Greater Greater Washington: Carolyn Gallaher Posts by Carolyn Gallaher. en Thu, 15 Sep 2016 09:37:00 +0000 The DC Council just cut $20 million for homeless services to fund tax breaks

On December 4, the DC Council moved to divert an estimated $20 million in new tax funds it had pledged for homeless programs to instead reduce the property tax rate for commercial entities valued at $10 million or more. That money could have funded permanent supportive housing for about 730 people, or have provided long-term housing vouchers to about 1,000 very low-income families, says Jesse Rabinowitz, Advocacy and Campaign Manager at Miriam's Kitchen, a DC nonprofit working to end homelessness.

There aren’t enough homes in the District for all the people who want to live here, and most existing homes are not affordable for low-income people. Zillow estimates that the median home value in the District in November of this year was $575,800. The average rents for one- and two-bedroom apartments are $1,996 and $2,532, respectively, which is way out of reach for those making the city’s median household income—$77,649.

The city’s contribution to low-income housing production, though important, is insufficient to solve the problem, let alone put a serious dent in it. That's why housing advocates are so frustrated with this move.

DC had decided to use half of online purchase revenue to fund housing

In 2013 there was chatter that the government would finally allow states to tax purchases made online. In preparation for that possibility, the District included a section in the Fiscal Year 2014 Budget Support Act of 2013 detailing what it would do with the new tax receipts if online taxation were permitted.

The bill stipulated that 50% of the revenue—at the time an estimated at $20 million—would be used to tackle homelessness in the city. In June of this year, the Supreme Court ruled that states (and the District of Columbia) can collect sales tax on on purchases made by their residents.

A month later, two councilmembers, Jack Evans and Phil Mendelson, quietly introduced a bill (The Internet Sales Tax Amendment Act) to amend how the city will spend its tax receipts for internet sales. Instead of subsidizing developers to build low-income housing or providing more rent vouchers for low-income residents, the bill amends the original 2013 act so the money is now used for a tax break for owners of commercial properties valued at $10 million or more.

Ostensibly, the move was to appease commercial interests who were unhappy with an earlier tax hike on commercial properties. Councilmembers David Grosso, Brianne Nadeau, Elissa Silverman, and Trayon White voted against the bill.

Lots of people in our region desperately need homes

In 2013 when the 2014 budget act was initiated, there were approximately 800 residents in the city’s family homeless shelter (the former DC General), more than half of whom were children. The plight of the city’s homeless families, and the shelter’s inability to meet their needs, would come to painful light in early 2014 when Relisha Rudd, a 9-year-old who lived in the shelter with her mother, went missing.

When the mayor first promised to close DC General, she said that she would replace it with several smaller shelters located across the city’s eight wards. Flash forward five years. On November 1, the Mayor formally shuttered DC General, but only two of those replacement shelters have been built.

While homelessness among families has dropped nearly 40% since its height in 2016, it remains a persistent problem in DC. This January, the city estimated that there were 924 families experiencing homelessness in the District, compared to 1,491 families counted in 2016. However, DC actually saw its percentage of homeless families increase 142.7% over the past decade. While the numbers may be down from 2016, they are not where they were before the 2008 recession.

The city likes to say the declining numbers are due in large part to its efforts to better serve homeless families. This is undoubtedly true, but there’s still much work to be done. To provide a path to stability, DC's homeless families also need affordable housing, not just shelters.

As Ed Lazere and Scott Schenkelberg argue in the Washington Post, budget choices are also moral ones. If DC is serious about being truly inclusive, it needs to build space for people of all incomes.

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Wed, 12 Dec 2018 15:30:00 +0000 Carolyn Gallaher (Editorial Board)
A housing fight with the National Shrine illustrates the limits of TOPA

DC's Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA) is designed to help tenants in multi-family apartment building stay put if their landlord decides to sell the property. So why is TOPA not working for tenants in several buildings put up for sale by the Basilica of the National Shrine in Northeast Washington?

A quick refresher on TOPA: In DC, when a landlord sells a multi-family apartment building, tenants have the right to refuse the sale and purchase the building for the same price. Of course, tenants usually don't have the cash to purchase the building outright, so they often assign their right of refusal to a for- or non-profit developer in exchange for things like buildings repairs and affordable rent (or below market prices, if condo conversion is on the table).

The process starts with a TOPA notice, which alerts tenants that their building has been contracted for sale and that they have the right to refuse the sale. However, these tenants’ experience indicates that TOPA doesn't always work for people living in small apartment buildings, and underlines that we cannot merely rely on TOPA to protect affordable housing in the District.

Tenants fear they may lose their homes

The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception is a Roman Catholic Church in University Heights. In 2016, Joanne Doyle willed the National Shrine a portfolio of 13 properties. Eight of the properties were small, four-unit apartment buildings; the rest were single-family homes. Most of the properties are located in fast-gentrifying neighborhoods like Brookland and Trinidad in northeast DC.

After the National Shrine took possession of the properties this spring, it transferred them to a holding company. The holding company then contracted to sell the buildings to multiple buyers. In a letter sent to tenants, the National Shrine explained its decision to sell as a legal matter: “As a Roman Catholic Church, the Basilica is not permitted to manage or own rental properties as a trade or business. Accordingly, we are required to sell all donated real estate as soon as practical.”

Of the eight buildings eligible to invoke their TOPA rights (single family homes are exempt from TOPA), only two — 636 Girard Street NE and 1365 Bryant Street NE — have done so. However, residents are having trouble making TOPA work for them and are worried they will lose their homes.

Why are tenants so worried?

Tenants have two fears. First, they fear steep rent hikes. All of the four-unit properties in Doyle’s portfolio are rent controlled. However, the city allows owners of buildings with four or fewer units to apply for an exemption, even if their buildings have been under rent control for decades.

Until 10 years ago, property values in Brookland and Trinidad were at or below city averages. This meant that a landlord like Doyle could cover her expenses and make a profit with monthly rents of $700 or $800 per one-bedroom unit. The new landlords paid much higher prices for these properties — most of the four-unit apartment buildings sold for over a half a million dollars.

To cover their new mortgages and make needed repairs, new landlords need to charge much higher rents than Doyle did. Tenants worry that instead of holding the property for years, the new landlords will do a quick flip, and either convert the building into condos or tear them down to sell to a developer.

Second, tenants fear they will not be able to find a comparably priced apartment if they have to leave. They are right to worry. Between 2002 and 2015 the District lost half of its affordable housing (defined as apartments renting for less than $800 a month).

The numbers are no better for people who want to buy affordable housing. According to a new study by the DC Policy Center, there are just under 2,000 starter homes in the district that are affordable for people making 80% of the Area Median Income (AMI). The number is just over 500 for people making 60% or less of the area median income.

These numbers are sobering when put into context: there are currently 51,000 families in the District that make 80% or less of AMI and 41,500 who make 60% or less of AMI.

The tenants in 636 Girard Street NE and 1364 Bryant Street NE are now trying to save their homes through other means. They’ve asked the National Shrine to cancel the contracts, held protests, and reached out to legislators. So far, their efforts have been to no avail.

So why isn’t TOPA working for these tenants?

I’ve studied TOPA for many years, and my first question when I heard about these buildings was simple: Why aren’t the tenants invoking their TOPA rights? Per DC Law, landlords are required to alert tenants when they have contracted to sell a multi-family apartment dwelling. There are numerous organizations in the city who help tenants invoke their TOPA rights.

To find out the answer to my question, I contacted Yasmina Mrabet, who works with Justice First and LinkUp, organizations that helps tenants fight landlord disinvestment, displacement, and gentrification. Mrabet told me that it’s not clear how diligent the National Shrine was in distributing TOPA notices to tenants.

Tenants in one of the buildings found the TOPA notices in the stairwell. Others can’t remember if they received a TOPA notice or not. One building’s tenants say they never received the notice. Other tenants, spread across the four buildings, said they received TOPA notices but did not know what they meant.

Although the city legally requires tenants to receive a TOPA notice, the office in charge of overseeing the TOPA process does not track whether letters are received. When tenants discover they did not receive a TOPA notice, it’s often too late to refuse a sale (the city statute only gives tenants in small buildings — four units or fewer — 22 days to notify the city of their intent to purchase).

To find redress, tenants have to either hire a lawyer or find pro-bono counsel. Legal redress can take years and is often unsuccessful, and even successful cases do not restore the initial right of refusal.

TOPA economics don't work out for small buildings

Another issue is that the buildings in question are too small for tenants to attract the assistance of a third party developer (each building has only four apartments). Tenants who successfully invoke their TOPA rights often work with a third party developer. However, working with developers usually requires some give and take.

