemic has already pushed budget hearings back until at least May.

The CFO has already cautioned that the city may have to cut spending depending on the extent of the current economic downswing.