SAFE, DECENT AND AFFORDABLE:

CITIZEN STRUGGLES TO IMPROVE HOUSING

IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, 1890-1982

...

~ ... .

by
Jerome S. Paige, Assistant Professor of Economics
Margaret M. Reuss, Professor of Economics
University of the District of Columbia

STUDIES IN D.C. HISTORY AND PUBLIC POLICY

PAPER NO.6
 THE D.C. HISTORY AND PUBLIC POLICY PROJECT

THE D.C. HISTORY AND PUBLIC POLICY PROJECT seeks to provide historical
research on critical public policy issues in the District of Columbia in a
form useful to policy makers in this city and the general public concerned
with policy issues.

In its first year, the project undertook a study of public education and
pub 1 i shed a set of papers which was presented at a conference in May 1982.
This year, the conference presents the results of the project ' s study of
housing in the District.

In addition to the conferences, the project has conducted seminars on

both topics for the Mayor, officials of the executive branch and the Council
of the District of Columbia.

The D.C. History and Public Policy Project is an undertaking of the

Department of Urban Studies (College of Liberal and Fine Arts) of the
University of the District of Columbi a, with the assistance of the Institute
for District Affairs, under a grant from the National Endowment for the
Humanities.

To order copies of the papers, contact the Department of Urban Studies,

University of the District of Columbia, 4200 Connecticut Avenue.. N.W. Room
5-02-6, Washington, D.C. 20008.

~ Jerome S. Pai ge &

Magaret M. Reuss, 1983

·~ -
 SAFE, DECENT AND AFFORDABLE:
CITIZEN STRUGGLES TO IMPROVE HOUSING
IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, 1890-1982

by
Jerome s. Paige, Assistant Professor of Economics
Margaret M. Reuss, Professor of Economics
University of the District of Columbia

STUDIES IN D.C. HISTORY AND PUBLIC POLICY

PAPER #6

May 1983

This paper is part of a series of historical studies on housing policy

in the District of Columbia prepared by the staff of the D.C. HISTORY AND
PUBLIC POLICY PROJECT, an undertaking of the Department of Urban Studies
(College of Liberal and Fine Arts) of the UNIVERSITY OF THE DISTRICT OF
COLUMBIA, funded by a grant from the NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE
HUMANITIES.
 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
SAFE, DECENT AND AFFORDABLE: CITIZEN STRUGGLES TO IMPROVE HOUSING IN
THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, 1890-1982
As the District government commits itself to improving housing and
rebuilding neighborhoods by empowering citizen groups, a knowledge of how
such groups have sought to improve housing, what their struggles were, and
what they have demanded in the past is useful in shaping public policy today.
Our overview of the citizen struggle to improve housing in the District
begins at the end of the nineteenth century with the efforts to replace the
alley dwellings, which had gained notoriety as the 11 Secret city" of
Washington.
Subsequently, we treat the New Deal, the war years, and the 1950s as a
period in which a powerful, public-spirited white and black elite fought the
opposition of organized business interests to public housing in the
District, cooperated with them occasionally over regulatory issues such as
the housing and zoning codes, and worked in harmony with them in support of
an urban renewal program. -
The government programs and judicial decisions of the 195.0s and 1960s
radically changed the housing movement in the District by involving, for the
first time, low income blacks and a new class of young professionals and
paraprofessionals.
Neighborhood-based organizations began the long struggle to ·develop
responses to government programs and, during the 1970s, many passed beyond
response to initiatives aimed at altering the relationships between owners,
users and regulators of housing. Accelerated changes in the costs of hous-
ing disrupted neighborhoods and tenant security and led to a proliferation
of tenant, cooperative and condominium organizations in the 1970s.
Finally, in the 1980s, as the District government conunits itself to
seeking the assistance of neighborhood organizations in dealing with its
continuing housing crisis, the citizens show signs o.f having developed the
breadth and sophistication of organization necessary to their taking on such
responsibilities.
Our review of the 92-year period, 1890-1982, reveals that citizens have
made eight basic demands in their attempts to improve housing in the
District. They have demanded: affordable housing, safe and decent housing,
dweller control over housing, non-discriminatory access to housing, reform
of Landlord and Tenant Court, power to plan or to participate in planning
their conununities, stable communities where they can remain if they wish,
. and responsive political and administrative structures. With each of the
demands, citizen groups have made recommendations.
To facilitate affordability, the District government should continue
rent control on existing units and should encourage new low and moderate
income construction and renovation by supporting one-stop housing develop-
ment center(s) to assist less experienced developers in combining direct

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subsidies, federal tax advantages, participation of public and private
financial institutions, surplus government properties, neighborhood organi-
zational support, etc.

To facilitate the expansion of safe and decent housing, the District

government shou 1d budget funds to abate ser1 ous housing code vi o1at ions
rapidly, itself, or it should pass repair and deduct legislation to allow
tenants to do so, themselves.

To facilitate dweller control, the District should move as quickly as

possible to expand tenant management or cooperative ownership in the low-
density public housing properties, and do every thing it can to facilitate
cooperative ownership for moderate income families.
To facilitate "open" housing, the D.C. Office of Human Rights should use
the services of citizen tech.nical assistance groups to extend its influence,
calling on private resources to do studies for it, and on the Washington
Lawyers Conunittee for Human Rights Under Law to appear with complainants
when property owners appear with their lawyers.
To facilitate refonn of Landlord and Tenant Court, the District should
move as quickly as possible to adopt a dispute-settlement mechanism which
can efficiently dispose of landlord and tenant complaints on an equitable
basis; this might be a housing court such as exists in a number of other
cities.
. To facilitate citizen involvement in ~lanning, the District should in-
volve neighborhood and city-wide organizat1ons in the step-by-step develop-
ment of a specific land-use plan, to which zoning should then confonn.
To facilitate neighborhood stabilization and economic develo~ment, the
District ·government should reinstitute the speculation tax, s ou1d move
aggressively to bring vacant land into use and deteriorated properties up to
Code level, . and should fund neighborhood development programs out of a
portion of the increased tax revenues from downtown red eve 1opment and from
the proceeds o~ industrial revenue bonds.
To facilitate responsive political and administrative structures, the
District should not fragment communities by establishing competing and over-
lapping structures, as occurred in the past in the cases of the PACs, Ser-
vice Area Committees, Model Cities Conunission, MICCO, the NDCs, etc., and
should strengthen the ANCs' ability to plan, to support neighborhood housing
and economic development efforts, and to monitor and enforce government
regulations in the neighborhood.
In conclusion, the District's commitment to improving housing and
rebuilding neighborhoods by empowering citizen groups complements the
history of citizen movements which has demonstrated citizens' evolving
desire and ability to take responsibility for solving their own housing
problems.

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 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

THE D.C. HISTORY & PUBLIC POLICY PROJECT gratefully acknowledges the
assistance of the following persons, who took time to speak with the project
staff, read drafts of the papers, or assisted in other ways.
David Clarke Dorothy Kennison
James Clay Anne Meglis
Kenneth Colbourn John McCoy
Marcia Kunen Patricia Evans Miner
Roxanna Dean Carolyn Oakley
John Hampton Kathryn Ray
James Harvey Sue Reddick
Kenneth T. Jackson Florence Reisman
Charlene Drew Jarvis Helen Young
Robert Jenkins

Our limited study of the history of citizen groups• efforts to improve

housing in the District of Columbia was made possible because of the time
that many individuals gave us. We held extensive interviews with Roger
Turpin, Lynn Cunningham, Evelyn Onwachi, Jim Banks, Kimi Gray, Dick Jones,
Anne Turpeau, Phyllis Martin, Michael Crescenzo, the Honorable Walter
Fauntroy, the Reverend Ernest Gibson, Howard Croft, Bob Stumberg, Carol
Rende, Margaret Oppenheim, Gottlieb Simon, and the Southeast Cluster Tenants
Union. Some of these individuals are quoted directly, others indirectly.
Yet, all their ideas were important in -shaping the final version of this
paper.
Also, a study like this requires access to research materials and we are
indebted to the staffs of the Metropolitan Washington Housing and Planning
Association, the Washingtoniana Room, D.C. Public Library, and the Moorland-
Spingarn Research Center, Howard University for assisting us in the use of
their collections. We also wish to thank our research assistants for this
project: Linda Coleman, Marian Ricks, and Ira Dennson. The editorial
assistance and conunents of Ken Jackson, Dennis Boland, Helen Young, Bob
Jenkins, and Steven J. Diner were invaluable. Although we relied on several
individuals to produce this study, we take responsibility for all omissions
and errors.
-- J.S.P. & M.M.R.