The developer offers improvements, like a new roof and electrical upgrades, in exchange for the ability to sell or rent some units at market rate. That bargain, which underpins many successful TOPA processes, does not tend to work in small buildings because the profit margins are usually too low. If the finances do work out for a potential developers, it's usually because they buy tenants out and then convert the building to luxury condos or rentals.

The same economics affect non-profit developers, which are committed to keeping families in place. As Heather Benno, who lives in 636 Girard Street NE, explained: “As a practical matter, no nonprofits were willing to work with us.”

Tenants also couldn’t turn to the District’s Housing Production Trust Fund (HPTF) for help. Despite the fact that the HPTF is funded at over $100 million a year (more than most other cities in the US with similar funds), the funds still are stretched thin and its administrators almost never give money to small buildings. In the midst of a severe housing shortage, the city reasons that it needs to spend its money where it can get the biggest bang for the buck — that often means allocating money to big buildings. Heather Beno described her building’s attempt to get city assistance to convert to a limited equity co-op as “impossible.”

Given the difficulty tenants are having using TOPA to stay put, Justice First has taken the approach that the National Shrine is a religious organization and should act accordingly. Mrabet argues that by selling these buildings, the church is participating in gentrification rather than helping the poor.

What should the city do?

The experience of the tenants in the National Shrine properties should also spark a wider conversation about affordable housing. The city often pats itself on the back for having the most tenant-friendly laws in the country. While that may be true, the numbers from the DC Policy Center study excerpted above demonstrate clearly that these laws have not allowed DC to escape an affordability crisis.

Far from it.

Even in buildings where tenants invoked their TOPA rights, the number of affordable units often declines. Buyouts, voluntary agreements, and other arrangements that tenants have to strike with for-profit developers protect in-situ tenants, but not the wider tenant class.

If the city really wants to tackle its affordability crisis, more and greater direct interventions are necessary. The city could start by providing more direct help for small buildings who want to use TOPA.

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Tue, 09 Oct 2018 21:14:00 +0000 Carolyn Gallaher (Editorial Board)
It’s difficult to become a homeowner with limited English proficiency

Most Americans’ biggest source of wealth is their home, but unfortunately homeownership rates are not standard across demographic categories. Thanks to the Urban Institute, we now know that Limited English Proficiency (or LEP) depresses homeownership, even when race, income, and other variables are accounted for. The question is why.

Individual and state-sanctioned racism has negatively impacted minorities

Racial minorities have lower rates of homeownership than white Americans. In the first quarter of 2017, homeownership rates for whites was 71.8%. The rates for Blacks and Hispanics was substantially lower — 43.4% and 46.6% respectively.

Although we know that there are disparities in homeownership rates across racial and ethnic groups, there are still debates about the exact causes behind them. In African American communities for example, racism, legacies of redlining, and unfair mortgage practices all play a role, but the order and combination often varies across space.

Hispanics also have lower homeownership rates than whites. Studies suggest that for Hispanics, a lower median age, limited education, and immigration status all depress homeownership, but the role of different variables is not consistent across the country.

Language proficiency is also a factor

The Urban Institute’s new study points to the role of a rarely-considered variable — limited English proficiency. The top five languages spoken by people with LEP are in the US are Spanish (39.1 million speakers), Chinese (3.2 million), Vietnamese (1.5 million), Tagalog (1.7 million), and Korean (1.1 million).

Although the percentage of people with limited English proficiency is higher for Chinese, Vietnamese, and Korean speakers, the sheer size of the Spanish speaking population — 10 times larger than the second-largest LEP group — means that the majority of LEP speakers speak Spanish (16.3 million).

Previous studies have noted that limited English proficiency depresses homeownership rates. However, Urban Institute’s study also finds that LEP is more influential than previously thought. That is, even when you control for differences in race, income, and age, LEP accounts for a significant portion of the disparity in homeownership rates.

Why does language matter so much?

The Urban Institute’s study doesn’t offer any concrete explanations for why LEP plays such an important role in depressing homeownership rates. Its goal was to account for the role of LEP. However, we can make some reasonable speculations for why LEP matters. Let’s look at two potential explanations.

First, applications for mortgages contain a lot of technical language. People with LEP often have English-speaking family and friends who can help them to fill out applications for driver’s licenses, banks accounts, etc. However, even native speakers often find mortgage applications overly technical and confusing. The networks people with LEP rely on may simply not feel up to the task of a mortgage application.

A second reason may be historical. Many Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America have recent histories with dictatorship. In authoritarian regimes, signing paperwork can be dangerous. Signatures can be used for nefarious ends — to repress opponents, cement support, or coerce the ambivalent. Although authoritarianism is on the wane throughout Latin America, social trust (among fellow citizens and in the government) tends to lag behind democratization.

In the Washington region’s inner suburbs where people with LEP are concentrated, boosting homeownership could not only provide a motor to the middle class for individual residents, but could also help stabilize areas often marked by transience.

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Thu, 26 Apr 2018 14:00:00 +0000 Carolyn Gallaher (Editorial Board)
A fix or a setback? DC may strip tenant purchase rights from single-family homes

When a landlord sells a rental property in DC, the law gives tenants the right try to purchase the property instead for the contracted sale price. A bill just approved by a DC Council committee would exempt all single-family homes from the law. Realtors say that's necessary to prevent abuses, while tenant advocates say it will harm vulnerable populations.

The bill, introduced by councilmember Anita Bonds (at-large), would exempt single-family homes from the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA). TOPA currently has slightly different provisions based on the size of the property — single family, properties with between two and four units, and properties with five or more units.

The bill widens from just exempting accessory apartments to all single-family homes

Last year, the Housing and Neighborhood Revitalization Committee, which Bonds chairs, held a public hearing on a draft bill to exempt single-family homes with accessory dwelling units (ADUs) from TOPA. Typical ADUs include so-called English basement apartments, converted garages, and carriage houses.

The DC Association of Realtors supported the draft bill. Realtors argued that the 180-day timeframe makes it hard for property owners to sell their property in a timely manner, or to arrange a timely follow on-purchase using proceeds from the sale, given the uncertainty of in-situ tenants’ intentions, financing, etc. Realtors also complained that some tenants had no interest in home-ownership but were using the TOPA process to extract hefty buyouts in exchange for not invoking their TOPA rights.

Polly Donaldson, the Director of the District’s Department of Housing and Community Development, expressed concerns that the draft bill would create two classes of tenants (those with and without TOPA rights) based on an arbitrary criteria (total number of rental units in a property). Tenant advocates argued that small fixes could be introduced to prevent abuses of the law, including narrowing the timeline and limiting who tenants can assign their rights to (e.g. to third parties who will guarantee affordability).

Given the gulf between the two sides, Bonds convened a working group of tenant advocates and real estate folks to hammer out the differences. The idea was to find a compromise position that both sides could agree on, and tenant advocates say the group were making progress.

The revised draft that Bonds brought to the committee did not contain such a compromise. Instead, the revised draft of the bill proposes to exempt all single-family homes from TOPA, not just those with tenants living in ADUs. Bonds' new bill does carve out two exemptions: TOPA rights of elderly persons (70 or older) and tenants with disabilities will be grandfathered into the bill.

The committee approved the bill at a mark-up on February 23. Councilmember Brianne Nadeau (Ward 1) offered an amendment to widen the definition of elderly to include anyone 62 or older. It was accepted unanimously by the committee.

Image by Rod Raglin licensed under Creative Commons.

Realtors are pleased with the change

Members of the city’s real estate community are happy with the new bill. It means that tenants in single family homes can no longer hold up legitimate sales just to score a hefty payout. Realtors also have argued that some homeowners may be reluctant to rent out a basement or carriage house for fear that it would then complicate selling the home in the future.

Other supporters of the bill note that if past is prologue, the exemption might not affect that many tenants. Council committee staff analyzed TOPA offers in single-family homes between October 2009 and August 2015 and found that of 427 offers, only 19 resulted in sales to tenants.

Some who otherwise support the bill aren't sure it even covers buildings they'd expect it to. The Dupont Circle Advisory Neighborhood Commission and Dupont Circle Citizens' Association argued that in many row house zones, actually, a house with a basement apartment is not technically considered an ADU or a single-family home but a two-family apartment building. It's unclear if the definition of “single-family home” in this bill encompasses that or not, but it's at odds with the zoning definition.

Tenant advocates feel betrayed

Tenant advocates are very unhappy about the bill. A group of housing nonprofits, led by the Latino Economic Development Center (LEDC), released a public letter condemning it. They argue that the exemption will make it easier for speculators to flip houses (which increases prices). And, with tenants out of the way, speculators can more easily convert single-family homes into multi-unit condominiums. Given that the District’s rental housing stock is already dominated by studio and one-bedrooms, tenant advocates argue that protecting the dwindling supply of family-sized homes should be a priority.

