jonetta rose barras: Housing doublespeak from Mayor Bowser

Ward 1 DC Council member Brianne Nadeau pushed back against Mayor Muriel Bowser and the DC Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) last week, after learning that some funds previously cut from housing counseling programs had been restored. DHCD took $1.1 million from the Home Purchase Assistance Program (HPAP) to return a portion of the $3.5 million that had been eliminated for grants to organizations critical to housing preservation and protection of tenants’ rights.

Nadeau and several of her colleagues, including Chairman Phil Mendelson, had written to Bowser demanding a full restoration of the funds. Council members learned of the reprogramming after The DC Line tweeted the content of an email I received from the DHCD in response to my question about whether the agency intended to address concerns raised by the legislature.

“While I do appreciate that the mayor has authorized a reprogramming to partially restore these services, I remain concerned about the way in which the agency has done so,” Nadeau subsequently told me in an email. “The bottom line is that with the most recent revenue estimate, we have more than enough funding to restore these housing counseling programs without cutting HPAP.

“Budgets reflect our priorities, and we need to ensure we are prioritizing, and fully funding services that prevent eviction, increase homeownership and help stabilize our residents,” Nadeau added.

Gwen Cofield, DHCD communications director, said in an email to me on Saturday, Oct. 13, that the agency’s local funds have increased. However, “funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) provided through the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program has not kept pace with [DHCD’s] increasing costs and needs.”

“That budget constraint necessitated difficult decisions, as 100 percent of our funding for community-based nonprofit organizations is CDBG,” added Cofield.

Here comes the double-speak: “Mayor Bowser authorized DHCD to reprogram the $1.1 million of [CDBG] funds after a recent DHCD year-end close out analysis,” Cofield also told me by email on Saturday.

Was there money or wasn’t there money? If there wasn’t any money as Cofield claimed, how was there money to reprogram from the same pot of funds? There are plenty of further questions for the council to pose.

Almost every year, it has become routine on Sept. 30 — the end of the fiscal year — to discover that several government agencies have not spent their total budget allotments. The administration invariably starts moving money from one place to another to prevent those funds from being reclaimed or possibly being placed in a reserve account.

The DHCD had funds from the 2018 HPAP budget that were not spent. The agency carried those funds to fiscal year 2019, which began Oct. 1. It then reprogrammed money from 2019 to restore some of the funds that had been cut from grants to nonprofits that provide housing counseling services.

The hole DHCD is digging for itself just got bigger with its explanation of where the funds came to restore the housing counseling cuts. Undoubtedly, Nadeau is writing another letter as she is reading this, asking the mayor about reprogramming from 2019. It’s one thing to use so-called lapsed funds; it’s another to essentially reduce the budget of a program two weeks after the start of the fiscal year.  Further, the city is pushing homeownership. Shouldn’t the agency preserve all funding to satisfy potential demand?

Since Bowser’s election in 2014, she has professed affordable housing to be her prime issue. Not all of her actions have been in sync with those words, however.

She has turned the proverbial blind eye to the incompetence of the director of the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs. That agency is vital to the preservation of existing housing. However, as expertly revealed in a recent report by the Office of the DC Auditor, the department has failed repeatedly to perform core functions.

Working with the council, Bowser did put more than $100 million into the Housing Production Trust Fund. And, yes, during this election season the DHCD has unclogged parts of the affordable housing construction pipeline.

Still, the Bowser administration has displayed a halfhearted commitment to ensuring affordable housing and protecting renters. Among other things, DHCD has not yet finalized regulations for the District Opportunity Purchase Act (DOPA). If properly implemented, this law would make it possible for the government to purchase troubled rental apartment buildings, thereby rescuing residents living in conditions where property owners are flagrantly violating the city’s housing code.

Now, DHCD’s director, Polly Donaldson — whose resignation I have called for —  has added insult to the agency’s injury of District residents. Unless fully reversed, the  budget cuts imposed by Donaldson and approved by Bowser will make it difficult for those interested in purchasing single-family homes to obtain important information. Equally important, tenant allies like the Latino Economic Development Corp., University Legal Services and Housing Counseling Services will be weakened in their fight against rapacious landlords and in their efforts to organize renters to make the best use of the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act when their buildings are put up for sale.

Interestingly not every organization funded by DHCD using federal block grant program money received a budget cut. “Although the [Congress Heights Training and Development Corp.] has been funded using CDBG through neighborhood services, their grant was completely separate from the housing counseling grants,” said DHCD’s Cofield.

The Congress Heights Training and Development Corp. is owned and operated by Monica Ray and Phinis Jones, two individuals who are politically connected to the mayor. Could that relationship have been the reason its grant wasn’t cut?  

jonetta rose barras is a DC-based freelance writer and host of The Barras Report television show. She can be reached at thebarrasreport@gmail.com.