- iii -
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY .... i

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ..... .... • iii
INTRODUCTION • .... ... . 1

CHAPTER I: UPPER CLASS REFORMERS AND THE HOUSING OF THE POOR,

1890-1960 • • • • • • • • • • •• ... 2
The Study of the "A11 ey Prob 1em" • • • • • • • • • • • • • 2
The limited Dividend Solution • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 3
The Struggle for Government Intervention: Founding of the
Washington Housing Association • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 4
Refonmers and Business Interests Clash over Housing Regulation
and Zoning Refonm • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 6
Racial Conflict and Housing Policy • • • • • • • • • • • • 10
CHAPTER II: RENEWAL VERSUS REHABILITATION: THE URBAN RENEWAL
CONTROVERSY, 1950-1960 • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 12
Citizen Opposition to the Renewal of Marshall Heights • • • • • 12
Citizen Fonnulation of a "Workable Program" for Urban Renewal • • • 16
Southwest Urban Renewal or 11 Negro Removal" • • • • • • • • • • 17
CHAPTER III: CITIZENS DEMAND THE RIGHT TO PLAN, 1960-1970 • • • • • • 20
Shaw Urban Renew~l: The Community as Planner and Developer • • • • 20
UPO and the Neighborhood Development Centers • • • • • • • • • 22
The Model Cities Program • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 24
CHAPTER IV: THE DRIVE FOR EQUAL OPPORTUNITY IN ·HOUSING,
1958 OttJARD • • • • • ••• .. 27
Neighbors, Inc • • • • • • • • • • • • • 28
The Fair Housing Associations ....• • • • 29
Housing Opportunities Council 30

CHAPTER V: PUBLIC HOUSING TENANTS ORGANIZE, 1965-1980 • • • • 33

Rent. Strike as Response to the Public Housing Crisis

Resident Control and Responsibility • • • • • • • • •
...• • • • 33
36
Continuing Issues of Controversy tn Public Housing 37
CHAPTER VI: THE TENANTS' RIGHTS STRUGGLE, 1964-1974 38

Mounting Conflict over the Housing Code ••••• 38

The Girard Street Project • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 39
The Battle Erupts, 1964-1968 • • • • • • • •
Clifton Terrace Rent Strike •••••
40
41
...
Trenton Terrace Rent Strike •••••• 41
The Landlord-Tenant Wars, 1968-1974 • . . . . . . . .. .. .. .
42
44
The Landlords' Counterattack • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Rent Control: A New Phase in the Tenants• Struggle ••••
$·
....
45
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CHAPTER VII: CITIZEN STRUGGLES TO STABILIZE NEIGHBORHOODS:
PROTECTIVE MEASURES, 1970-1982 • • • • • • • 47
The Course of Private Reinvestment in Washington•s Inner-City • 47
Citizen Response to Gentrification and Displacement • • • • • • • • 48
The Struggle to Save Rental Housing • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 50
City-Wide Housing Coalition • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 50
City-Wide Housing Foundation and the Return to Advocacy • 53
Negotiating to Save Rental Housing • • • • • • • • • • • 54
CHAPTER VIII: CITIZEN STRUGGLES TO STABILIZE NEIGHBORHOODS:
CREATIVE MEASURES, 1970-1982 • 56
Self-Help or Sweat Equity • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 56
Cooperative Housing • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 57
Securing Access to Credit from Local Financial Institutions • 58
Tapping the National Credit Markets for Funds • • • 60
Tax Incentives to Reduce Displacement and Expand
Housing Supply • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 61
Planning for Heterogeneous Communities • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 63
Creating Viable Neighborhood Economies • • • • • • • • 64
CHAPTER IX: CITIZENS' HISTORICAL STRUGGLES AND
CONTEMPORARY PUBLIC POLICY •• 66
Citizens' Historical Demands •••• • • • • • • 66
The Demand for Affordable Housing 66
The Demand for Decent Housing •• 67
The Demand for Dweller Control • • • •••
The Demand for "Open 11 Housing • • • • • • • • • •
..... 67
67
The Demand for Refonm of Landlord and Tenant Court • 67
The Demand to Plan • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 68
The Demand for Stable Communities • • • • • • • • • • 68
The Demand for Responsive Political and Administrative
Structures • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 68
Citizen Gains • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 68
Functions of the Citizen Organizations • • • • • • • • • • 69
Public Policy-Recommendations of Citizen Groups Representing
Consumers of Housing • • • • • • • • • • • • • 70
NOTES • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 75

- v-
••• [l]t is essential in a democracy that every important governmental
function be matched, watched, and criticized or supported according to
its merits, by a citizens' organization whose primary function is that
of a catalyst. Government activities are so many, even in the local
field, that the ordinary citizen cannot become enough acquainted with
them all to have a valid opinion on them. So there must be specialized
citizen groups in which he has confidence, to which he can turn for
information and guidance.
The most important action of each of these citizen groups or organiza-
tions in the housing field, is that of determining for itself what kind
of city it desires, what kinds of dwellings it believes will best serve
its community ••••
Only on the basis of such a determination is the group qualified to take
its second most important action, that of evaluating the performance of
either pr.ivate or official agencies.
A third important action • • • is to point out needs that are not being
met.

John lhlder
Executive Director
National Capitol Housing
Authority
November 30, 1950

- vi -
 INTRODUCTION

11
The government acting alone cannot solve the city's housing problems, ..
notes the Overview of the 1982 Draft Comprehensive Plan for the National
Capital. Therefore, the 11 City will encourage and support activities which
a11 ow citizens of the District to he 1p themse 1ves. There must be a new
partnership between the city and neighborhood organizations to increase the
means available within the community to support homeownership, promote main-
tenance, and encourage neighborhood improvement ...
As the District government commits itself to improving housing and
rebuilding neighborhoods by empowering citizen groups, a knowledge of how
such groups have sought to improve housing, what their struggles were, and
what they have demanded in the past is useful in shaping public policy today.
Our overview of attempts of citizens in the District to improve housing
begins at the end of the nineteenth century with efforts to replace the
alley dwellings, which had gained notoriety as the 11 Secret city11l/ of
Washington. Subsequently, we treat the New De a1, the war years and the
1950s as a period in which a powerful, public-spirited white and black elite
fought the opposition of organized business interests to public housing in
the District, cooperated with them occasionally over regulatory issues such
as the housing and zoning codes, and worked in harmony with them in support
of an urban renewal program.
The government programs and judicial decisions of the 1950s and 1960s
radically changed the housing movement in the District by involving, for the
first time, low income blacks and a new. class of young professionals and
paraprofessionals.
Neighborhood-based organizations began the long struggle to develop
responses to government programs and, during the 1970s, many passed beyond
response to i1.itiatives aimed at altering the relationships between owners,
users and regulators of housing. Accelerated changes in the costs of hous-
ing disrupted neighborhoods and tenant security and led to a proliferation
of tenant, cooperative and condominium organizations in the 1970s.
Finally, in the 1980s, as the government looks to the neighborhood
organizations for assistance in dealing with its continuing housing crisis,
the citizens show signs of having developed the breadth and sophistication
of organization necessary to their taking on such responsibilities.
In conclusion, we look back over the period since 1890 and distill the
major demands and recommendations made by citizen activists as they sought
improved housing, more responsive government and neighborhood self-
determination.

- 1 -
 CHAPTER I
UPPER CLASS REFORMERS AND THE
HOUSING OF THE POOR, 1890-1960

The dominant housing issues in the District of Columbia during the

period 1.890-1960 -- crowded, unsanitary housing for the poor, particularly
the black poor, and an inadequate housing supply -- were dramatically mani-
fested in the alley dwellings. The struggle to replace the alley dwellings
set the stage for many later debates on improving housing. It raised such
issues as the role of private market forces in creating or eliminating
inadequate housing, the impact of population changes on the demand and the
quality of housing, the role of non-profit or low-profit organizations in
supplying housing, the role and limits of citizen refonn efforts, the ad-
vantages of relocation versus rehabilitation, and whether housing should be
built for middle, moderate or low income people. (See study of Housing
Regulation*, Chapter I, for a more extended discussion of government efforts
to eliminate the alley dwellings.)
The Study of the aA11ey ~rob1ema

Two factors led to a worsening of the conditions in the alley communi-

ties of Washington during and after the Civil War and created a social move-
ment for their eradication. First, people with no resources flowed into a
city that had no resources for their accommodation, thus forcing them into
the alleys of the inner-city where they were close to the service employment
available. Second, the tremendous rise in land values during and after the
Civil War caused pro~erty owners to cut off the rear of lots and build row
housing facing the alleys, thereby increasing the size and density of the
alley populations.
From its inception, the citizen movement to eradicate the alley dwell-
ings was led by a well-meaning upper class elite which brought to the
campaign all the racial and class biases of missionaries elsewhere in the
world. In the early 1890s, a Committee on the Improvement of Housing in-
vited Jacob Riis, a New York social activist, to do a study on Washington's
alley dwellings. His report to a joint committee of Congress led to enact-
ment in 1892 of a law prohibiting houses on alleys less than thirty feet
wide. The shortage of housing for the poor was so acute, however, that the
1aw was not enforced.
Two years later a group of citizens interested in sociological problems
organized the Civic Center, which set up a housing committee to study alley

* Throughout this paper references are made to other studies in this

series. Steven J. Diner, "The Regulation of Housing in the District of
Co 1umbi a: An Hi stori ca 1 Analysis of Po 1icy Issues," paper No. 5 in this
series, is referred to as study of Housing Regulation. Irving Richter, "The
Evolution of Federal Housing Policy and Its Impact on the District of
Columbia," paper No. 7 in this series, is referred to ,as study of Federal
Housing Policy.