Tenant advocates would like to see more carve-outs if the bill goes forward. At the moment, Nadeau’s amendment tries to soften the impact by lowering the age limit for elderly from 70 to 62. I spoke to Rob Wohl at LEDC, who told me that the amendment does not target the right group. “The demographic category most at risk for housing insecurity today is not the elderly, it's families,” Wohl said. The majority of the District’s rental housing is studios and one-bedrooms. Families, nuclear or multi-generational, have fewer and fewer options if they want to stay in the city.

Ed Lazere, who is challenging council chairman Phil Mendelson in the Democratic primary, also weighed in. He said that the working group established by Bonds had been making progress on problems with TOPA in single-family homes with ADUs, and claims, “Mendelson upended this progress by introducing and pushing a proposal that is far more harmful to tenants.” ​​​​​​

Wohl made a similar point. He told me, “We were willing to find fixes for people in that situation, but the new bill exempts all single family homes.” As Wohl explained to me, “that’s a bigger category.” It includes not just people who live in their homes and rent ADUs to tenants, but also people who do not need help, like “owners of investment properties.” In some cases, low-income residents have been renting a whole house for years or decades — it's not just about the transient renter in a basement apartment.

There's still time for changes

For my part, I agree that this bill is overly expansive. It will take TOPA rights away from a wider category of tenants than many people assume. When we talk about single-family homes, we often think about stand-alone houses, or row houses, but single-family home can also include condominium units being rented by individual owners. The early condo building boom in the early 2000s means there are a lot of renters in the city who live in single-family homes in condo buildings. They should continue to have a right to buy their units if and when their owners decide to sell.

It’s also interesting to note that the data collected by Bonds committee found that two-thirds of successful TOPA sales were for units in condominiums. TOPA currently gives tenants in these units the right to buy. Bonds new bill will make that impossible.

There’s still time to rework this bill. The council still can amend the bill to incorporate the compromises already hashed out by Bonds' working group and find further ones that can work for all sides.

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Mon, 05 Mar 2018 18:00:00 +0000 Carolyn Gallaher (Editorial Board)
Revoking El Salvador’s Temporary Protective Status is bad news for the region

On January 8 the Department of Homeland Security announced that it would not renew Temporary Protective Status (TPS) for the nearly 200,000 Salvadorans living in the US. That has big implications for the Washington region, where more than 32,000 Salvadorans with TPS live. They tend to be concentrated in neighborhoods like Langley Park, Maryland and Manassas Park, Virginia, and have had a deep impact on local culture.

Some TPS holders will leave, spurring disinvestment and labor shortages. Others will stay and go underground. Neither scenario is good for these neighborhoods.

What is TPS and how does it affect the region?

The Department of Homeland Security is in charge of designating TPS. Countries are eligible for TPS if they are recovering from a natural disaster or grappling with ongoing conflict. Once a country receives TPS designation, its nationals in the US may seek work authorization.

There are nearly 200,000 El Salvadorans with TPS in the United States. They are concentrated in three metropolitan areas: DC (32,359), New York (23,168), and Los Angeles (30,415). The US first granted El Salvador TPS in 1990, and the designation expired in 1992. After a series of devastating earthquakes in 2001, however, El Salvador’s TPS was reinstated. The Department of Homeland Security renewed the status continually until this January.

Seventeen years of continued renewals means that Salvadorans with TPS have established deep roots in the DC metro area. They purchased homes, sent their kids to local schools, and opened businesses. They were some of the earliest supporters of DC United. Pupusas are now part of the local cuisine. Salvadorans are part of the fabric of Washington.

Pupusas, plantains, and more. Image by Garrett Ziegler licensed under Creative Commons.

Why some TPS holders will stay and go underground

Despite the difficulties of living without papers in the US — especially in an era of heightened immigration enforcement — most Salvadorans with TPS will remain in the US after September 9. Several factors explain why.

A recent study in the Journal on Migration and Human Security found that the 300,000 TPS holders from El Salvador, Honduras, and Haiti have 273,000 US-born children. Since only 10 percent of Salvadorans with TPS are married to a legal resident, leaving children behind with the other parent isn’t an option for most.

TPS holders are also deeply embedded in the labor market. According to the same study, only five percent of El Salvadoran TPS holders are unemployed (less than the workforce as a whole). Eighty-eight percent work in the formal labor force. The top three industries where Salvadoran TPS holders work are construction, restaurants and food services, and landscaping. In Washington, these concentrations are obvious to anyone who has hired a landscaper or watched neighbors get a new roof.

TPS holders are embedded in local economies in other ways as well. The Journal on Migration and Human Security study found that around 11 percent of TPS holders from El Salvador, Honduras, and Haiti are self-employed (people in this category may also be employed in the formal labor market). Most self-employed TPS holders are small business owners, which means they are producing jobs. Nearly 30 percent of TPS holders from these three countries also have mortgages.

Conditions in El Salvador, Honduras, and Haiti are also a factor. El Salvador and Honduras are currently among the most violent countries in the world. Deportees to both countries are also at risk because criminal organizations routinely prey on returning migrants, who they see as easy targets. Haiti, already a desperately poor country, continues its struggle to rebuild after the 2010 earthquake that sparked its original TPS designation.

Children are hit hard when parents are deported. Image by IM Swedish Development Partner licensed under Creative Commons.

What will happen to labor markets and laborers?

To understand how TPS revocation will affect the region, we have to look at four groups: TPS holders who own small businesses, industries who employ a lot of Central Americans, TPS recipients, and TPS family members.

TPS recipients with small businesses have three options: sell their business, put it in a family member’s name, or shut it down. Closing up shop is the most likely option. Unless TPS holders have adult children or a spouse with legal status, there is not often anyone to hand the business over to. Selling a business will also be difficult. Many of these businesses are restaurants and bakeries located in Salvadoran enclaves. The profit margin in these kinds of restaurants is already quite small, and those margins are likely to shrink with the economic disruption TPS revocation will bring with it.

Industries that hire Salvadoran (or Honduran) employees will likely face a labor shortage. Some TPS holders will return home. Some may seek asylum in Canada. Most will choose to stay, for the reasons listed above. Domestic business owners will have to decide how to handle their employees who want to stay on after losing status. They can either lay them off or move them off the books.

For TPS holders, going ‘off the books’ is a risky proposition. Employers can reduce their wages, arguing that they incur risks by keeping them on. They can refuse to pay overtime or not grant vacation or paid sick leave. Although not all owners will take advantage of employees put into this position, some will inevitably do so. Former TPS holders will have no legal recourse to fight them.

Revoking TPS also puts holders’ families at risk. When a provider (mother or father) goes underground, they constantly worry what will happen to their children if they are suddenly picked up by ICE agents and moved to a deportation center where they can be held incommunicado for days. Some worries are immediate and visceral — who will pick up my daughter from school if I’m suddenly detained? How can I let her know where I am?

Others concerns are more long term — how can I make sure that my child can get the money in my bank account? How can I afford to pay someone to take care of her when I can’t find a job back home?

Children worry too. Losing a mother or father to deportation can feel like a death.

Gang-related graffiti spotted in DC.

Bad for the neighborhood, good for the gangs

TPS holders from El Salvador are geographically concentrated; nearly half of them live in three metro areas. Within these metro areas, Salvadorans are further concentrated, often in enclaves like Langley Park in Maryland or ‘Chirilagua’ in Virginia. Chirilagua, also known as Arlandria, got its Salvadorian nickname from the home city of many of its residents.

TPS revocation is likely to lead to two problems that will reinforce one another. The first is disinvestment. Neighborhoods like Chirilagua will see the classic signs of ongoing disinvestment — shuttered storefronts, abandoned houses, and the aftermaths of evictions plain on local sidewalks.

The second is ramped-up recruitment efforts by local MS-13 cliques. A recent story in the Washington Post noted that part of MS-13’s resurgence in the region is due to its decision to actively recruit unaccompanied minors who were temporarily settled with relatives in the area. These minors are vulnerable to gang recruitment because they feel isolated in the US and desperately want to belong. Though many TPS holders’ children were born in the United States, the chaos that TPS revocation will create in their families and communities make them ideal targets of recruitment. A resurgent MS-13 is bad for everyone.

There are moral reasons to oppose revoking TPS. Many Salvadorans with TPS have lived in the US for twenty or more years. They have made lives here — opening businesses, having families, and contributing to the economy. To revoke TPS is cruel, especially to their American children who will see their families ripped apart.

There are also practical reasons to oppose revoking TPS. Trump’s move will further exacerbate inequality in the region by pushing people into the shadows. In the shadows, people cannot pay taxes or buy property. They will be too afraid to report crimes or assist in police investigations. Some will take measures into their own hands when they have been wronged. Gang activity will flourish. Restoring El Salvador’s TPS is the right move. The next step should be to create a path to permanent legal status for them.

