jonetta rose barras: Is DC Council member Robert White the housing change agent the city needs?

What is wrong with at-large DC Council member Robert White? What is he thinking? These are questions some residents may be asking. In the past week, I have wondered the same thing. 

The two-term legislator has leapt from the skillet into the fire and has been talking as if he looks forward to the potentially intense heat of becoming the chair of the legislature’s Committee on Housing. White’s new elevated role will force him to contend with concerns, complaints and the orneriness of DC tenants, homeowners and their advocates. He also will be required to grapple with the city’s antiquated affordable housing delivery system while working with an executive branch that too often traffics in mediocrity.

“I gave a lot of thought to where I could be most effective,” White explained to me during a telephone interview the day after Council Chair Phil Mendelson presented his plan for restructuring the legislative branch, including adjusting the rules of engagement and ethics as well as increasing the number of committees from nine to 10. Amid the shuffling of responsibilities, these mini political and public policy fiefdoms appear mostly aligned to legislators’ pleasures rather than the structure of the executive branch or some other logical framework.

A vote on the plan is expected Tuesday as Council Period 25 gets underway with an organizational meeting. Already there has been some controversy surrounding the proposal. 

Ward 7 Council member Vincent Gray has objected to being removed from his pedestal as chair of the Committee on Health, describing it as discriminatory. He has been tapped to head a newly organized Committee on Hospital and Health Equity, which will include shared oversight of the yet-to-be-opened Cedar Hill hospital on the St. Elizabeths campus, the Commission on Health Disparities, the Commission on Health Equity, the Department of Health Care Finance, the Not-for-Profit Hospital Corporation (which oversees United Medical Center) and the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services. 

Mendelson said he made the change in part in response to members’ concerns about Gray’s health. Now in his second term as Ward 7 representative after serving as mayor, Gray suffered a stroke last December. While recovering he has had other health issues, including a torn Achilles tendon that required surgery. There was also a November fall in his bathroom that sent him to the hospital followed by extensive rehabilitation, according to knowledgeable sources. 

After several weeks where he was largely out of public view, Gray has slowly increased his visibility over the past month or so, attending legislative sessions and a couple of groundbreaking events. Still the impact of his illnesses and injuries on his ability to manage his committee and his council portfolio has been noticeable.

Legislators have said they want Gray to take the time to recover. Consequently, Mendelson has nominated at-large Council member Christina Henderson as the new health chair. She was elected to the council in 2020. If Mendelson’s plan is approved without alterations, this will be her first turn at the helm of any committee.

Gray hopes to convince colleagues to keep him as chair of the Committee on Health. 

He also announced that he will seek to amend the council’s rules on Tuesday when they are scheduled for a vote. His amendment as presented in a public statement released by his office would make clear that the council must adhere to the city’s Human Rights Act. That means council members, council officers and staff “shall be prohibited from taking any discriminatory act that conflicts with the intent of the council expressed in DC official code 2-1401.01” — with a specific reference to the assignment of committee chairs. The protection would apply to individuals regardless of their appearance and/or disability, among other areas. 

The amendment proposed by Gray’s office hasn’t yet been approved for legal sufficiency by the legislature’s general counsel. It’s not clear whether the amendment will see the light of day beyond media reports.

However, there are likely to be some revisions to Mendelson’s plan, at least at the margins. In a memorandum for the draft legislation he circulated on Wednesday, he mentioned that some council members have asked for changes, resulting in ongoing conversations that may lead to adjustments in committee membership. In a telephone conversation with me, Mendelson declined to provide any details. “The documents speak for themselves,” he said.

There hasn’t been any negative reaction to White’s appointment. He will inherit the job from at-large member Anita Bonds, a feckless leader of the council’s Housing Committee over the past eight years. Smartly, she didn’t engage in a public battle over holding onto its reins. That would have been embarrassing since countless advocates and nonprofit organizations had mounted a campaign to dethrone her. I presented my own reasons for giving another legislator the opportunity.

Housing is arguably the second most important issue in the nation’s capital right now — following public safety. It cuts across every DC demographic. A new congressional representative, Democrat Maxwell Frost of Florida’s 10th District, decried earlier this month his inability to find affordable housing, citing his current debt-to-income ratio as a key barrier despite the assurance of a lawmaker’s salary come 2023.

When I spoke with White, he declined to provide specifics about his plans for the committee. “I want to give myself time to crack open the binders,” he said. “It is really important at the outset that we develop an agenda; otherwise, we will have difficulty creating a path to improvement.”

Should the absence of details gin up worry among residents and advocates that they may face yet another committee chair long on talk but short on action?

Maybe. Maybe not.

To be fair, White has had housing in his sights for years. When he first arrived on the council, he introduced the idea of converting unused office space to housing. Some folks, including Mayor Muriel Bowser, dismissed the concept, calling it too costly to implement. 