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conditions and make reconunendations. With the cooperation of the Woman•s
Anthropological Society, the committee did the first of many detailed
studies of the a 11 eys, and attributed the prev a 1ence of a 11 ey dwe 11 i ngs 11 to
the fact that no class of realty pays as well as alley property in this
city.n,£/ Dr. George Kober, the chairman of the committee, warned that
relying on the market to house the poor without either ~hilanthropic or
government subsidy would exile them to the outlying areas._! The location
of post-World War II low-rent construction in the far reaches of Southwest,
Southeast and Northeast shows the aptness of his warning.

Numerous studies of the alley cormnunities followed. In 1907 and 1908,

President Theodore Roosevelt•s 11 Homes Commission .. examined the issue in
detail. In 1912 the Monday Evening Club found 270 alleys with an estimated
population of 16,000 and compiled a 11 Directory of Alleys 11 to publicize these
11
hidden 11 communities 11 menacing the city.u4/ As a result, Congress appro-
priated funds in 1912 to clear the notorious Willow Tree Alley and convert
the land into a playground. The D.C. Public Utilities Commission noted that
11
The residents unhoused by this operation found dwellings in the immediate
vicinity • • • and brQ.ught about a badly congested condition in houses
neighboring the alley, .. ~ the first indication of the perennial problem
of urban renewal•s impact on the rest of the community.

The Limited Dividend Solution

In 1894, the District Commissioners responded to the agitation about the

housing conditions of the poor by setting up a central relief committee
under General George Sternberg. This committee, along with the Civic
Center, the Board of Trade and the Woman•s Anthropological Society, received
a Virginia charter for a privately-financed, limited-dividend housing cor-
poration called the Washington Sanitary Improvement Company. This was the
first attempt by citizens to increase the supply of decent lower income
housing through private initiative. The intention was to rehouse the alley
dwellers and thus to demolish the slums. However, it was 11 Considered best
to begin this movement by providing improved dwellings for the better class
of wage earners, in the belief that the houses vacated by them would be
rented bY. the next grade, and so on unti 1 the bottom of the 1adder was
reached.u6/
Later, one of the organizers, dissatisfied with the results of the
trick 1e-down approach, estab 1i shed the Washington Sanitary Housing Company
in 1897 with a dividend limited to four percent instead of five percent, in
an attempt to 1ower rents in 9Jderto house ••day 1aborers, 1aundresses and
other humble wage earners. 11- This proved unsuccessful, and in 1911
Congress amended the Housing Company•s charter to allow it to pay five per-
cent, and in 1923, the Sanitary Improvement Company raised its permissible
dividend to six percent. The two companies working in harmony built
hundreds of two-story flats and apartments, for the most part resembling row
houses, on vacant land throughout the inner city.
Their philosophy of housing -- spelled out by Dr. Kober -- was to avoid
high-density apartments as an undesirable environment, and to avoid indi-
vidual home ownership as too costly and as lacking the organization and
supervision needed by low income residents. Instead, they built mainly

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row-type flats in which each apartment had its own front door and rear exit
to its own yard. The properties were grouped compactly, each area having a
resident manager to collect rent, to supervise the activities of the tenants
and to maintain the properties. One issue arose then and arises today: how
to provide incentives for residents to maintain their buildings. Origin-
ally, an interesting scheme allowed tenants to receive a rebate of one
month's rent if no interior repairs had been required (or a portion of one
month's rent if in excess of repair costs). After many years, this practice
was discontinued on the grounds that it led to tenants failing to report
necessary interior repairs. By 1934, the two companies had 878 apartments,
474 of which were for whites and 404 for blacks.
According to Appleton Clark, president of the companies in 1934, the
success of their enterprise was shown by "the fact that there never have
been any vacancies more· than a day or so, and that generally there is a
waiting list.u8/ The housing survey conducted by the D.C. Public
Utilities Conmission in the same· year added: "The flats of the limited
dividend housing corporations in Washington are with few exceptions the only
living quarters in the city within the reach of the s~all wage-earner which
do not violate essential principles, of good housing."Y
Whatever their successes, the limited dividend corporations were inade-
quate to the massive job of providing housing for the poor. As early as
1909; a commission of upper class housing reformers; appointed by President
Theodore Roosevelt, concluded: "Under present conditions as to the price of
land, labor, and of materials, and in view of existing building regulations,
there is no temptation to capital to invest in this class of houses (new
houses for rent to fami 1ies of low income)." The report went on to cite
European experience with government loans for construction of low-rent hous-
ing and proposed that the federal government appropriate or loan money to
Washington for this purpose.lO/
In 1947, John lhlder of the National Capital Housing Authority (NCHA)
sunmed up the historical limits of a strictly philanthropic approach by
noting that "after fifty years of effort our two local companies present
only tokens of what might be done ••• they have provided better dwellings
than would·otherwise have been available for more than a thousand families.
But they introduced in Washington the one-bedroom flat. They have not
cleared the slums; they have built· on vacant land... And, he pointed out,
the one company remain i ng active was bu i 1ding in the moderate income, not
low income, range.JJ/
The Struggle for Government Intervention:
Founding of the Washington Housing Association
Before the New Deal period, citizen efforts to remove the alley dwell-
ings had foundered on their inability to provide relocation housing. The
need for government subsidy to provide the relocation housing and for
government regulation to prevent the deterioration of the existing stock was
now recognized. This public interest clashed head-on with the organized
opposition of home builders, realtors and property owners, who saw such
things as public housing, housing codes, zoning and rent control as in-
fringements on the unencumbered use of their property. (See study of Hous-
ing Regulation.)

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 The housing reform movement of the 1930s and 1940s in the District and,
to some extent, nationally, revolved around the name of John Ihlder. Ihlder
came to Washington in the 1920s to work for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
He bought a house in Georgetown, became chairman of the Homeowners• Commit-
tee of the Georgetown Citizens Association and in 1929 organized the Com-
mittee on Housing of the Washington Council of Social Agencies.
In 1933, at Ihlder•s initiative, a group of twelve prominent citizens,
under the honorary chairmanship of Mrs. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, formed
the independent Washington Committee on Housing. The committee•s membership
was referred to by a member as 11 representat i ve, men and women, poor and
rich, black and white. 11.!Y In fact, the membership represented the
propertied and professional elite of Washington.~
In 1934, with the aid of Senator Arthur Capper, the Committee drafted
legislation establishing the first housing authority in the country, the
D.C. Alley Dwelling Authority. (See study of Federal Housing Policy.) John
Ihlder, the new director, 11 announced [the authority•s] objective as the
reclamation of the alley slums on a sound economic basis, at no ultimate
cost to the taxpayers. It proposed to treat the appropriation given to it
as a loan, to be repaid with interest.uJY The plan was to use conunercial
activity and land sales to finance the housing. The authority used its
$500,000 direct appropriation to purchase fourteen slum squares, on five of
which it built moderate income housing for 112 families, on another five it
built garages, a repair shop and a parking lot; it then razed the buildings
on the remaining four and sold two of them--a modest beginning to urban
renewal.
In 1935, the Committee 11 prevailed· upon the federal Public Works Adminis-
tration [PWA] to es~i~lish two housing projects, one for white and one for
colored residents ...___ At the su~gestion of the newly-created Housing
Division of PWA, the Washington Comm1ttee on Housing was incorporated as the
Washington Housing Association (WHA) and asked to supervise one of these,
the Langston public housing project on Benning Road, N.E. which, in the end,
was the only one funded.~/
The U.S. Housing Act of 1937 established· a national agency, the U.S.
Housing Authority, to make loans to municipalities for the construction of
low-rent housing. The act also provided subsidies to enable public housing
authorities to reduce rents in their projects to levels affordable by low
income families. WHA lobbied actively with Congress for conversion of the
D.C. Alley Dwelling Authority to the equivalent of a state housing authority
eligible for funding under the act. This was achieved when in 1938 Congress
added Title II to the Alley Dwelling Act. (See study of Federal Housing
Policy.)
John Ihlder continued as Executive Officer of the Alley Dwelling
Authority and remained a board member of WHA. During World War II and its
aftermath, he was the capital•s leading discussant of the whole breadth of
housing problems. In 1946 he chaired a subco11111ittee of the D.C. Emergency
Housing Committee, the purpose of which was to promote housing for
veterans. In particular, he documented the needs of low income veterans in
rebuttal to the Home Builders Association of Metropolitan Washington and the