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Wed, 17 Jan 2018 15:00:00 +0000 Carolyn Gallaher (Editorial Board)
This affordable housing law has never been used. Now DC is finally getting ready for DOPA.

Nearly a decade ago, DC passed a law that was meant to preserve affordable housing that slipped through the cracks of perhaps the city’s best known tenant protection legislation, TOPA (Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act). That law has never been used due to its lack of implementation regulations, but officials are looking to change that soon.

When a landlord sells a residential apartment building in DC, the city’s TOPA law allows tenants to refuse the sale and to purchase the building instead (often by partnering with a developer). If tenants do not act, or cannot secure financing, the initial sale goes forward.

In 2008 the DC council passed the District Opportunity to Purchase Act, or DOPA. It was designed as a safety net for TOPA. If tenants could not make TOPA work, the city could refuse the sale and preserve the building as affordable housing. In other words, if the tenants’ attempt (TOPA) fails, the District (DOPA) would step in and act like a tenant association would: strike a bargain with a developer and preserve some affordable homes.

The problem is that DOPA has never been used because it lacks regulations for implementation. City officials are now in the process of writing these regulations.

Image by Tim Brown used with permission.

Why DOPA is Important

The District has made it easier for tenants to use TOPA by funding nonprofits who help tenants navigate the process and deal with technical issues, but tenants still face challenges.

Perhaps the biggest hurdle is financing. Most tenants’ associations do not have access to credit, so they have to partner with a developer to purchase their properties. Some developers promise more than they can deliver. Others fail to complete deals because of market forces beyond their control. Whatever the cause, some tenants cannot get financing in place in the allotted time and are unable to complete the purchase.

Tenant infighting can also create challenges. In mixed income buildings, for example, tenants often cannot agree what to do with their building post-purchase. Wealthier tenants may prefer condo conversion while moderate-income ones would rather remain rental. Meanwhile, short-termers may be most interested in the size of potential buyouts. When tenants cannot reach a consensus, they usually do not invoke their TOPA rights.

One of the primary purposes of TOPA is to allow tenants to negotiate to keep their homes more affordable, so when TOPA fails the city could lose those affordable homes. This was why DOPA was conceived of in the first place, as a way to intervene and preserve affordable homes in failed TOPA deals.

Image by Caitlin Faw used with permission.

What will DOPA look like in practice?

Currently the District’s Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) and tenant advocates are talking about what DOPA implementation regulations should look like. Although the statute offers some guidelines — for example, TOPA rights supersede DOPA rights — numerous questions remain. In particular, city officials need to decide when it should invoke its DOPA rights and how it should do so.

Most tenant advocates believe the District should register its interest as soon as a sale is contracted. Registering interest is a formal process that temporarily stops a contracted sale from proceeding while the District weights its options (tenants do the same thing in the TOPA process). Since TOPA rights are senior to DOPA rights, even if the city expresses an interest in a property before the tenants do, DOPA rights would only kick in if tenants fail to act.

If the District ends up exercising DOPA, it basically would do what the tenants’ association failed to do. First the District would issue an RFP (request for proposals) to developers that are willing to meet affordability criteria and are in good standing with the District. Developers could also apply for pre-approval to ensure a timely process occurs.

The District would then choose the best developer, who would then purchase the building, make necessary repairs and cosmetic improvements, and manage it under the agreed-upon affordability criteria.

The regulations for all of this are pending soon, but most tenant advocates believe the District should use its expression of interests broadly, meaning that it registers its DOPA rights early and often when apartment buildings go up for sale. But they also believe the city should buy the building (or in TOPA/DOPA parlance, “refuse a sale” since it blocks the original private sale) more sparingly, meaning they actually go through with the whole process only on more focused and strategic properties that meet certain criteria.

Although this approach, or something like it, is likely to go forward, DOPA could be used in other ways. Let’s look at two.

1) The District could become the landlord

In this approach, the District would use DOPA to actually purchase buildings outright, rather than partnering with a developer. This would require using the District’s Housing Production Trust Fund or another source of funding, and then a district agency would manage the homes as affordable rentals.

While government-owned housing has seen a big decline in the US, other cities (such as Vienna) have managed social housing programs with great success. Having a permanent supply of public housing is especially important in the current context. The stock of privately owned affordable rental housing in the city is in steep decline. Between 2002 and 2015 alone, the DC Fiscal Policy Institute estimates that the city lost nearly 50 percent of its affordable housing units.

Most cities in the US are reluctant to build or buy more public housing. It’s expensive to buy older buildings that have been subjected to decades of disinvestment. Most buildings would require extensive repairs just to bring them up to code, never mind the cost of modernizing heating and cooling systems, windows, and entry systems. Maintaining older buildings also tends to costs more than rent receipts and reserves allow, making upkeep difficult.

Public housing does not have to be a failure though. Both Hong Kong and Singapore have built and continue to build affordable housing. Edward Goertz’ recent book on housing policy in the US — New Deal Ruins — also demonstrates that public housing’s failures in the US have as much to do with how public housing provision was managed (he uses the term straitjacketed) than with something inherent to public housing.

None of this means the District should buy all of the buildings available to it through a DOPA process, but it does mean that the city could target some buildings to purchase, refurbish, and manage as low income rentals. It could also select building across the city, helping to spread out the city’s affordable housing stock. Selective purchases could also create more low-income units since the District could select a higher than average number of units to make affordable. The District could also choose to keep the units affordable in perpetuity (currently, most buildings funded through HPTF are time-limited for affordability).

2) The District could buy buildings, then re-sell them with permanent rules for affordability

Joe Sternleib, CEO of the Georgetown BID and participant in the city’s 2016 Housing Preservation Strike Force, proposes a different use of DOPA. He told the Washington City Paper, “It costs hundreds of thousands of dollars in subsidy per unit in some neighborhoods to build new affordable units.” Rather than building new units, he suggests, the city could use DOPA to purchase existing lower-cost buildings that go up for sale, place covenants on some of the units to keep them affordable, then put the buildings back on the market.

It would be up to the District to select what percentage of units to covenant and at what income levels. The rates in covenants used today vary widely — anywhere between 30 percent and 120 percent of Area Median Income (AMI) — depending on the affordability program used.

The affordable housing stock owned or funded by the District is already subject to affordable housing covenants. The main difference here would be that the city would use the DOPA process to place covenants on already existing buildings it neither owns nor intends to fund through the HPTF.

This model raises a significant question, though, about who should be first in line, tenants or the District (the current DOPA statute puts TOPA rights first). Sternlieb’s initial suggestion was to make the District first in line rather than tenants so that it could immediately place the affordability requirements on a percentage of units.

Image by Mike Sager used with permission.

However, tenants and tenant advocates are not likely to support this approach, precisely because it would erode TOPA rights. TOPA offers tenants a form of empowerment they rarely get in other cities — the chance to negotiate to stay put in a fast gentrifying city as renters (or as homeowners, if they negotiate to turn the their building into affordable condos). This approach would also make it harder for tenants to use TOPA to convert their buildings to condo or co-op since many creditors will not finance condo/co-op developments with permanent rentals.

When queried about tenant concerns, Sternlieb offered a modified version of his idea in which TOPA rights would come first with a caveat. Tenants would get first crack at buying their building if that means staying put and agreeing to keep a significant percentage of units affordable long-term. However, if tenants wanted to negotiate with a developer for buyouts and/or voluntary agreements (meaning that that the tenant gets a sum of money to relinquish their rights to the unit), the District would have the option to step in first. The District would only use its veto for buildings with high numbers of low income residents.

As he explained, “The primary objective is the preservation of affordable housing. If neither the tenants nor the District are willing to make the commitment to preserve the affordable housing, then you can allow the tenants to buy out, but not until the District has had the opportunity to preserve the affordable housing. I really feel strongly that if you have a public policy designed to promote affordable housing, that should be the highest value in the hierarchy of values.”

Neither this approach nor the District-as-landlord approach are likely to be written into the upcoming regulations, but it is useful to consider alternatives as we wait for a the first real rules and use for DOPA. TOPA is a powerful tool for empowering tenants and preserving affordability. Adding a functioning and flexible DOPA to the mix will only reinforce these benefits.

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Wed, 06 Dec 2017 17:00:00 +0000 Carolyn Gallaher (Editorial Board)
Hundreds testify that DC needs to #fixTOPA, but does it need to be fixed? If so, how?

Hundreds of DC residents testified at a 7+ hour hearing on September 22 about a proposed bill that would reform the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA), a law that gives tenants the opportunity to buy their residence before the owner sells it to a third party. The 40-year-old law has staunch defenders in the District but critics have increasingly been calling for reforms, especially regarding the sales of single-family homes.

Right now there is an ongoing debate in DC about TOPA. Critics say some tenants are abusing their rights to negotiate, and argue the law was intended to be used by owners of larger-scale housing. Supporters rejoin that TOPA is a vital tool for protecting renters and affordable housing more generally, and say it should not be weakened.

