D.C.’s largest landlord, the D.C. Housing Authority (DCHA), has a plan to turn around its struggling public housing programs in the next three years, but advocates and residents are skeptical. Getting the agency that houses 50,000 residents back on track soon is critical, not only because many residents live in old units, but because neglecting to fix current problems could lead to a situation where public housing deteriorates to the point it becomes prohibitively expensive to fix, experts say.
In order to meet this challenge, DCHA leadership hope the agency’s newly-released Three-Year Recovery Plan can achieve a lot: moving more people into the agency’s underutilized public housing and voucher programs; creating more affordable housing; and fixing agency weaknesses like insufficient staff training, poor customer service, and IT problems. Most significantly, the plan aims to reposition all public housing subsidies, which could mean temporary relocation and displacement for residents.
Repositioning is a process where the housing authority takes a public housing property and replaces it with a different kind of rental assistance program, often selling or refurbishing the building along the way. DCHA does not give a timeline for this process in the recovery plan. The accompanying 2025 Moving to Work plan (MTW) sets a goal of beginning the conversion of all 8,000 units in the next year, though agency officials have said the process will take far longer, and will involve extensive consultation with residents.
A much-needed recovery
The recovery plan is not the agency’s first attempt at a “turnaround.” After exiting receivership from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in the late ‘90s, DCHA appeared to recover before showing issues again in the 2010s. In 2022, HUD released an audit that found over 80 issues within DCHA, including a failure to maintain livable conditions in many units and an extremely low occupancy rate for public housing, despite a long wait list.
The recovery plan is based on the HUD audit, a 2021 audit from the D.C. Office of the Inspector General, and feedback from residents and staff, according to the plan’s introduction. DCHA Director Keith Pettigrew emphasized the plan is a “living document” and the agency will seek to respond to resident feedback.
Many of the plan’s agency-wide goals aim to address key DCHA challenges, including low occupancy and poor conditions in public housing. Currently, only 83.42% of public housing units are “online”— an improvement from the 2022 HUD audit but short of the recovery plan’s goal of 90% or above use rate for public housing, which a DCHA spokesperson said is industry standard. To address under use, DCHA will create a plan to spend the money allocated by the mayor and D.C. Council to address vacancies and fix inhabitable units. Once the units are fixed, they’ll be offered to some of the 2,700 people currently on the public housing waitlist, according to a DCHA spokesperson.
The recovery plan also calls on DCHA to computerize tasks like work orders and inspections to reduce the backlog and ensure speedier repairs for residents. The plan will address operating issues by introducing standard training and procedures for all departments and filling vacancies.
In order to address the waitlist that stretches over 18,000 people long for the Housing Choice Voucher Program (HCV), the recovery plan proposes restructuring the department that manages vouchers, calls for the creation of an annual leasing plan, and suggests updating the administrative plan to comply with current regulations.
Throughout the plan, DCHA emphasizes improving customer service and rebuilding trust with residents and voucher holders.
Street Sense found the plan, released on June 27, has garnered mixed reactions from advocates and experts. Susan Popkin, who leads the Future of Public Housing initiative at the Urban Institute, sees it as a step in the right direction.
“I think it reflects a real attempt to turn things around and have a new day,” Popkin said. “When I read it, it’s quite different from things I’ve seen before. They’re responding to all the findings that the HUD review had.”
After years of promises of change at DCHA, Daniel del Pielago, the housing director at Empower DC, hopes this plan will represent a true turnaround for the agency.
“It’s a move in the right direction in the sense that we are hearing finally a housing authority that is taking some ownership for the disarray that this agency has been in and making some moves towards improving that,” del Pielago said. He agrees admitting what hasn’t been going well — and creating a plan to change it — is important, but adds many residents feel like the plan is the bare minimum.
“We need an agency that is going above and beyond. One of the critiques that we heard from residents was like, this is basically a report on what they should be doing already, right?” del Pielago said.
Katrina Johnson knows what del Pielago is talking about first hand. She’s a voucher holder and has struggled the past couple of years with an unresponsive caseworker who only seemed to get back to Johnson promptly when she was in danger of being terminated from the program.
“She’s hard to get in contact with, she don’t answer the phone, she don’t answer emails or nothing. It’s like I’m talking to a brick wall,” Johnson said, referring to her caseworker.