- 5 -
Washington Board of Trade, who· minimized the low income demand.lZ/ Ihlder
guided groups from the League of Women Voters and the Citizens Counci 1 for
C011111un i ty P1ann i ng on tours of veterans • and 1ow income s 1urn housing, and
repeatedly clashed with the National Home and Property Owners Foundation and
the National Association of Home Builders in testimony before Congress.
In April 1947, however, he applauded the announcement of the Home
Builders that they intended "to erect a 1arge number of low and moderate-
priced rental housing projects, 11 on the grounds that this would enable the
National Capital Housing Authority (NCHA) to graduate· its highest income
tenants and replace them with others at the bottom of the income scale. He
foresaw what was to be a perenni a1 problem facing NCHA: that the fami 1ies
which NCHA would force out because they were over the income ceiling were,
in most cases, 11 high 11 income because they had multiple earners. They there-
fore would require large apartments, yet "private builders [have] said that
they caonQt afford to build rental dwellings with more than one or two bed-
rooms."~' NCHA would either have. to ignore the continued presence of
large, over-income families, or force them out onto the private market where
they would be unwelcome, and, if they found shelter without breaking up the
family, would be as crowded as within public housing.
In testifying before a Senate committee in 1947~/ Ihlder pointed out
that the spokesmen for the National Association of Home Builders and the
National. Home and Property Owners Foundation, although .local men discussing
local conditions, were actually using the District as the arena for a
national battle against public housing. The private builders argued that
they could do the job better than the Housing Authority if they were given
the power ~f eminent domain, assistance with long-term financing and land
cost write-downs by a public agency, at which point public housing should be
done away with. They achieved all but their last objective within the next
ten to twelve years.
Ihlder was confrontational. He said the witnesses "are definitely
putting property rights first." And he responded to the witnesses: "Shall
we put first the right of the people in our slums to have proper dwellings,
or shall we put first the right of builders and landlords to a profit? In
my belief, decision in favor of human rights will safeguard property as it
has in the past."20/
In a supplement to his statement, lhlder pointed to another chronic
prob 1em facing NCHA: what proportion of re 1i ef (we 1fare) f ami 1i es shou 1d
there be in public housing. He explained that there was an understanding
that the number of relief families should not exceed approximately twenty-
five percent of the total number of families in each project because more
might 11 create acceptance of relief as a normal way of life 11 and thus "be
stultifying for those on relief and demoralizing for the others." He
claimed NCHA had once allowed one of its properties to go up to thirty
percent and seen the change in attitude~/
Refonmers and Business Interests Clash
Over Housing Regulation and Zoning Reform
The new breed of housing reformers, epitomized by Ihlder and organized
primarily by the WHA, showed their willingness to confront business

- 6 -
interests with government authority in· another way. During Wor 1d War I I,
they helped to draft rent centro 1 1egis 1at ion, and after the war, they
lobbied hard to retain it in spite of vigorous opposition from owners and
realtors. (See study of Housing Regulation.)
Since its beginning, WHA had been concerned with highlighting the
dangerous conditions in existing slum housing and with seeking means of
improving them.. Its first effort in this regard was an exhibit on 11 The
Relationship of Housing to Health and Child Welfare, to Delinquency and
Dependency, and to the Churches.u22/ Then in 1938, WHA published 11 A Guide
Book for Housing Study in the District of Columbia--What You Can Do, 11 which
stressed the overcrowding and lack of sanitation:
Nearly 9000 houses are without indoor toilet facilities.
Over 4000 houses do not have inside running water. More
than 10,000 families must use candles or oil lamps ••••
Population in the District has increased 30 percent in
the past 10 years. New dwellings for only half of these
newcomers have been provided ••• 176 inhabited alleys
in all sections of the city. • • • [The] Municipal Court
has to pass upon 3 to 4 thousand landlord tenant disputes
every month.
WHA recommended a bill to set up a Small Claims and Conciliation Branch
in the Municipal Court, which was enacted in March of 1938. A member of the
WHA Board became judge of the Landlord-Tenant Court and 11 WHA helped finance
a social worker for that court who later became a paid employee.u23 (See
study of Housing Regulation.)
In 1940, WHA in cooperation with the Washington Building Congress
drafted and submitted a mode 1 housing code to supp 1ant the morass of over-
lapping and conflicting congressional laws, regulations issued by the
District commissioners, and judicial rulings. However no action was taken
by the commissioners.
WHA continued to try to fill the gap: In 1943 it inspected 2710 proper-
ties and reported 3093 violations of which 1275 -were abated; in 1944, it
inspected 714 properties; in 1945, 973 properties and in 1946, 279 proper-
ties.24/ Years of such direct experience strengthened the WHA board's
commitment to and made them more effective spokesmen for housing reform.
The District government had passed rooming house regulations, but tene-
ment house regulations and provisions for the elimination of yard toilets
and hydrants had not yet been promulgated. WHA favored a single code,
including a section on the responsibilities of owners and occupants, that
would make it 11 unlawful for any person to occupy, or any owner to permit to
be occupied 11 9 dwelling unit not meeting the minimum requirements of the
proposed act~ The association also favored a housing court, based on
the Baltimore model established in 1947, on the grounds that cases of hous-
ing regulations violations in the District 11 have been known to remain on the
books for years •••• In many instances, cases are dismissed, or else draw
only nominal fines.u26/

- 7-
 In an effort to broaden its base of support, WHA organized a Joint
Committee on the Enforcement of Minimum Housing Standards to prepare a draft
comprehensive code. Other members were the Washington Building Congress,
the Home Builders Association, the Washington Real Estate Brokers Associa-
tion, the Real Estate Board and the Board of Trade. They produced the Board
of Trade draft which was presented to the District commissioners.
The commissioners finally began to develop a comprehensive code in 1954
because federal urban renewal legislation made such a code a precondition of
urban renewal funding. (See study of Housing Regulation.) At a public
hearing on December 1, 1954, WHA attacked the code as too weak, particularly
its enforcement provisions, and reconunended that the code be sent, back to
its original drafters. These criticisms were echoed by spokespersons for
the U.S. Public Health Service, the Congress of Industrial Organizations,
. the American Society of Social Workers, the League of Women Voters, the
National Council of Jewish Women, the National Federation of Churches and
the Inter-Church Committee on Slum Clearance, the Americans for Democratic
Action, the Urban League, and the Bureau of Public Health Engineering.
Significantly, all these representatives of other organizations either sat
on the board or were members of WHA.
Just as the efforts to establish rent control and a housing code brought
WHA into conflict with elements of the business community, so too did the
struggle to update the Zoning Code in the 1950s. WHA saw that, in the
absence of a comprehensive plan for the District, zoning would determine the
pattern of development. Spot changes were allowing the intrusion of high-
density uses into residential areas, and citizens were mobilizing in opposi-
tion. In 1953, the Spring Valley and Wesley Heights Citizens Associations
battled against construction of Sibley Hospital on the grounds that it would
lower property values ~nd increase traffic hazards in their neighborhoods.
The Zoning Commission yielded. American University, owner· of the site, went
to court which ruled in favor of the hospital. Citizens also mobilized in
opposition to the Friendship Heights shopping center, the Woodner expansion
in Mt. Pleasant and a garage in a residential area of Georgetown, to name
just a few of the cases.
In response to this furor, the D.C. Zoning Ad.vi sory Committee was set up
in 1954. It was composed of some forty prominent individuals and repre-
sentatives of business and professional associations, and had a six-member
executive board. The composition and views of this group were a continuing
source of controversy because of their strong self-interest in the outcome
of the zoning process. Though a member of this group, WHA believed .. major
errors were made in its composition--a disproportionate number are in real
estate, banking, 'zoning variance• law, big business, architectu27J and
engineering ••• a low representation from other community elements ...__
The ~ain stru~gle was over the developers• and builders• desires for the
removal of, or raising of, the height and density limits. Citizens groups
such. as the Progressive Citizens Association of Georgetown, which had been
successful in getting the Old Georgetown Act passed in 1950, fought for
1arger minimum lot requirements city-wide while their opponents, the Home
Builders and Real Estate Brokers Association, expressed concern a~g~t the
effect this would have on families displaced by slum clearance- The