This fall, there are two TOPA reform bills up for debate in the District, by Councilmembers Anita Bonds (at large) and Brianne Nadeau (Ward 1). Both carve out different kinds of exemptions from TOPA for single-family homes, and would shorten deadlines those tenants must meet.

At the hearing last week on Councilmember Bonds’ bill, it became clear early on that many of the TOPA critics who came to testify wanted a simpler solution, one that Chairman Phil Mendelson supported strongly from the dias: “a flat-out exemption for all single-family houses” from TOPA (something that neither bill fully proposes).
So what about TOPA should be reformed? What are the risks of reform? To make sense of this complex issue, we asked two of our contributors: Should TOPA should be amended for single family homes, and if so, how?

Image by Ted Eytan licensed under Creative Commons.

Jessica Wilkie, GGWash contributor and realtor:

As a realtor who who has dealt with first-hand the some of the negative consequences of TOPA, I’m strongly in favor of the proposal to exempt single family dwellings from TOPA requirements. The law is overly burdensome to homeowners who choose to sell their rental property (which is sometimes their primary residence, in the case of basement rentals or even roommates who are entitled to TOPA rights). It’s not fair to impose these regulations on individuals, who are not commercial investors, who just want to sell their homes.

TOPA laws give tenants, who may or may not have the capability to actually make the purchase, the power to muck up a sale with extended time frames and ambiguous terms. The timelines are completely archaic. If an owner gives notice of sale to a tenant, tenant has seven days to request information, then 30 days to indicate to interest, and then sixty days after that to secure financing and get to closing. In a market where the typical closing takes thirty days, a buyer off the street is not going to wait out a tenant who wants to exercise his TOPA rights. This is why owners are forced to buy the tenants out and have them assign their TOPA rights back to … the owner (and this is where these exorbitant payouts are coming into play).

Here’s a recent example I’ve dealt with. A couple bought a condo to live in several years ago and then, as happens, they left the area for work out of state and rented the place out for a few years. Now they’ve decided to sell, and now they’ve got a TOPA headache.

We’re not through it yet, but so far the tenant is nearly impossible to get a hold of. After significant effort he finally allowed us into the place to see it, and it’s a complete disaster zone, with his junk and stuff literally covering the entire floor. We can’t list the place with him in it if the owner wants to get anything close to market value — but with his stuff out of there and a good scrubbing it’ll show just fine.

As required, we let the tenant know he’s got TOPA’s right of first refusal on this property, and he’s said he’s interested in purchasing. He hasn’t talked to any lenders though and has dodged all of our follow-up efforts to contact him. It’s a strong guess that he won’t qualify for the loan. Nonetheless, we’ll be forced to carry out TOPA with its extended timelines unless owner reaches an agreement with him and offers some type of “incentive” to get him to move. We’ll see how much he wants, but since it’s also nearly impossible to evict tenants in DC, even after the lease has gone month-to-month, the tenant is holding some pretty strong cards. All this has been an extremely unpleasant surprise to the owner, who thought he could just sell his condo.

At very least, the TOPA timelines should be modified and shortened to reflect today’s real estate norms. I’d also venture to say that owners deserve more rights when it comes to vacating their place for the purpose of selling (once their lease is up).

Image by Ted Eytan licensed under Creative Commons.

Carolyn A. Gallaher, GGWash Contributor and author of The Politics of Staying Put:

I don’t think the District should rewrite its TOPA legislation to deal with abuses of legal grey areas by a particular lawyer and his/her clients. It would be better to seek a regulatory fix to the problem. There have been a variety of actors who have tried to circumvent TOPA’s spirit over the years. Some of Council’s attempts to amend the legislation have created unintended consequences.

When you hear single family homeowners and realtors critique TOPA, it is easy to feel sympathy for the hurdles and delays they face. However, it is also worth understanding what TOPA is designed to do and why we should defend these goals despite the inconveniences they may cause.

As a general rule, urban landlords have significant leverage over their renters. In most cities tenants have no or limited rights when their landlord decides to sell a rental property. He/she can give their tenant three month’s notice, for example, but in most cities they’re not even legally required to give one month’s notice. There aren't many supports to help with a tenant's moving expenses either, even in cases when they receive short notice. In short, tenants are at a big disadvantage.

TOPA was designed, in part, to level this playing field. The City Council that wrote the TOPA law recognized that finding, securing, and keeping stable housing should not be such a precarious endeavor. It also realized that in a city with trenchant race and class divides, losing one’s house or apartment could also mean being pushed out of the city. TOPA can’t prevent all precarity, or keep everyone in the city, but it gives tenants time and yes, leverage, in a context where they usually have none.

Today the city is much wealthier than it was in the early 1980s when the TOPA law was written, but in many ways TOPA is even more necessary today than it was then. The city has lost half of its affordable housing over the last decade, and it remains as divided by race and class. When considered in this light, the push to eliminate or weaken TOPA’s protections for renters in single family dwellings feels misguided. Landlords may point out that tenants shouldn’t be able to negotiate for moving costs, for example, but it’s worth remembering that tenants, especially low income ones, are ill-prepared to cover the costs of moving, securing new housing, and keeping their home and work lives stable. What do we have in place as a city to support tenants in these moves? We often see tenants willing to stay in place no matter how horrible the living conditions become simply because there is nowhere else to easily go in the city. TOPA is tenant friendly, but it’s also fairness friendly.

The better the District regulates TOPA (establishes norms, beefs up its enforcement capabilities, etc.), the easier abuses are to detect and stop in their tracks. I also think the ongoing negotiations between a working group of tenant advocate groups and DCAR representatives convened by Councilmember Bonds remains the responsible way to resolve the issue.

What do you think?

GGWash readers: What do you think about these bills? Should TOPA be amended, and if so, how?

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Thu, 28 Sep 2017 16:00:00 +0000 Julie Strupp (Managing Editor),&nbsp;Jessica Wilkie (Contributor),&nbsp;Carolyn Gallaher (Editorial Board)
Ending this federal program could harm the area’s Salvadoran community

Immigrants from El Salvador are one of the DC area’s largest foreign-born populations. Many Salvadorans arrived here decades ago under a federal program that allowed them to flee a civil war and, later, two devastating earthquakes. But the program could soon end, which could have major impacts on our region’s neighborhoods.

El Salvador is one of thirteen countries with Temporary Protective Status (TPS), including Honduras, Nicaragua, Haiti, Sudan, and Syria. The Department of Homeland Security can grant TPS status for three reasons—ongoing war or conflict, natural disaster, or other extraordinary conditions. Once a country has TPS status, its citizens in the US may apply for individual TPS. TPS is not a legal status, but it does allows holders to apply for a work permit and a driver’s license, which in turn allows him or her to open a bank account, rent an apartment, buy a home etc.

El Salvador first gained TPS status during its civil war, which occurred from 1980 to 1992, and received another designation in 2001 after two devastating earthquakes. Thirty percent of El Salvador’s population fled the country following the civil war, and between 500,000 and 1 million people emigrated here. Today, there are 190,000 Salvadorans on TPS in the United States, more than the other twelve TPS countries combined.

Many of them live in the DC area. There are 288,000 Salvadorans in the region, making up one-third of its Hispanic community. It’s the highest concentration of Salvadorans in the nation.

However, that could change if TPS expires on March 9, 2018. While it’s been renewed continuously since 2001, the Trump administration doesn’t seem interested in doing that. In a June visit to Haiti, another country with TPS, then-Homeland Security head John Kelly told Haiti’s new president that he should start preparing to repatriate Haitian citizens with TPS, which expires in six months. Advocates for Salvadorans in the DC area are getting worried.

Implications for DC’s immigrant enclaves

The Trump administration’s approach to TPS may have negative effects on DC’s immigrant enclaves. Consistent TPS renewals for El Salvador sent a message to Salvadorans that they could build a life here. Many did, and have become fully contributing members to our society.

One TPS holder, who lives in Pennsylvania, recently visited The Central American Resource Center (CARECEN), a non-profit in DC that helps Latino immigrants. She told her story, although she was too afraid to share her name. She received TPS when she was 9 years old. She went to high school and college in the US, where she earned a degree in nursing. She now works as a nursing supervisor at a hospital in Pennsylvania. In an instant her entire life could be turned upside down.

Some TPS holders, who have until now been law-abiding residents who pay taxes, own homes, run businesses, and have families. A survey of TPS recipients found that they are more involved in their communities than undocumented immigrants. Over 80% of the nation’s TPS holders are involved in the labor force, with the largest concentrations in construction, food services, and landscaping. Thirty percent of the nation’s TPS holders have mortgages.

But now, some may decide to ‘go underground.’ They may choose to liquidate their assets and move into the informal economy. It is, after all, a ‘Sophie’s choice’ to ask TPS holders to choose between leaving their families or going underground.