Suddenly, converting offices to housing is trending in DC. 

Bowser broke ground Dec. 15 on a project that will convert the old Vanguard building at 20th and L streets NW into The Elle Apartments. Announcing the DC government’s planned incentives for similar conversions, Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development John Falcicchio offered in a press release: “We have approached our downtown reimagination strategy from three lenses: Change the Space, Fill the Space, and Bring the People.

“We know that creating new housing in downtown will lead to a more vibrant neighborhood and 24/7 economy. The Housing in Downtown Abatement Program will incentivize more conversions, and bring about more housing affordability and retail opportunities,” Falcicchio said.

What a difference a pandemic and a slumping downtown can make in countering the government’s myopia.

White has said he will continue to push for more conversions. He also talked of jumping quickly into oversight of the DC Housing Authority, which he described as “an agency that is in desperate need of stability.” His assessment is amplified by a scathing report prepared earlier this year by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which concluded the agency is failing in its fundamental mission to provide affordable housing to low-income residents.

Before going on holiday recess, the council voted 9-4 to approve emergency legislation that restructured the DCHA’s Board of Commissioners, creating in its place the Stabilization and Reform Board. There had been massive objection to Bowser and Mendelson’s effort to reduce the board’s size from 13 to nine while eliminating some of its most vocal and controversial members. White played a significant role in negotiating a solution while ensuring enough council members supported the proposal to meet the supermajority threshold required to pass emergency legislation.

He may have helped push through that bill, but White warned that his efficacy as committee chair should not be judged by the introduction of new legislation on housing matters. His focus will be “less on legislation” and more on “where do we do oversight to correct and fix” issues and agencies.

Sounds good, right? I am particularly animated by the idea of enhanced and, perhaps, higher-quality oversight. 

But achieving that goal could be difficult. The Housing Committee as shaped by Mendelson is a beast. It is expected to include, in addition to DCHA, the usual government agencies — the Department of Housing and Community Development, the DC Housing Finance Agency, and the Office of the Tenant Advocate, for example. The five-member panel also will oversee the Interagency Council on Homelessness as well as the Department of Human Services — which includes short-term family housing, eviction prevention and rental assistance, Rapid Rehousing, emergency shelters and day centers. Additionally, the committee will have oversight of advisory neighborhood commissions and the Mayor’s Office on Returning Citizen Affairs — remnants of the portfolio of White’s current committee.

“There is some putting of items in committees that are different than the core purpose of those committees,” Mendelson acknowledged during an interview with me, dismissing criticism that they are too broad and unwieldy. “Last year there were nine. Now we have 10. I try to get consensus.”

As an example, he cited Ward 4 Council member Janeese Lewis George, who is expected to be named chair of the Committee on Facilities and Family Services — a hodgepodge of agencies, if there ever was one. It is proposed to include the Child and Family Services Agency, the Department on Disability Services, the State Rehabilitation Council and the Commission on Poverty. But it also has purview over the Department of General Services.

“[She] was very interested in DGS,” continued Mendelson. “I saw an opportunity to have somebody interested and focused” on the department. 

Interestingly, in the recently completed Council Period 24, White was chair of the Committee of Facilities and Government Operations, which included DGS and the Office of Contracting and Procurement (OCP), among others. If you’re a DC Public Schools parent, you know about DGS’ lousy job making repairs in dozens of city public education facilities. The DC auditor found significant management programs at the agency. And, if you’ve read my columns about the Medicaid managed care saga, you know how many times OCP has failed miserably in conducting a fair contracting process. 

Despite those measurable failures, White touted his achievements as chair of his former committee in our interview and in a subsequent press release. In particular, he highlighted his work around the ANCs and the Office on Returning Citizen Affairs, which he said “always has been a place near and dear to me.” 

White told me he wanted to hold onto those areas — and especially the agency and board that work with returning citizens — because he and his team have made “so much progress” and that “progress can be undone quickly.”

“It is one of those issues that can slip through the cracks, similar to ANCs,” White said, adding that his Committee on Facilities and Government Operations had done “the biggest overhaul of [the Office of Advisory Neighborhood Commissions] since its creation.“

Unequivocally White said that “every single agency” under his committee’s oversight “is better than when I got it.”

“We are going to bring that same strategy” to the Housing Committee, continued White, “so that when people ask are they better off, my job is to make sure the answer is ‘Yes.’”

After years of no, yes sounds pretty good. However, it’s certain that White will have to endure many burn marks if we are to reach that destination. Will he be willing to do so?

Stay tuned.

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jonetta rose barras is an author and freelance journalist, covering national and local issues including politics, childhood trauma, public education, economic development and urban public policies. She can be reached at thebarrasreport@gmail.com.