- 8 -
executive committee of the Zoning Advisory Council announced its opposition
to the proposed height and density limits.
During the long process of modernizing the zoning code, WHA directly,
and through board members such as U.S. Grant, III, who was a member of the
Zoning Advisory Council's executive committee, pressed the public's interest
against the builders and developers and their professional advisers, who
11

together constitute the majority of our Executive Committee [and who]

identify the best interests of the city with their own.u29/ Floor/area
ratio limits were a new tool and the ability of WHA volunteers such as Grant
to engage in technical debate on such issues, yet keep the broader interests
of the public in mind, was very valuable. Grant showed foresight in argu-
ing, 11 To loosen the [proposed] Zoning Regulations ••• is unsound for the
overall economy, as it will inevitably induce creeping-blight. Indeed, such
blight is slowly taking over our Central Business District from the east, by
reason of undue commercial development to the northwest induced by excessive
[spot] rezoning to commercial use of residential property on Connecticut
Avenue and 'K' Street, N.w.n30/
At the end of 1955, Reverend Hartman, president of the Washington
Clearinghouse on Slum Clearance, Redevelopment and Housing, could complain
that the full Zoning Advisory Committee had not met in a year, and had
failed to keep the citizens informed, and that 11 business groups have decided
what they want, but the homeowners of the city still are waiting for someone
to tell them what •s going on.ui!J However in the end the citizens got
their hearing. Ten public meetings were held in June of 1956, and in 1958
there were lengthy hearings at which 162 persons testified. Now it was the
business interests which called for a two-year moratorium and further public
hearings to delay a zoning law which they saw as too restrictive but which
was passed in 1958 in spite of their reservations about it.
Up to the time of the New Deal, the focus of the reformers was on volun-
teer action to expose, and cause to be eradicated, physical condit1ons in
the alleys which they saw as intolerable. They recognized the need for
relocation housing but, by and large, considered housing a private responsi-
bility. Therefore christian charity and market forces would have to be
joined to provide a solution--the limited dividend· companies.
With the market collapse of the 1930s, government intervention became
acceptable, and a new breed of upper class activists came. to the fore who
were prepared to use the powers and resources of government to attack the
housing problem. Their base of operations in local and national debate was
the Washington Housing Association. They were not anti-business; in fact a
number of them were prominent in the business 1ife of the conununity. Nor
were they anti-property, but they were determined to make the market work
for the New Deal social goals which they espoused. Opposed to them were the
Home Builders and Realtors Associations which were determined to keep the
government and reform efforts from limiting their freedom of action.
The conflict between the two groups found its sharpest expression in the .
effort to expel WHA from the Community Chest, thus removing its main source
of funds. In 1945, Ernest Henry, Counsel of the D.C. Rent Control Adminis-
tration, argued for expulsion of WHA, the Washington Urban League and the

- 9 -
Citizens Council for Convnunity Planning in a report entitled 11 The Use of
Community Chest Funds for Propaganda and Lobbying Purposes, .. which specific-
ally attacked WHA for 11 the printing and distribution of one-sided propa-
ganda, and lobbying • • • for public housing and for retention of the
National Capital Housing Authority.u32/
Nine years later victory was achieved: the cover article of the Home
Builders Monthl{ could report that, 11 After many years of frustration, --uii
Home Builders ssociation, with the aid of other civic groups, finally
managed to oust the Washington Housing Association from the list of bene-
ficiaries of the Washington Comnunity Chest. Mr. Luchs (of Shannon and
Luchs Realty Co.) charges that the Washington Housing Association has been
sponsoring a program of social action, public housing and rent control and
using Chest money for its social work. We have always preached the fact
that the Chest should not be used for this type of a Socialistic program ...
It is ironic that on the same page the Monthl~ cormnented, 11 The Census Bureau
reported today that nearly 16,000 homes in t e Washington M~tropolitan Area
lacked hot water and private toilets and baths in 195o.u33t Due to ener-
getic efforts by supporters and board members, WHA's expulsion was short-
lived and the agency was reinstated the next year.
The executive committee of the Chest, in voting for expulsion, criti-
cized 11 the apparent inabi 1ity of WHA to fulfi 11 its primary purpose and
become a rallying point which can attract as many as possible of the various
community groups and organizations interested in all aspects of the field of
housing. 11 Their grounds were not that WHA did not have tenant or neighbor-
hood or minority representation on its board; rather that 11 the Board does
not have as strong representation from the business life of the community as
is desirable ·for an agency that attempts to mold public opinion.u34/ The
refonners were seen as 11 traitors to their class 11 because of their espousal
of low income housing needs and because they had power to influence govern-
ment at the commissioner and federal level.
Racial Conflict and Housing Policy
Prior to World War II, black as well as white reformers responded to the
housing crisis by undertaking numerous studies and by petitioning govern-
ment. For example, a 1929 study by William Jones, a sociologist from Howard
University, The Housing of Negroes in Washington, D.C., outlined the
severity J>f the housing problems facing blacks and called for widespread
reforms.~/ Later, 11 1n Washington as elsewhere in the nation, wartime
witnessed an incr'ea$ing black assertiveness, white resentment, and white
1iberal . worryingn 36t because many whites 11 Were content to deal with all
[housing] issues in a non-racial context so long as the segregation pattern
was not threatened.u37/
The clash between the white citizens associations and black civic asso-
ciations raised issues that continued for decades: neighborhood stability,
renewal versus rehabilitation, fair housing, planning, public housing, and
local control. In February and March 1945, there were hearings before the
Subconunittee on the District of Co 1umbi a of the United States Senate on
11
Low-Cost Housing in the District of Columbia.u38/ During these hearings,

- 10 -
representatives from the white citizens associations called for the aboli-
tion of NCHA, and for private enterprise to undertake slum clearance and to
provide low income housing. They spoke in favor of segregation in public
housing and greater local representation on the housing authority. Their
program for slum clearance and low income housing required governmental land
a~semb~~J rent certificates, and tough enforcement of the housing regula-
tlons._
Representatives from the black civic associations saw slum clearance
(the demolition of the alley dwellings), federal construction, segregation
and the behavior of the private real estate market as causing blacks to be
"de-housed and overcrowded 11 and pushed out of the Oistrict.40/
The focus of the housing debate was meanwhile shifting from the upper
class desire to remove a prominent urban eyesore--the alley dwellings--to a
more widespread concern on the part of both black and white reformers with
the inadeq~ate supply of low income housing and the need for broad neighbor-
hood redevelopment.

- 11 -
 CHAPTER II
RENEWAL VERSUS REHABILITATION: THE URBAN RENEWAL CONTROVERSY, 1945-1960

The prospect of large-scale redevelopment (after passage of the D.C.

Redevelopment Act of 1945) changed the nature of the participants in the
housing debate. Up until this time, the reformers and government officials
had debated-what to do for the poor and working class. From this time on,
spokesmen for the minority and low income groups affected would join the
· debate. Their initial concern was over the threat to their homes in the
sites selected for redevelopment. They progressed to a concern with what
they saw as a pattern of 11 Negro remova1, 11 as urban renewal and public con-
struction laid claim to large areas of the inner-city. And they complained
bitterly that all of this was occurring without any over-all plan for the
·development of the city.