This doesn’t bode well for the DC area’s immigrant enclaves. Maryland and Virginia have two of the largest populations of Salvadorans in the nation, and Hispanic immigrants have been vital in reviving inner suburbs like Bailey’s Crossroads in Northern Virginia or Langley Park and Wheaton in Maryland. They opened businesses, bought houses, embedded themselves in their neighborhoods.

If numerous Salvadoran TPS holders sell their houses, or simply abandon them, neighborhoods will take a hit. Empty houses can quickly become havens for prostitution, drug use, and other social ills. Some landlords may also take advantage of people who lose their status but stay on in the US to be with their families. Some will put off (or simply refuse to make) repairs because tenants without status aren’t likely to call municipal housing authorities.

Revocation could also contribute to the very kinds of corruption and lawlessness that many TPS holders fear in their home countries. Fear of deportation, for example, might make Salvadorans who lose their status afraid to talk to police when they witness crimes. Detectives will have trouble solving cases. Over time, criminals will seek out these neighborhoods because they know witnesses aren’t likely to come forward.

People in the underground economy are usually too afraid to report intimate crimes like child abuse or domestic violence as well. They are just as unlikely to call a city office to report a landlord who raises the rent above allowed amounts and then threatens to call Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) agents if it isn’t paid. People in the underground economy are also likely to take justice into their own hands—meting out (or paying someone to mete out) street justice, which is often bloody and inconsistent with human right’s norms.

Immigrants invested in our region, and it shows. Eliminating TPS for El Salvador, when coupled with the anxiety caused by Trump’s election, would most likely spur disinvestment.

TPS holders prepare for the worst

Not surprisingly, Salvadoran TPS holders are terrified. For TPS holders who have lived in this country since they were children, fear of the unknown is paramount. For those with children born in the United States, the fear is seeing your family split between two countries. And for both groups, the uncertainty is its own form of agony. It is hard to make plans when you don’t know where you’ll be living in six months’ time.

Given the Trump administration’s aggressive, sometimes hostile posture towards immigrants, it is important that TPS holders are prepared for the worst case scenario. Those with minor children need to create guardianship agreements so that their children will not be put into foster care if they are subject to deportation.

They may also want to designate a Power of Attorney for financial matters. Currently, TPS holders can operate in the formal economy—they have bank accounts, credit cards, and even loans. However, they need up-to-date IDs to complete financial transactions. Unfortunately, the most common form of identification, a TPS driver’s license, is short term, with the expiration date set automatically to the country’s TPS expiration date. If a TPS renewal is rejected, a holder has no way to get a replacement government ID, and many banks will not let their clients close accounts with expired IDs. Likewise, municipalities usually require up to date IDs to enforce property transfers—something a parent with TPS might want make to an adult child with US citizenship.

What are the implications of all of this uncertainty? To be fair, renewals, usually conducted every 18 months, have always been a source of anxiety. However, Salvadorans have been exceptionally lucky. Since its 2001 designation, El Salvador’s TPS designation has always been renewed. After the country rebuilt its damaged infrastructure, other major problems, such as gang violence surfaced, justifying renewal. Many fear Trump will end El Salvador’s TPS at the worst possible time—as the country’s murder rate skyrockets.

Although TPS was originally established to address discriminatory practices in how asylum cases are processed, critics will contend that TPS holders are not guaranteed renewal and should be thankful for the time they had here. But these people have built lives here and shaped our region in myriad ways. It may be immigrants’ who have the most to lose if TPS is not renewed, but in the end, all of us will suffer the consequences.

Top image: Restaurants are just one way Salvadoran immigrants have reshaped our region. Image by Dan Reed.

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Wed, 23 Aug 2017 16:30:00 +0000 Carolyn Gallaher (Editorial Board)
What does DC look like to someone from Belfast?

When you live in a place and write about it too, it can be easy to focus on the problems like potholes, confusing parking signs, and bike lanes that end abruptly. It’s easy to forget about the little things that make your city loveable. I recently helped host a group of students from Belfast, Northern Ireland, and I really enjoyed seeing the District from their perspective.

I’m a professor at American University, and this May eight students from Queens University Belfast came to take a class I teach called Conflict Transformation. After two weeks here, they returned to Northern Ireland with eight students from American.

While the Queens students were here, I was able to see DC from their perspective. That made me question things I take for granted about the District.

Visiting students liked the Metro

Complaining about Metro is standard fare for Washington area residents, but the Queens students were mostly impressed by it. We had four off-campus meetings during the course’s first two weeks, and we used Metro to get to all of them. The students were given pre-paid Metro cards, and they found them easy to use and refill. Despite ongoing SafeTrack repair work, we did not encounter any delays getting to our meetings. In fact, I budgeted much more time than we needed to arrive to meetings on time.

Students outside of the US Institute of Peace.

The one thing that gave some students pause was the depth and relative darkness of the stations. One student described DC’s metro stations as “grey, dark, and uninviting,” and said that going down the escalators at the Tenleytown station made her feel like she was “going down to the center of the earth.”

On the whole, though, the Queens students liked it. In fact, when some of them returned from a weekend strip to New York, they told me that our Metro is much nicer than New York’s subway. It also smells a lot better. I imagine a lot of residents here would agree with them, but it’s easy to forget all of this when you’re counting the days until SafeTrack is done.

They also loved the green space and the food

Students also liked how green DC is. Most movies about DC show the federal parts of the city—the brutalist buildings, K Street, close ups of the monuments. But staying in an AU dorm in leafy upper Northwest DC opened their eyes to a part of DC they’d never seen on TV.

As one student put it, “It’s actually quite livable.” Another said, “It doesn’t look like it does in the movies.”

Students also liked the foods you can get from all over the world here. For their last night in DC we took the students to Cactus Cantina. I love Cactus Cantina—best salsa in the District—but I also take it for granted. I’ve been eating Mexican food since I was in high school. At this point, Mexican food is typical American food to me. When I chose the restaurant, it was mostly because it was within walking distance of AU.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that the Queens students were actually excited about my choice. “I’m so glad you chose this place!” one of them told me. I was reminded that what constitutes ethnic food depends on where your country’s immigrants come from. In the UK, contemporary migrant streams (1950 onwards) have come from the Caribbean, India, and, more recently, North Africa. So if you hail from Belfast, Mexican food is a novelty.

The students didn’t expect so much security

Students were generally surprised at the level of security in federal buildings. When we visited the State Department, for example, we were asked to arrive an hour earlier because it would take that long to get 24 students through security. The estimate wasn’t off. Indeed, we had to traverse two layers of security to get to our meeting. The first entailed getting into the building—putting bags through an x-ray scanner and walking through a metal detector. Once inside, we had to go through a second round. Every student was issued a name tag and then escorted, in groups of ten, to our meeting room. When we decided to have lunch in the State Department cafeteria, we were also required to have “minders” who would escort us there, stay with us while we ate, and then take us to the exit.

Students in the State Department lobby.

The Queens students’ reaction to the security initially surprised me. They were born in a conflict zone. During Northern Ireland’s Troubles, government installations, hotels, and pubs were frequently bombed. Belfast’s Europa hotel, for example, was bombed 33 times by the IRA in a span of 24 years. Yet here we were, in DC, facing more security than students from a post-conflict zone were accustomed to. It brought home for me just how fortress-like federal DC has become. It also made me remember that it was not always like this, even a decade and a half ago.

They also didn’t expect DC’s racial divide

Students noticed that most of the American students they encountered on AU’s campus were white, while the people they interacted with in the student cafeteria or from the janitorial service were black or Latino. They saw the same pattern at the fast food restaurants they frequented near campus and at coffee shops and cafeterias they went to downtown.

Students from Belfast are, of course, used to trenchant social divides. Protestants and Catholic tend to go to separate schools, and residential mixing is not common. However, in Belfast, the divides aren’t visible so much as received. That is, you grow up learning where each group lives in the city and what common Catholic and Protestant last names are. It surprised the students to see the divides.

As one of the course’s conveners put it, “we hear about race in the US, but you don’t really appreciate how blatant the racial divide is until you see it first-hand.”

They did miss tea and pubs

The Queens students did not have much negative to say about their time in DC. “The entire trip was an amazing experience,” one student told me. But a few things did strike them as odd.

The first was how difficult it was to make yourself a good cup of tea. Tea is ubiquitous in Northern Ireland. As a result, so are electric kettles. When the Queens students arrived to the AU dorm on their first night they were surprised there were no tea kettles around. My meek explanation the next morning—that you can get tea at a coffee shopmorning— probably added insult to injury.

Students also wondered where the pubs in DC were. DC has plenty of bars, of course, but pubs are different from bars. Pubs are near residential areas. You don’t have to dress up to go to one, and you’re as likely to see someone your parents’ age in a pub as twenty-somethings. There really aren’t many places like that in DC.