Recently, Johnson has been trying to move into a new apartment — her current apartment failed its inspection — but her caseworker has been slow to respond and send the paperwork to her new landlord. When Johnson contacted her new landlord, the landlord told her the caseworker had arranged for her to move in September even though she moves out of her current apartment on Aug. 18, leaving her angry and worried about where she and her kids will live for those two weeks.
She often feels like she’s the only one responsible for making sure her caseworker does her job, Johnson said, leaving her feeling like DCHA just doesn’t care that she depends on this housing.
“I have work, it’s hard for me to try and work and go back and forth to get somebody to do their job, with me moving and stuff and in general. They never respond back, ever,” Johnson said.
For Johnson, the emphasis on improving customer service in the recovery plan is just the bare minimum. She also thinks it should come with some accountability.
“Fire everybody and start over. That’s what they need to do.”
Controversial conversions
Beyond addressing fundamental operational problems, the recovery plan includes big changes.
Among the most ambitious goals in the plan is DCHA’s intention to reposition the subsidies of all current public housing units. There is no timeline tied to this goal in the recovery plan, but the recently approved 2025 Moving to Work Plan (MTW) — an agreement between DCHA and HUD outlining the kinds of redevelopment and programming DCHA plans to engage in — says DCHA plans to pursue repositioning all subsidies in the next fiscal year.
DCHA aims to redevelop its public housing by converting existing housing to either Section 8 project-based assistance utilizing the Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) program or Section 18, which would allow the authority to sell or demolish existing housing without replacing it with a comparable unit, or a combination of these methods, according to the MTW plan. There are a few properties further down the line in this process, among them Park Morton, Kenilworth, Barry Farms, Greenleaf, and Lincoln Heights, but for the rest, DCHA only lists its intention to begin some form of conversion.
In an email to Street Sense, a DCHA spokesperson wrote the repositioning will take several years. After the agency applies to HUD for authorization, they’ll have to find a developer and financing for each property, create a redevelopment plan, have HUD and the DCHA board approve that plan, and then begin construction.
Popkin explained that often, residents often don’t notice a huge difference when a city converts public housing using the RAD program. However, in this case, she said many residents will be forced to move because DCHA’s proposed redevelopment aims to repair or renovate severely dilapidated units.
“They’re repositioning in order to fix the buildings or redevelop them entirely. So people are going to be moved, and it’s going to involve involuntary relocation. Typically, RAD doesn’t provide enough funding, and usually that doesn’t happen, but it’s going to happen here because of the condition of the properties,” Popkin said.
When asked how many residents will have to move due to the conversions, a DCHA spokesperson said it was too soon to provide an estimate, since the agency is just in the first stage of the planning — they’ll still have to make an individual redevelopment plan for each property. DCHA will work with residents to select development partners and create those plans, the spokesperson wrote.
From Popkin’s perspective, the authority is trying to be relatively thoughtful about what such a big change could mean, working with developers with experience in trauma-informed redevelopment and housing.
DCHA’s past handling of redevelopment doesn’t inspire confidence, however, according to Rebecca Lindhurst, a managing attorney for Bread for the City’s housing practice.
“DCHA’s way of doing redevelopment has been completely flawed and has resulted in displacement of communities, destruction of communities for many, many years,” she said, citing the past redevelopment of Arthur Capper under the HOPE VI program — there are hundreds of units that still have not been replaced following the redevelopment of this property. “The concern is that people just aren’t going to be able to come back, and that redevelopment can take such a long time that it just really destroys communities,” Lindhurst said. Despite these concerns, DCHA hopes redevelopment will ultimately create better conditions for public housing residents and allow DCHA to expand the amount of the affordable housing it offers.
According to a DCHA spokesperson, all residents will have a right to return to their communities.
“DCHA is committed to a dynamic community engagement process with our residents to select development partners, provide input on each redevelopment plan, and develop relocation and continued occupancy plans,” they wrote.
Beyond relocation, the other changes associated with repositioning have also caused surprise, concern, and confusion from both residents and advocates alike.
“I just wanted to speak on the Moving to Work because I’ve read as best I could,” Patricia Bishop, a public housing resident, said in a July 10 Board meeting. “My main concern about that, if we’re going to do Section 8 or RAD or whatever. By this being public housing buildings, all the utilities were included. If this does not happen when it’s turned over to these types of Section 8 low rent, people are going to become homeless.”
According to Popkin, RAD does include a utility allowance where rents will be lowered if after conversion tenants are expected to pay their own utilities. However, this is just one of many aspects of a conversion where tenants don’t all know what to expect.