In 1947, the National Capital Park and Planning Commission (NCPPC) had
identified seven "slum" areas for possible redevelopment: Foggy Bottom,
Shaw and 14th Street, Southwest, Near Southeast and Northeast, Marshall
Heights in Far Northeast and Barry Fanns just north of St. Elizabeth's
Hospital. Government officials were weighing the benefits and costs of
starting urb\'\/enewal in the congested center of the city or in the outly-
ing "slums."- The need for redevelopment was greatest in the center,
but there was little vacant land available for relocation and what land
there was was needed for public purposes, particularly for National Capital
Housing Authority housing (NCHA), which had a waiting list of 18,000 at the
time, according to the Washington Housing Association (WHA).42/
Citizen Opposition to the Renewal of Marshall Heights
Marshall Heights was a conununity of 2,100 persons on 180 acres bounded
by East Capital, Central and Southern Avenues, Benning Road and 49th Street,
N.E. Other areas had similar or worse conditions; NCPPC gave priority to
Marshall Heights red\v~ 1opment apparently because the area contained a great
deal of vacant 1 and-7 As an NCHA spokesman explained, "The worse slums,
and therefore those most in need of redevelopment, are occupied predomi-
nantly by Negroes. Marshall Heights is one of the two fairly large remain-
ing sparsely occupied a!!js ••• that are available for displaced low-
income Negro families."- The strict segregation by neighborhood and
block which had developed in the 20th century (see Chapter IV) offered
limited relocation options, and it was clear in the 1940s that redevelopment
was not going to be used to alter that pattern.
In 1935, the residents of Marshall Heights had appealed to Mrs. Eleanor
Roosevelt for help because they had no water supply. After her visit, water
pipes and hydrants were provided to about ei 9R~1 fami 1 ies who had been
relocated from the alleys to shacks there.-- At that time, Mrs.
Roosevelt warned the authorities: 11 ln any clearance project, it must be
borne in mind that when you take people out of undesirable houses, you don't
want them to move into more undesirable places. These people Y} Marshall
Heights are in worse condition than they were before they moved. 11-4

.;, 12 -
 By 1948, according to a Washington Urban League survey done at the
request of NCPPC, of 288 of the 480 families in the community, seventy-six
percent still had no running water or public sewers. Thirty-nine percent of
the houses were overcrowded (with six to fourteen people per unit) and 82
percent were heated by coal, wood or kerosene stoves, creating fire
hazards. In its own study, NCPPC reported that of 456 occupied dwellings,
only five percent met the minimum housing standards of the National Commit-
tee on Hygiene of Housing of the American Public Health Association 47/
However, Marshall Heights viewed itself as a stable, predominantly home-
owning community; 38 percent of the families had resided there for ten years
or more and some 300 of the 480 owned their own homes. Their problem was
their low income level; 73 percent of the income earners in the Washington
Urban League survey worked as common 1aborers, service workers or domes-
tics. To the District government, the problem was the lack of tax base to
pay for the much needed services. In 1947-1948 Marshall Heights was
reported to have paid in taxes less than half the cost of educating its
chi 1dren. 48/
The District government asked NCPPC to determine which approach to
Marshall Heights would be cheaper: 11 to put in facilities, grade and surface
the streets, and connect the faci 1ities to each house, or to redevelop it
entirely... Because of winding street patterns and hilly conditions, NCPPC
concluded that rehabilitation and upgrading would be the most expensive and
that the residents would be unable to bear their share of the cost.49/
As a result NCPPC proposed a redevelopment plan for the area which
called for razing the majority of the structures and constructing 350
single-family houses, 950 semi-detached, and 200 apartment house units, with
the eng result to be a projected six- to eight-fold increase in tax
yields •.J!I The District commissioners promptly requested $1,500,000 from
the federal Budget Bureau to purchase the land under the District Redevelop-
ment Act of 1945.~/
The Marshall Heights citizens were understandably concerned about this
threat to their neighborhood and to the homes they had laboriously con-
structed in what had been up until then a neglected rural corner of the
District. The president of the Marshall Heights Civic Association testified
before the Senate Appropriations Committee on March 5, 1948 in opposition to
the NCPPC plan on the grounds that "the Act gives the Agency the power to
move a segment of the population and scatter them to various places not of
their own choosing. Whereas it had been their individual and collective
desires to live in the area where they had bought land and expected to im-
prove.11 He added that the government 11 Can help matters greatly through
subsidies to those landowners who would be in need of it in meeting any
reasonable specifications made in any plan for redevelopment.u_5_2/
The black D.C. Federation of Civic Associations (representing twenty-
seven member organizations) testified more generally: 11 We are apprehensive
lest the ideal spirit of home ownership be blighted by enforced tenancy in
multiple housing projects in sections not of our choice by the Public Law of
Eminent Domain which may be used to arbitrarily confiscate homes of

- 13 -
thousands of residents in areas predominantly occupied by colored citi-
zens... Before any funds for redevelopment were appropriated, they called
for a master plan for the entire District so that •tcitizens might study it
and understand the relationship of the redevelopment areas (Marshall Heights
and Barry Farms) to the whole. 11 They also called for an end to race dis-
crimination in housing:

For several years, no matter whether intentionally

planned or the result of circumstances -- a one way road
1eads to the ghettos of the far northeast and southeast
sections of the District of Columbia. We find ourselves
unable to buy, rent or lease property in localities of
our choice. The mass movement of colored citizens from
the Georgetown section caused by the extension of Rock
Creek Park, the pressure of rea 1 estate groups, and the
recent residential rezoning, bars further occupancy
toward the west. The prohibitive property values and
restrictive racial covenants form an iron curtain to the
northwest. Pub 1ic buildings, playgrounds, school sites,
parks and, according to the press, the demands of the
business groups that the central area of the city be
redeveloped and occupied by those of the high salary
group, all tend to hasten the movement of our citizens to
the northeast and southeast and make perm~nent the
Hitler-like ghettos now being considered.53/
In addition to the Federation of Civic Associations, the Central Northeast
Civic Associ.ation, the Washington Urban League, the NAACP, the Washington
Housing Association and the Interdenominational Ministers• Alliance of
Washington and Vicinity testified in support of the residents• position at
various of the public hearings.
NCPPC and the Redevelopment Land Agency responded by reassuring the
citizens that 11 Persons 1ivi ng in a project area wi 11 be given first choice
for a fixed period of time to buy or lease dwellings within the same area
after its redevelopment, .. and 11 No public housing will be favored in initial
proj~cts if private enterprise can provide proper housing of the types, ~?st
or~n the financial terms within reach of present families in the area.u5
Marshall Heights residents and their supporters pointed to the wide-
spread Negro displacement caused 11 by construction of Federal buildings on
Constitution Avenue, by other housing projects for whites in the Garfield
section of the Southeast, by the expansion of the Navy Yard and the super-
highway network built to service the Pentagon Building and the National
Airport, and the eviction of Negroes from Georgetown 11 as well as by demol i-
tion for parking lots and large apartment buildings for high-income groups.
They despaired of the local authorities finding an acceptable solution and
doubted their interest in doing so, given the attitude expressed 11 by one of
our city heads [in favor of] the •screening of Negroes• planning to move to
Washington to detenni ne whether they wou 1d be •a drug on the market. '··~!
So they turned to the United States Congress for relief.

- 14 -
 The House Appropriations Committee, siding with the Marshall Heights
residents, recommended that the District government abandon the NCPPC p1an
and instead install utilities, sewer and water mains and streets, and
require the houses to conform to the D.C. health laws 56/ According to
the D.C. Federation of Civic Associations, it was the organized opposition
of the large majority of homeowners in Marshall Heights "which was so
largely instrumental ••• in causing the Congress to refuse, for the third
time, the request of the Redevelopment Land Agency for funds with which to
start slum clearance.u57/
WHA had tried to act as mediator in the controversy--it favored rede-
velopment but it also wished to protect the Marshall Heights residents.
WHA's executive director reported that "A number of the residents have
privately expressed themselves as willing to accept redevelopment, if their
rights are protected 11 and, in response, NCPPC guaranteed "that the area
would be redeveloped gradually, so as to keep dislocation to the very mini-
mum" and proposed "that the Marshall Heights residents form themselves into
a corporation to deal more effectively with the Redevelopment Land Agency."
She a1so assured the homeowners that RLA had promised "that in its negot i a-
t ions for the purchase of property, resident owners would be offer'ed a sum
equivalent to the 'home value• as well as the market value" and 11 that if
owners desire, the Land Agency would offer a long term ground lease on a new
building site in the same area."
With these assurances, WHA called for action by RLA, the Commissioners
and the Congress. WHA warned, however, that, if this proposal failed due to
resident opposition, "a redevelopment site must be chosen in the central
area" and NCHA, which opposed Marshall Heights redevelopment, "wi 11 be free
to acquire land for public housing in M&rshall Heights for the purpose of
relocating families who will have to be moved from the central redevelopment
area.u58/
The Marshall Heights Civic Association was victorious in the short run.
Congress prohibited Marshall Heights redevelopment. In the end, however,
the residents may have lost. As WHA forecast, NCHA moved ahead with con-
struction in Marshall Heights and by 1978 there were 1,427 units of public
housing and 353 units of federally-assisted housing there. Sidewalks were
still missing along nearly half the streets and, in the southern portion,
approximately eighty percent of the streets lacked sidewalks, curbs or
gutters on what was hilly and erosion-prone land. A new development effort
was about to get under way~/
It is worth looking at the reasons that the Marshall Heights urban
renewal controversy had a generally unsatisfactory ending. Although the
residents, as embattled property owners, were able to enlist the support of
powerful members of Congress, they were unable to get from the District
government or RLA either technical or financial assistance or the capital
improvements and public services they needed to rehabilitate their neighbor-
hood. Second, they were unable to look at the redevelopment proposal in the
context of city-wide redevelopment and relocation needs because there was no
such overall plan. As a result, they saw redevelopment in the narrow con-
text of an attack on their homes. Third, the mediating role of WHA seems to