The students are now in Belfast. I wonder what the American students will think of it? And, what it will make them look at in DC with fresh eyes?

Top image: Students atop the roof of the Northern Ireland office's building.  Image by the author.

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Tue, 06 Jun 2017 16:26:00 +0000 Carolyn Gallaher (Editorial Board)
What happens when people without cars move to places built for driving?

What happens when people without cars move to neighborhoods built for cars? In Langley Park in Prince George’s County, an increasing number of people want to walk to jobs and retail— even though doing so isn’t all that safe (yet).

The number of people who walk along University Boulevard in Langley Park is on the rise, but the area is still most accommodating to cars. Image from Google Maps.

Langley Park is on the county’s northwestern border with Montgomery County. It used to be a farm, but after World War II it was sold to developers who built small bungalows and garden apartments for newly returned GIs and their new families.

In the early years most residents were white, but during the 1970s African American families began moving to the neighborhood. In the 1980s immigrants began trickling in as well. They hailed from diverse places— El Salvador, Ethiopia, and Vietnam to name just a few. Immigrants continue to live in Langley Park, but today Hispanics are the largest racial/ethnic group, comprising 76.6% of the area’s 2010 population.

We usually think about walkability in the context of young professionals who want to walk to bars and restaurants and get to work via bike lanes or public transportation, but in Langley Park, walkability is about immigrant families who need to walk bus stops and shops for everyday errands.

Lots of people want to walk around Langley Park

Langley Park has two main thoroughfares: University Boulevard and New Hampshire Avenue. Both are state highways with concrete median strips. Based on what I see on Google Earth, I’d estimate that cross streets in Langley Park are usually at least 2/10ths of a mile apart. The area’s retail is concentrated on University Boulevard in small- and medium-sized strip malls with parking lots out front.

A Google Maps image of Langley Park. 193 is University Boulevard.

As the distance between cross streets and the abundance of parking lots on University Boulevard demonstrate, Langley Park’s developers assumed the area’s residents would drive to local retail establishments. There are still plenty of cars in Langley Park— traffic jams are common during rush hour— but now there are also lots and lots of pedestrians. And, there are many businesses for them to walk to.

In fact, retail in the corridor is thriving. Strip mall vacancies are rare, and most businesses target local residents instead of commuters driving through the area. There are only a few fast food chains on University Boulevard, for example, and the most visually prominent one— Pollo Campero— originated in El Salvador and tends to cater to Central Americans missing the tastes of home.

Other shops include nail salons, pharmacies, international groceries, and Salvadoran and Mexican restaurants. The area also has a variety of clothing stores, including an African fabric store, a Sari shop, and a Ropa Colombiana. Value Village also has a store in the area, and serves as a sort of second hand department store, selling clothes, toys, furniture, and small appliances.

All of this adds up to the streetscape in Langley Park being more vibrant than your typical suburban area. People aren’t just going to and from their cars; they’re walking, hanging out in front of stores, or sitting on retaining walls and shooting the breeze. One strip mall even has a semi-regular street preacher. Armed with a megaphone and boundless conviction, he exhorts and cajoles passersby in equal measure.

Photo by the author.

Most importantly, there are lots and lots of kids— in strollers, holding their parents’ hands, and carrying a backpack on the way to or from school. Except for the built landscape, this could be in any kid-friendly area in DC— think the Palisades or Chevy Chase.

Pedestrian safety is a big concern here, and quick fixes aren’t long-term solutions

That built landscape is a big deal, though. Getting from home to shop and back again isn’t easy when you have to cross six lanes of traffic. And unlike the Palisades or Chevy Chase, the distance between cross streets in Langley Park is substantially longer.

As a result, pedestrians often cross between crosswalks, which can be dangerous given the volume and speed of traffic in the area. Crashes involving cars and pedestrians have been a consistent problem in the area for more than a decade. The latest pedestrian fatality happened last July when a police officer struck and killed a man as he was crossing the street in between walk signals.

To try to address this problem, the county installed new medians along University Boulevard last year, along with six foot metal fences to prevent pedestrian crossings between signals.

Photo by the author.

While these may make the street safer in the short term, they come at the cost of increasing the root problem, which is that there aren’t enough crosswalks to handle all the demand. The fences prioritize making sure cars can move through the area without worrying about people on foot, making the road even more like a highway. That’s actually the opposite of how you build a street to be genuinely safe and useful for pedestrians.

Fortunately, signal timing and crosswalks in some places have recently been improved to give people sufficient time to cross. And the new Takoma-Langley Crossroads Transit Center, set to open in late 2016, will also be a good step since it will consolidate stops for 11 bus routes that currently carry 12,000 passengers a day. That means transfers will be much easier and safer.

The Takoma-Langley Crossroads Transit Center. Photo by the author.

Also, when the Purple Line is built, the transit center (a planned stop on the line) will further concentrate transportation options, making getting to or from public transportation easier.

Langley Park is certainly making progress when it comes to being safer for people on foot. But there’s also a long way to go in order to truly retrofit the area to be safe, easy, and enjoyable to walk around.

More crosswalks would be a great start, and traffic calming to slow cars down would likely go a long way. A pedestrian bridge over University would be the dream, and planting trees and foliage would also help reduce noise and air pollution while also providing a more attractive thoroughfare.

Whatever the specifics, I hope resources go into making the area safer and easier to walk around. Langley Park deserves it.

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Mon, 28 Nov 2016 15:20:00 +0000 Carolyn Gallaher (Editorial Board)
DC’s TOPA law lets tenants buy their buildings before anyone else can, but it also helps renters stay put

Tenants at the Garden Towers in Mount Pleasant used TOPA to keep their building rental. Image from Google Maps.

DC has a law that lets tenants buy their building if their landlord wants to sell it. Under the law, the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA), tenants can work out a deal directly with their landlord, or more commonly, they can refuse a contracted sale the landlord arranges with a third party and purchase the building instead for the same price. Although TOPA is a right to buy statute, the right to collectively decide what happens with their building gives tenants a very powerful seat at the table.

As I noted in an earlier post, when my landlord signed a contract in 2001 to sell my apartment complex to the National Cathedral, I wound up owning my unit because my fellow tenants and I asserted our TOPA rights. Per the TOPA statute, we formed a tenants’ association, refused the initial sale, and purchased the building instead (for the same price) with the help of a developer. Although my tenants’ association decided to convert our building to condominium, many tenants’ associations choose to keep their buildings rental. In this post, I’ll explain how TOPA has become a tool for tenants who want to keep renting.

The importance of renting

Right-to-buy programs are often touted as mechanisms to free low income people from dependency on unscrupulous landlords and/or government subsidies. When Margaret Thatcher privatized British public housing in 1980, for example, she declared that it would give tenants the “independence that comes with ownership.”

Of course, owning a home isn’t for everyone. Some people don’t want to own a home. Others can’t afford to. People who work minimum wage jobs usually don’t make enough money to afford a mortgage, let alone save for a down payment, and few banks will lend to them anyway.

TOPA gives tenants bargaining power

TOPA helps tenants stay put as tenants (rather than as owners) by giving them bargaining power. To understand how bargaining works in the TOPA process it helps to start with a simple fact—most tenants’ associations can’t afford to buy their buildings on their own. They don’t have bank accounts or established credit that would allow them to get a loan. Given these realities, the TOPA statute formally allows tenants’ associations to assign or sell their right of first refusal to a third party who can help with financing. Tenants’ associations can work with for- or non-profit developers. Low income tenants’ associations and members are also eligible to receive financial assistance from the city.

To be sure, dependence on developers does have its downsides. For-profit developers, for example, usually insist on the right to offer tenants buyouts—a sum of money given to a tenant to relinquish rights to her unit. In buildings converting to condo, developers can then sell these units at market rates. In buildings remaining rental, they can require tenants to sign a voluntary agreement (VA), one of several petitions landlords can submit to the city for permission to increase rents above existing caps. Once a VA is executed, they can raise rents to market rate.

However, with open space for development at a minimum in DC, and property values at record highs, developers are also eager to work with tenants in order to get access to property in gentrifying neighborhoods. This means that tenants are in a position to bargain for things they want before agreeing to assign their right of first refusal to a developer.

Of importance here, tenants can require that developers agree to keep their properties as rental accommodations. They can also refuse to work with developers who demand that tenants sign a voluntary agreement as a condition of partnership.

The city does not collect data on TOPA outcomes, so we don’t know which outcome is most common—converting to market rate condominium or co-op, converting to limited equity co-op, or remaining rental. However, TOPA experts usually agree that condo conversion was more common before 2008, when borrowing was easy and risk was someone else’s problem.

