Troubles with public housing dominated the discussion at a recent empowerment circle held by the community organizers of Empower DC.
Schyla Pondexter-Moore, an affordable housing organizer for the group, helped get the conversation started.
“In our communities there are no resources, so if you have nothing nobody does anything,” Pondexter-Moore said.
As a tenant of the Highland Dwellings public housing project, Dixon-Moore led her neighbors in a successful legal fight against a HOPE VI renovation effort that they feared would displace them and privatize their housing project. HOPE VI uses federal and private money to rebuild severely distressed public housing projects but offers residents no guarantee they will be able to return once the work has been done.
After organizing her own neighbors, Pondexter-Moore has been encouraging other public housing residents to fight for better living conditions in their communities. At the empowerment circle, held in October, Pondexter-Moore made it her business to dispel myths about public housing. While many believe residents don’t pay rent, most actually pay one-third of their income as rent. Another myth is that public housing residents are criminals. False, said Pondexter-Moore, a background check is required before moving and the resident faces eviction if anyone in the individuals’ unit is arrested.
In the last decade, the District has lost 40,000 of its native born population; most were living in low-income areas, according to Empower DC. The empowerment circle featured four women who are in threat of or have been moved by HOPE VI or other renewal efforts.
Elaine Carter a community activist of forty years was philosophical about being required to leave her unit.
“God places me where I need to be,” she said. “I was one of the last ones to leave my community.”
Carter said she was waiting for something in writing saying that she would be able to return.
Another public housing resident. Michelle L. Hamilton-Agytong lived on the street and in shelters for 14 years before her name came up on the waiting list for public housing. She now lives at the Barry Farm housing project which was targeted in 2005 for redevelopment under the city’s New Communities Initiative (NCI.)
NCI is another revitalization mode similar in some ways to HOPE VI in that it rebuilds old public housing projects as mixed-income communities . Unlike HOPE VI, it promises one-to-one replacement of old units. But the work at Barry Farms has languished for years. Little has been done and residents say the buildings are becoming increasingly unlivable, yet they are afraid to leave for fear of losing their units.
The same concerns were brought to city officials at an Oct 22 oversight hearing on NCI.
At the hearing, Pondexter-Moore said she was wary of NCI, saying “dispersion is not an antipoverty policy.
“The driving force being these programs is to deconcentrate poverty,” she continued. But she asserted that such programs do not “do anything to effectively defeat poverty but to just spread us out.”
Pondexter- Moore also testified that public housing is needed and that residents can’t afford to lose any more. When she finished her testimony the crowd erupted in applause.
In other news, the CCNV Task Force has continued discussions about the future of the historic Federal City Shelter. The federal agreement that helped to make the building into a shelter is set to expire in 2016. The 1350 bed shelter is located on Second and D Streets NW, in a rapidly gentrifying area, and homeless activists are paying close attention to the workings of the task force.
So far, discussions center on whether the current building should be renovated or whether a new facility should be built.
The Oct 31 meeting was held in the shelter’s community room.
Much of the meeting focused on the legal restrictions that may apply to the uses of the property. In addition, questions were raised about the future of the adjacent Mitch Snyder Arts and Education Center. CCNV’s Rico Harris told the crowd that CCNV hopes to continue the work started there in the eighties to promote art and to educate homeless individuals.
Homeless activist David Pirtle spoke of the continuing need for shelter beds. He reflected on the persistence of homelessness.
“We housed 1,000 people last year but we are not reducing homelessness in the district,” he said. Other advocates stressed the need to have the homeless community involved in any final decision. It it the hope of all that there will be some sort of agreement that everybody can live with.