- 15 -
 have come too late after the organizations and individuals had dug in on
opposite sides of the issue.
To strengthen its mediating ability, WHA attempted in 1949 and. 1950 to
establish a Slum Clearance and Redevelopment Council, including such groups
as the Washington Federation of Churches, the American Institute of
Planners, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, B'nai B'rith, the American Institute
·of Architects, Americans for Democratic Action, the League of Women Voters,
the Washington Urban League, the D.C. Building and Loan League, the
Washington Central Labor Union, the National Association for the Advancement
of Colored People and the Federation of Civic Associations. It was one of
many efforts by WHA to bring about better understanding between private and
11

pub 1i c interest groups 11 • It fa i 1ed, according to a 1etter of March 15, 1950

sent to invitees, because at the initial meetings The representatives of
11

var.ious groups appeared to be so far apart in their views as to make it

impossible to reconcile those differences.u60/
Finally, the intransigence of the Marshall Heights residents was
heightened by the sensitivity of those who are both poor and minorities to
being the victims while the affluent are seen as the beneficiaries of
redevelopment efforts. This could only have been· addressed by the early and
organized participation of this poor and minority neighborhood in the
redevelopment planning.
Citizen Fo~ulation of a aworkable Programa for Urban Renewal
The National Housing Act of 1954 for the first time made the development
of local "workct.ble programs for conununity improvement 11 a prerequisite for
receiving federal funds for urban renewal or public housing. These programs
were to include {1) sound local housing, {2) a master plan and zoning to
match, {3) basic neighborhood analysis, {4) an effective renewal administra-
tion, (5) adequate provision for rehousing those displaced by urban renewal,
(6) organizational methods to finance the plan, and (~). provisions for
community-wide citizen participation.
At the request of the District commissioners, James W. Rouse and
Nathaniel S. Keith produced a report entitled 11 No Slums in Ten Years, 11 which
outlined a Workable Program for the District. Rouse and Keith argued for a
number of farsighted principles including- strong neighborhood associations.
in the renewal neighborhoods. They concluded that with the adoption of a
comprehensive housing code, the establishment of a housing court and sys-
tematic code enforcement, private rehabilitation as in Georgetown, Capitol
Hill and Foggy Bottom would take care of a substantial part of the slum
problem. Thus their title~/
The Marshall Heights setback had awakened the housing reformers of the
city to the need to involve urban renewal residents in planning for the
future of their neighborhoods. WHA' s Urban Renewal Cormnittee, under the
chairmanship of John Ihlder, understood clearly the implications of a
"Workable Program, .. and, in a 1955 report, the committee demonstrated its
awareness of the need for neighborhood participation in planning and a
centralized relocation service and of the impacts of urban renewal on other
neighborhoods (impacts which the planners missed)~

- 16 -
 Our advocacy should be of strong citizens• associations
in all areas, not merely in renewed neighborhoods.
[Neighborhood] organizations should be alerted to possi-
bilities of the redevelopment and renewal program so they
may participate in its guidance, incidentally assuring
that what is gained by slum clearance or urban renewal in
some areas is not ba 1anced or overba 1anced by what is
lost elsewhere ••••
[C]ooperation between officials responsible for the
renewal program and the neighborhood organizations should
begin early, and proponents of renewal should be frank in
presenting their proposals, not omitting such pertinent
factors as increased rentals or purchase prices ••••
It is not enough "to forecast relocation needs and
develop resources to meet them over a three year
period," • • • whi 1e other programs ha.ve at 1east ten
years during which they will continue to demolish or by
required improvements make more expensive the dwellings
now occupied by low-income people. These other programs
include not only slum redevelopment and neighborhood
renewal, but also highway construction and extension, new
public buildings, schools and parks, in addition to the
effects of the proposed housing code enforcement. Lack
of decent, safe and sanitary housing for the displaced
people may either bring the renewal program to an
untimely halt as relocation areas diminish, or it will
result in lowered housing standards for the increasingly
over-crowded . remaining s 1urns which wi 11 become economic-
ally, socially, politically more expensive than those we
now have.
In order to prevent either of these results, the subcom-
mittee urges that relocation of displaced low-income
families and persons be in neighborhoods where:
1. every effort is made to assure that they will not be
displaced again by the slum clearance and renewal
program,
2. a gradation of incomes with its incentive to eco-
nomic progress is practicable.
Large areas where the population is of one income group,
whether high income or low income, are uneconomic and are
incompatible with a democratic society~
Southwest Urban Renewal or HNegro Removala
Southwest was the first blighted section of Washington to be studied for
renewal. The original plan of 1951 was discarded when a developer's bid
caused RLA to conclude that the land was too valuable to be used in ways

- 17 -
which might have acconunodated the low income people of Southwest.63/ In
1956, Charles Horsky, president of WHA, testifying on the plan for Project
Area C of Southwest Urban Renew a 1, warned that the new p1an ran counter to
the caveats of WHA's Urban Renewal Committee regarding one-income neighbor-
hoods and the risk of displacement destabilizing other neighborhoods. "Now
it appe ar s to be more in the nature of a plan for a Washington show-
place, .._641 he testified.
RLA committed in Southwest the same error they contemplated in Marshall
Heights, bulldozing instead of rehabilitation. However, in Southwest they
committed what WHA saw as an additional error by removing a preponderantly
black and poor community in favor of a middle-to-high income community. Of
the some 23,000 original residents of the renewal area, seventy-seven
percent were black and sixty-four percent had incomes under $3,600.~ In
1968 the Southwester, newsletter of the new Southwest Neighborhood Assembly,
reported that rent a1s ranged up to $400 per month for penthouse apartments
and sales prices up to $109,290 for a restored historic townhouse. In con-
trast, only 203 units were planned for families of moderate income.66/
Thus was created precisely the one-income community which the WHA Urban
Renewal Committee had warned against.
Eighty percent of the residents of pre-urban renewal Southwest were
tenants in contrast to the sixty-two percent homeownership of Marshall
Heights. These Southwest residents were as vulnerable to outside forces as
were the poor tenants elsewhere in the inner-city who were displaced by
public or private urban renewal. (See Chapter VII.) They did not have the
influence on public policy enjoyed by even the modest homeowners of Marshall
Heights.
However, RLA had 1earned a 1essen from the Marsha.ll Heights experience
of community opposition. The relocation staff under James Banks started
working with the community in the planning stage 11 to enable all families to
understand the impact of the coming program upon themse 1ves and their com-
munity and to provide mef}·mum opportunity for the families to participate in
plans for relocation ..._ (There was of course no suggestion that they
participate in the redevelopment planning.) The staff counseled the fami-
lies on a broad range of problems, provided up to $200 per family to cover
the costs of moving or property loss, and supervised every stage of their
relocation. The last family from Southwest was relocated in 1961.
Organized citizen protest in Southwest came after rather than before
renewal but it was spearheaded by fanner residents of the renewal area.
According to RLA, some 180 families with deep roots in the area were moved
to adjacent public housing, where some became leaders in the one surviving
community organization, the Southwest Community House {SWCH). A second
community organization, the Southwest Neighborhood Assembly, was founded in
the 1960s at the instigation of RLA.
In 1970, RLA infonned the conmunity that there was one parcel of land
remaining, adjacent to Jefferson Junior High School on 7th Street, S.W.,
which might be devoted to housing if the Urban Renew a1 Plan were amended.
SWCH put forward a .proposal for a low and moderate income, low-density
development designed to be complementary to the adjacent private rowhouses.