After the recession, tenants had more trouble getting loans and developers had more difficulty finding eligible buyers. As a result, remaining rental often became the de facto choice of both tenants and third party financers after 2008.

Of course, tenants’ and developers interests don’t always overlap. In these cases TOPA means tenants don’t have to be saddled with a given developer. They can choose the developer that best meets their needs. And today, the need to stay put with affordable rents is more important than ever. Indeed, median rent in the city is now well over two thousand dollars a month ($2,415). The number of affordable apartments has also declined precipitously in the last decade. The DC Fiscal Policy Institute found, for example, that the number of “low cost” rental units in the city declined nearly 40% between 2002 and 2013. In this environment, tenants’ ability to use a right-to-buy statute to keep their buildings rental (and with rent control intact) is no mean feat. It is, indeed, extraordinary.

TOPA rights are collective rights

A key part of the TOPA statute is the so called right of first refusal. It’s what gives tenants leverage in a situation where they normally have none. The right is not an individual right, however. When an apartment building is contracted for sale, only a registered tenants’ association—not an individual tenant or a small group of them—can refuse a sale. Registered tenants’ associations are also required to demonstrate that they represent at least a majority of eligible residents. In a similar fashion, if a tenants’ association wants to convert a rental property to condominium through TOPA, it may only do so with the consent, by vote, of a majority of tenants.

Making the right of first refusal a collective right is vital for ensuring that the interests of vulnerable tenants are considered during the process. In fact, it makes it more difficult for a small group of tenants to hijack the process for their own interests if those interests aren’t in line with the wider tenant body.

A hypothetical scenario explains why. Let’s say a landlord decides to sell a mid-rise apartment building near Fort Totten where the tenants fall into three, roughly equal-sized socioeconomic groups—low income residents with government housing vouchers, young professionals, and undocumented immigrant families. If an individual tenant or a small group of tenants could invoke the right first refusal, the young professionals could band together to buy the building, convert to condominium, and then kick out the tenants who couldn’t or didn’t want to buy their units.

Under TOPA’s collective rules, however, a tenants’ association would have a hard time operating on behalf of a small group of tenants. It couldn’t form a tenants’ association with only one-third of building residents, for example. Nor could it convert to condominium with a similar fraction of support.

In recent years dozens of tenants associations have used TOPA to keep their buildings rental, such as Garden Towers in Mount Pleasant Columbia Heights. I cover Garden Tower’s experience and several others in my new book, The Politics of Staying Put.

Although TOPA allows tenants to stay put as renters, developers have continued to use VAs during TOPA cases to circumvent rent control protections. In my next post I’ll make any argument for why we should eliminate VAs from TOPA process.

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Thu, 15 Sep 2016 17:52:00 +0000 Carolyn Gallaher (Editorial Board)
A new owner bought my apartment and wanted to tear it down. Here’s how I ended up owning the place.

In 2001 my landlord sold my apartment complex to the National Cathedral. It wanted to replace our apartments with a visitors’ center. I managed to stay put and buy my unit because of a DC law called the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA).

The author’s building. Image from Google Maps.

TOPA gives tenants’ associations the right to refuse contracted sales of their buildings and to purchase them instead for the contracted sale prices. There are lots of TOPA stories. This one is mine.

I learned about the sale of my building from the Northwest Current. When I read the headline my stomach dropped. I’d only been in my apartment for a year. It was affordable, close to work, and pet friendly. I had also just adopted a dog. I didn’t know if I could find another pet-friendly building nearby.

My fears weren’t unfounded. Tenants are usually vulnerable during building sales. In many cities new owners can institute steep rent hikes, refuse to renew leases, or convert to condo. They can even tear buildings down. Fortunately, as I would find out, DC has protections against these tactics.

A few days later several of my fellow tenants organized a meeting in the alley behind our property. They explained the TOPA process and the rights it gives tenants. It sounded fantastical to me. The most I’d ever gotten as a tenant was an $80 check from a landlord who waited 4 days to fix my broken stove. And, he only issued it after I researched the housing code and told him he was legally required to reimburse me.

Here’s how TOPA works

When residential property is sold in D.C. landlords are required to give tenants a TOPA Notice, or Offer of Sale, which informs them that they may refuse the sale and purchase the property instead for the contracted sale price.

Tenants must then incorporate as a tenants’ association, if one does not already exist, and submit a letter of interest within 45 days of receiving the offer of sale. The tenants association can then request information from the landlord including floor plans, itemized operating expenses, utility rates, capital expenditures for the previous 2 years, a recent rent roll, and a list of vacant apartments.

The tenants’ association then has a 120 day period to exercise their right of first refusal and negotiate to purchase the property. If the tenants’ association signs a contract with a deposit they have an additional 120 days to secure financing. After the purchase is complete the tenants’ association can convert to condominium or co-operative or remain rental.

My conversion experience

My tenants’ association decided to refuse our sale. Our biggest hurdle was finding the 26 million dollars necessary to match the initial sale price.

The city provides loans and technical assistance to help majority low income tenants’ associations purchase their buildings, but we weren’t eligible since most of us were professionals. Private loans weren’t an option either. As a new tenants’ association we didn’t have a bank account or credit history. We would need a developer to help us buy the property.

The process of selecting a developer usually involves substantial ‘horse-trading.’ For their part tenants want low/stable housing costs. In buildings converting to condo, like ours, that meant below-market prices for our units. Tenants also want repairs their landlords often neglected to make for years. In our case we needed new boilers, repairs to decaying joists, increased electric voltage, and new plumbing risers.

For their part, developers want to make a profit, and the best way to do that in buildings where tenants want to convert to condo, is to secure some empty units that can be sold at market rates. As such, developers negotiate for the right to offer tenants a buyout, a sum of money a tenant takes in exchange for relinquishing rights to her unit.

My tenants’ association found a developer and converted to condominium in late 2002. Just over 30% of my fellow tenants stayed put. Another 30% took buyouts ($7,000 for studios, $10,000 for 1-bedrooms, and $12,000 for 2-bedrooms). The remaining units were vacant at the time of conversion.

I purchased my 1-bedroom unit for $162,000. For me the TOPA process was both exhilarating and terrifying. I loved my condo and my neighborhood. The Cathedral was my front yard. I could walk to work and the grocery store. And, suddenly I felt like I lived in a small village instead of an anonymous city. My fellow tenant convertors and I walked each other’s dogs, swapped spare keys, shared drinks (and hangovers), and helped each other through heartaches, job losses, and the like.

But, I was also worried. As an academic I wondered how I would pay my mortgage if I didn’t get tenure, and whether I’d be able to sell the condo quickly if I needed to. I also worried that I’d be house poor—able to make the mortgage but scrimping to cover everything else. My unit was in poor shape: 20 year old carpet, peeling wall paper, grungy cabinets and a stove that wasn’t up to code.

Looking back, I laugh at my worries. Although I paid a below market price, I worried the market was out of control and that my unit was over-valued. Little did I know that property values would appreciate rapidly after I purchased my unit and that its value would never fall below my purchase price, even during the recession. At the end of the day, I was lucky. My building was sold at a favorable time and my tenants’ association leaders (Laura, Matthew, Patty and Stephen) were tenacious.

Classifying TOPA

TOPA doesn’t always work so well. The process is also very different in buildings that opt to remain rental because of the city’s rent control statute. I will explore these issues in future posts, but it’s worth considering here what makes TOPA so powerful.

First, TOPA gives tenants a legal way to stay put when their apartments are sold. Although building sales can happen at any time, they are especially common during gentrification. In fact, the city council introduced the TOPA statute in 1979 in response to a then ongoing condo conversion boom associated with gentrification near downtown.

Tenants who can’t afford homeownership can also use TOPA to keep their buildings rental. In fact, a city statute passed at the same time as TOPA only allows a building to convert to condo if 50% (+1) of units vote to convert.

Having a legal right to stay put is exceptionally rare for tenants in the U.S. Most cities offer no or minimal protections for tenants whose buildings have been sold.

Second, TOPA gives tenants market power during gentrification. Lots of people benefit from gentrification, but tenants aren’t usually among them. Cities get increased tax revenue. Landlords sell aging building for big profits. Developers turn disinvested buildings into luxury housing with price tags to match. Tenants, by contrast, are usually forced out of their homes. TOPA changes that by giving tenants market power. They can buy their units and build equity, take buyouts and use them to pay down debt or build up savings, or stay rental and negotiate with their development partner for building improvements. For once, tenants don’t get the short end of the stick.

I believe affordable housing should be a right and I know the commodification of housing has contributed to rising unaffordability nationwide. Until we can convince cities to provide affordable housing, however, TOPA can at the very least give tenants a fairer shake in the game we’re now playing. TOPA doesn’t change the game, but it has changed who can play it.

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Wed, 15 Jun 2016 19:00:00 +0000 Carolyn Gallaher (Editorial Board)