WASHINGTON — WUSA9 is taking a closer look at the affordable housing crisis in the District.
According to housing advocates, the market has priced out 20% of African American residents in the last two decades. But some are managing to stay in their homes, thanks to a 40-year-old law that is opening doors to countless homes in DC.
The Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act, or TOPA, has been DC law since 1980, but advocates said with the changing political landscape it is important to remind Councilmembers that TOPA works. On Monday, the Coalition for Nonprofit Housing and Economic Development hosted a bus tour of four TOPA properties.
“They are challenged to figure out who to recover from post-pandemic impacts on downtown now with the loss of teams in Chinatown there’s going be a lot of attention on commercial corridors and major development,” said Stephen Glaude, CNHEC CEO. “We just don’t want them to lose sight of what made the District of Columbia the great city that it is.”
Councilmember At-Large Robert White joined housing advocates on the bus where they stopped first at the Portner Flats in Shaw where Ward 1 Councilmember Brianne Nadeau joined the tour.
“There are ways we can improve it (TOPA) and I want to look at that,” said Councilmember White. “I want to push it.”
“This is about the tenants having a say as to what happens with their home,” added Councilmember Nadeau.
The tenants of these former garden-style section 8 apartments teamed up with Somerset Development to use TOPA to stay in place; they subdivided their lot, sold half to a developer, and used that money to purchase their share doubling the amount of section 8 homes.
“We think this is a really unique model to tap into increasing land value created by gentrification and use it to preserve and build more affordable housing,” explained Patrick McAnaney with Somerset Development.
Marlene Frost first moved into Portner Flats with her mother in 1981 and raised her son there. Their TOPA notices were delivered in 2012. The tenant association had 30 days to organize, 120 days to put a down payment on the property, and then 240 days to finalize the sale. The tenants relocated for 18 months during the construction.
“It was worth fighting for because we got what we wanted,” said Frost.
They also visited the Maycroft. The affordable apartments sit on valuable property in Columbia Heights. Back in 2011 tenants got notice the owners intended to sell and that is when they organized with Jubilee Housing who exercised their TOPA rights to buy and renovate the property keeping the 64-unit building affordable.
“Without TOPA I probably couldn’t afford to live in this neighborhood and possibly this city,” said resident Samuel Buggs. “Those of us that were born and raised in this city, we should have some say so where we would like to live.”
CNHED just released a study analyzing the D.C. housing market from 2006 to 2020 and found that TOPA is responsible for maintaining over 16,000 units that would have otherwise been lost to developers.
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