Depending on the program used for redevelopment — RAD or Section 18 — resident’s rights will also change because units will no longer belong to the public housing portfolio, but rather be subsidized by a different kind of assistance.
“There are rights that the tenants keep in a RAD, but not as significant in a conversion to Section 18. So that’s one of our biggest concerns is that it will be converted, and the tenants will then lose their public housing rights,” Lindhurst said.
In public housing, with DCHA as the landlord, tenants have the right to file grievances if the conditions in their unit are being neglected, or they feel that their rent has been miscalculated. But if the property is sold to a new landlord using Section 18, tenants lose this tool for accountability.
Some of the concern also hinges on the ambiguous timeline for repositioning. Although the MTW plan outlines repositioning within the next year, at the July DCHA board meeting, Chairman Raymond Skinner clarified not all the redevelopment will happen that quickly.
“We’re still at the very, very early stages of this repositioning discussion. So, we don’t know for building by building for the most part where we’re going to go and how we’re going to do it,” Skinner said. “But the residents will be involved and there will be numerous meetings on the plan.”
Advocates, however, wonder what resident involvement for development will look like given DCHA’s past blunders at properties like Kenilworth.
“The question for me is whether that redevelopment or that resident involvement is merely picking the paint color, or is that resident involvement substantive regarding how many units are built, how long it takes, where people go in the meantime,” Lindhurst questioned.
Wary of uncertainty
The recovery plan’s lack of specifics is a recurring concern — one that policymakers have also commented on. Councilmember Robert White, who chairs the Housing Committee, put out a statement about the plan, praising Pettigrew for recognizing how DCHA failures have hurt residents, but calling on him to follow up with “clear data and timelines for accountability, with measurable goals and deadlines.”
Currently, the document includes no deadlines other than executing the entire plan within the next three years. Although the DCHA board could play a role in prodding the executive team for updates about the plan’s progress, the lack of benchmarks has left some residents feeling uneasy, according to advocates. According to a spokesperson, the agency will give “periodic” progress updates about the progress of the recovery plan.
“I think one of the bigger critiques was that public housing residents, voucher holders, have been waiting for improvements for a very long time. So when they see a document that is somewhat general, that doesn’t have specific dates, they are wary of: When will this actually happen?” del Pielago said.
Another worrying omission for some advocates is any mention of DCHA’s Office of Audit and Compliance, despite DCHA struggling with instances of fraud in the past. The recovery plan includes a detailed list of strategic goals and objectives for many of the office’s and departments at the housing authority, but not the Office of Audit and Compliance. According to the DCHA spokesperson, the agency-wide goals still apply to the office, there just were not any specific goals for it. Specific goals may be added as the document is updated.
“I find it so strange that the audit and compliance office is not included. That’s the checks and balances. How can you put an audit and compliance in your building, but you’re not utilizing it, and it’s not in your recovery plan?” Kenneth Council, a former DCHA board member, asked at a July 10 board meeting.
William Jordan, who works with the Park Morton Equity Team organizing public housing residents, thinks there’s something else missing too: the view that residents are partners in the work of turning DCHA around.
“The part that’s missing is that there’s no department of resident equity or something like that. They have resident services, but that’s not the same thing. You have to have an infrastructure of resident equity at some level for any plan to work,” Jordan said.
Del Pielago agrees and hoped that the housing authority would take seriously the need for increased resident engagement. He noted that although the document is primarily designed as an internal one aimed at the agency and staff, presenting it without an accompanying message aimed at residents or voucher holders can leave some DCHA clients feeling as though the plan isn’t actually about improving conditions or reducing waitlists.
“When something more holistic isn’t presented, it continues this kind of like are they really doing this for us? Are they doing this to cover their behinds?” del Pielago said. “While I think this is a move in the right direction, I think, the agency needs to do something that is a little more holistic and that talks more directly to its client base.”
Despite concerns and uncertainties with the recovery plan, advocates, residents, policymakers, and experts are rooting for it to succeed — DCHA needs to get on the right track so it can show up for the people who depend on it, they say.
“This is an inflection point. The thing I always say about D.C. is it’s really important to get this right because if we lose D.C.’s public housing — whatever we call it, whether it’s now RAD converted, it’s still deeply subsidized housing — we are going to lose the most stable source of affordable housing in the District,” Popkin said. “There will be nowhere for the people who depend on that housing.”
