Years of disinvestment led to poor housing conditions at Ward 8's Barry Farm and ultimately plans for the mixed-use redevelopment of the DC Housing Authority complex. (File photo courtesy of Empower DC)

jonetta rose barras: The DC Council’s ‘responsibility shuffle’

By jonetta rose barras On Nov 12, 2019 Last updated Nov 14, 2019

When faced with troublesome executive-branch or independent agencies, the DC Council’s solution has become nauseatingly predictable. Members, separately and collectively, propose a new agency, office or commission as an antidote for the old bureaucracy; sometimes they suggest splitting or deflating an existing structure. They have been known to sweep issues under the rug or toss out a bunch of taxpayer money, as if dead presidents can whip the difficulties into submission. Evidence suggests those tactics have proved ineffective or impotent. We need only consider the Department of General Services, which the DC auditor has frequently criticized. It was created a decade ago by combining several agencies or offices under the assertion that it could provide improved services and save money; its handling of school modernizations is proof it didn’t meet that mission.

Still, at-large Council member Anita Bonds, chair of the Committee on Housing and Neighborhood Revitalization, and several of her colleagues have reached for a combination of those failed tools to address the indisputable public housing crisis facing the city. Bonds held an Oct. 29 public hearing on two legislative proposals: the Housing Authority Board of Commissioners Qualifications and Expansion Amendment Act of 2019 and the Public Housing Rehabilitation Oversight Task Force Act of 2019.

The former would change the skills and experience required for individuals to be appointed to the board of commissioners of the DC Housing Authority (DCHA) while expanding the size of the panel from 13 to 15; the two new members would be selected by the council. The latter bill would establish a 15-member task force, ostensibly to provide oversight of DCHA.

Neither bill would put a dent in what ails the public housing authority, which is plagued by massive uninhabitable apartments and not enough money to rehabilitate them. DCHA is the city’s largest owner and operator of low-income, affordable apartments. With substantial federal disinvestment in the past few years — funding has fallen short of the need ever since the cuts that were made during the Reagan era — and obvious mismanagement by previous directors, the agency appears on the brink of collapse.

During this year’s budget deliberations, council members tussled with DC Chief Financial Officer Jeffrey DeWitt to secure money from Events DC’s bank account. An independent agency that runs the convention center along with various entertainment and sports arenas, Events DC had a cache of cash that the legislature wanted to use to provide some financial assistance to the housing agency. The council eventually directed $24 million to DCHA.

That isn’t anywhere near enough; more than $2 billion is needed to upgrade and renovate the agency’s full portfolio. Officials there, including board members and executive director Tyrone Garrett, have developed a strategic plan that would substantially rehabilitate only 14 of the 41 properties DCHA owns and operates. That blueprint relies heavily on so-called public-private partnerships while raising significant questions about how the cash-strapped agency would ensure the units at the 27 other sites would not slide into similarly deplorable conditions, morphing DCHA into one of the District’s largest slum landlords.

At-large DC Council member Anita Bonds chairs the Committee on Housing and Neighborhood Revitalization (Photo courtesy of Anita Bonds).

Against such complex, urgent and dire fiscal trials, Bonds’ proposed deck-chair solutions are laughable. They should be dubbed the responsibility shuffle — an entertaining maneuver performed to sidestep her oversight role while passing obligations to DC residents under the guise of seeking the involvement of experts.

According to the second bill discussed at the hearing, the task force Bonds and her colleagues hope to create would, among other things, oversee the “efficiency and effectiveness of the planning and activities that the [DCHA] has undertaken relating to the rehabilitation, redevelopment, maintenance, and preservation of public housing … .” Further, the task force would make findings and recommendations on appropriate oversight and budgetary actions and policies. Once convened, the law mandates the new panel to file reports every 90 days for a year.

That sounds like oversight, which is what Bonds is paid a six-figure salary to do. Instead, she has decided to enlist 15 District residents to perform her prime function while declining to offer them any compensation (aside from government officials on the task force, of course).

Nothing prohibits the council through Bonds’ committee from engaging in the kind of rigorous reviews and surveys of DCHA prescribed in her legislative proposal. She can call the executive director into a DC Council hearing room at the John A. Wilson Building two or three times a month, if necessary. When DC Public Schools was more troubled than it is today, then-council member David Catania, who had oversight of education, brought officials regularly to his office or before the public to report on various critical initiatives.

If Bonds believes she lacks the expertise to sufficiently scrutinize DCHA, she could request funds to expand her staff to bring on personnel with greater knowledge of housing development and rehabilitation.

As for the qualifications of folks serving on the DCHA board of commissioners, doesn’t the DC Council approve mayoral appointees? It is free to reject any individual, advocating for persons with more specific and demonstrated skill sets. However, in the five years Mayor Muriel Bowser has been in office, it has been rare for the council to exercise its prerogative.

Some advocates, including the Committee of 100 on the Federal City, one of the oldest planning advocacy organizations in DC, offered support for the expansion of the board and creation of the task force. Andrea Rosen from the Committee of 100 suggested that “each of the public members appointed by the mayor and council meet a different competency listed in the legislation, so that a broad range of expertise significant to solving the District’s crisis in public housing can be realized.” Her colleague, Kirby Vining, head of the organization’s housing subcommittee, posed a series of questions the task force should seek to answer, most of which focus on the federal government’s involvement with DCHA and what role the city should have.

Daniel del Pielago, organizing director with the nonprofit Empower DC, raised questions about the relevance of the task force, however. He quoted one public housing resident who argued, “We don’t need more commissioners.” He said residents want guarantees that their properties will be repaired and that they will be able to actually return to their homes when they are forced to move so those renovations can occur.

Garrett urged the committee to consult with the mayor and the DCHA board before moving forward with either legislation. Johanna Shreve — the city’s chief tenant advocate, whose office Bonds proposed would provide administrative support to the task force — said, “I would have to respectfully decline this particular request,” noting her agency’s growing responsibilities.

Shreve raised “several questions and concerns” about the way the legislation is drafted, offering that Bonds may want to specify the task force’s “main goals and purpose.” (I don’t make up this stuff.) Moreover, she asked whether the task force would be “value added” and why there is no mention of how it would interact with the board of commissioners.

Shreve seems to suggest the council’s focus should be more on preventing the loss of public housing units. After all, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which actually owns the local public housing properties, has already approved DCHA’s participation in the Rental Assistance Demonstration Project, according to Shreve. That would mean that “109 units technically would be removed” from the agency’s portfolio. She said another “five projects” may be removed in 2020.

Under this demonstration project, DCHA would issue long-term housing vouchers that would send residents into the private market. Will the amount of the government subsidy keep pace with DC’s high rental rate? If it does not, will that force more tenants to find housing outside of the city’s borders? With those dynamics potentially in play, God only knows why Bonds and her colleagues are fiddling around with job descriptions and task forces.

jonetta rose barras is an author, a freelance journalist and host of The Barras Report television show. She can be reached at thebarrasreport@gmail.com.