- 18 -
The two conmunity organizations, the ·private tenants associations in the
renewal area, ministers and others began a three-year effort of meetings,
marches and testimony at RLA, NCPC and D.C. council hearings which cul-
minated in the desired plan change. For the first time a resident-income
target was written into a renewal plan. Two law suits were filed almost
inmediately, one by forty-nine adjacent homeowners, one by the owners of
L'Enfant Plaza, to block the plan change.
The number of units projected, 139, was small and would have done little
to relieve the pressures of overcrowding in Southwest public housing or the
waiting list of 1,039 at the one moderate income development in the renewal
area. However, its symbolism to the displaced and low income residents was
great. In the words of Leon Fields, Director of Southwest House, "This is
the last hope, the last everything. If we don't get this, we don't get
anything. It would be a tremendous blow to the low-income. The conununity
will be completely divided.u68/
In 1980, after several appeals, the District Court decided against RLA,
and the project was effectively terminated. Some of the opposition to it
was alleged to have racial overtones, but by that time urban renewal
Southwest was a bi-racial conununity. The homeowners who brought the first
suit included black former residents of Southwest 69/ It was a property
owners• reaction as in Marshall Heights, but this time they were reacting to
the threat to property values which low. income tenants were seen to pose,
rather than to the threat of bulldozers. There was a similar element in
both cases; it was that any unexpected government action to change the con-
ditions in a neighborhood frightens the citizens directly affected. History
shows that they then organize in opposition. Only a well-understood and
accepted comprehensive plan wi 11 reassure citizens that they wi 11 enjoy a
measure of stability in their neighborhoods.
These two early renewal efforts, Marshall Heights and Southwest, and the
debate over the Workable Program have stressed citizen criticisms that urban
renewal is destructive to the neighborhood directly affected and destabiliz-
ing to the neighborhoods receiving the displacees. Citizens stressed that
this might have been avoided by strong neighborhood organizations with
resources to defend resident interests, accompanied by official dedication
to rehabilitation instead of demolition and by a comprehensive development
plan for the city treating the neighborhood's renewal as part of a total
strategy.

- 19 -
 CHAPTER Ill
CITIZENS DEMAND THE RIGHT TO PLAN, 1960-1970

Throughout the years of District urban renewal the same questions have
been debated and largely left unresolved. Middle and upper income citizens
wanted the slums, which they saw as a reproach to their city, removed. They
wanted a clean, sanitary and beautiful environment and they were beguiled by
the promise of an increased tax base. Low and low middle income families
wanted better housing in their neighborhoods and more knowledge of and voice
in what was happening. They in turn were often beguiled by the desire to
have upwardly mobile middle-income neighbors, reasoAing that only thus would
they get the services they desired.lQ.7 To control what happened in their
neighborhoods, they demanded the right to p1an and eventually the federa 1
goveroment attempted to assure them that right.
Shaw Urban Renewal: The Community as Planner and Developer
The Federal Housing Act of 1954 required a community's participation in
the p1anni ng and execution of its own renew a 1. Shaw, at 638 acres the
largest urban renewal area in the United States, and the.Northwest #1 Urban
Renewal area were the first to put citizen participation into practice.
Unlike Southwest, in the urban renewal area of Shaw-Northwest #1, a number
of strong churches were able to maintain their buildings and congregations
throughout the renewal process and provide a local institutional base for
citizen involvement in planning. From the beginning there was strong local
leadership from pastors and other community activists, and there was a
federal mandate for various channels of formal citizen participation, backed
by federal funding.
The original impetus for the pastors• involvement came from the Howard
University Service Project, which was started in 1960 by a group of com-
munity leaders and Howard University faculty. They centered around Shiloh
Baptist Church and its minister, Dr. E. L. Harrison. Their purpose was to
mobilize the local churches to assist in bringing change and redevelopment
to their neighborhoods. A confidential report to the project's Policy Com-
mittee on interviews· with 25 public and private officials made the following
recommendations: ( 1) more adequate code enforcement and a change in court
policy to get more rapid repair or a repossession law under which the city
could take over rental properties with continuing code violations, (2) a
51
block club 11 approach to organizing tenants to improve their neighborhoods,
(3) increased credit for home improvement (red-lining was seen as a serious
problem in the neighborhood), and (4) a program of "urban orientation•• by
neighborhood residents and churches taking on the responsibility of initiat-
ing newly-arrived families into urban living 7~/
As a result, Shaw moved rapidly. Reverend Walter Fauntroy, with the
assistance of Reverend Ernest Gibson, called together the pastors of Shaw to
set up the Model Inner-City Community Organization (MICCO) to ensure that
the poor of Shaw would have a voice in renewal planning and execution. In
1966, with the backing of President Lyndon Johnson, with whom he had had a
working· relationship since the March on Washington in 1963, Fauntroy
succeeded in getting RLA and NCPC to designate· MICCO as the citizen-
participation arm of Shaw urban renewal.

- 20 -
 MICCO was funded to produce a generalized plan which would be followed
by specific 11 action year 11 plans. Fauntroy hired Reginald Griffith of the
Boston Redevelopment Land Agency as head planner and gave him a technical
staff. Redeve 1opment was to proceed according to the MI ceo motto that
renewal should be 11 With the people 11 (doing the planning), 11 by the people 11
( i nvo 1ved in emp 1oyment and enterpri se) , and 11 f or the peop 1e 11 (who 1i ved
there at the start). The planners were responsible to the MICCO board made
up of representatives of local business, service agencies, fraternal or-
ganizations, churches, PTAs, neighborhood councils, and other local groups.
Community input was solicited by a survey which produced 9000 returns. On
this basis, the planners produced a general concept plan which was sent out
to previous respondents and to community organizations for review and amend-
ment. In 1968, the completed plan was submitted to RLA and the city council
and was accepted (with Fauntroy, now vice-chairman of the council, abstain-
ing).72/
The riots following Rev. Martin Luther King's assassination occurred in
April 1968. Shortly after his Inaugural in 1969, President Richard Nixon
toured the riot areas and promised to rebuild them. The Administration
provided $92 million in the first Action Year (1970) for land acquisition by
MICCO, using the power of eminent domain, a 11 non-violent land reform" in
Fauntroy's words. The churches73/ were ready to act as non-profit de-
velopers; they selected their parcels, the federal subsidy programs they
would use, and their development teams.
In the second Action Year (1971), Fauntroy tried to develop a MICCO
organization in the 14th Street riot corridor, while Gibson attempted the
same in the H Street, N.E. corridor. They had little success, because,
according to Gibson, local leadership failed to develop, and builders and
developers, seeing the possibilities, began backing ~pecific civic associa-
tions and clubs, creating factional divisions among them.74/
MICCO was beset by other troubles: on the one hand, there was friction
with the predominantly white RLA staff who wanted more control of the
development process; on the other hand, there was friction with community
groups who argued that MICCO was dominated by black business interests, and
that it did not represent the views of the predominantly poor residents of
Shaw and NW#l. When Fauntroy was elected D.C. Delegate to the Congress in
the fall of 1970, it was reported that "some within RLA feel that MICCO
represents primarily the political interests of its founder, D.C. Delegate
Walter E. Fauntroy, and the financial interests of his supporters rather
than the people of Shawu75/.
In February 1972, according to Eugene L. Meyer of the Post, "RLA forced
Fauntroy to quit as president of MICCO by threatening not to refund the
organization [and] MICCO capitulated, approving a contr..act that Fauntroy
contended destroyed the essence of citizen involvement ...~ MICCO •s board
became a Project Area Committee (PAC), an instrument for community reaction
to RLA proposals, rather than an initiator and independent actor.
Elsewhere in the city conflict also arose: Fauntroy noted that 11 0n H
Street the Model City Commissioners ••• vied for power with a coalition of
citizens' groups. HUD required that they get together and form a Project

- 21 -
Area Committee. On 14th Street, ·two separate groups received planning funds
from RLA" and hired consultants. When HUD required that a PAC be created,
the 11 two consultants put their relatives on the payrolls.•• Planning vir-
tually came to a halt while RLA struggled with this issue and the citizens
struggled to get their PACs certified by HUD.

The reporter concluded, 11 it is now clear that 'citizen participation• in

redevelopmen~ is not the panacea that many thought it three or four years
ago. Clearly, citizen groups in the inner city ID9Y reflect political forces
and pressures as much as government agencies.••_77/ Recently, the Reverend
Gibson expressed a different view; he attributes much of the dissension to
interference by developer/builders, armed with funds and long range plans of
their own, in the citizen process, and to RLA's ineptness in dealing with
MICCO. Looking back at the period, Gibson noted that "A major percentage of
Shaw would have been owned by church-controlled housing corporations if
MICCO had been allowed to continue. Members of the churches in the area
were eligible and, as tenants, they would have had a good orientation and a
sense of ownership in the projects."78/
UPO and the Neighborhood Development Centers
Another federally-funded program that had a massive effect on citizen
participation in housing and community development planning in the 1960s was
the United Planning Organization. (UPO). The Economic _Opportunity Act of
1964 established the Conununity Action Program, which was to be carried out
in poverty-stricken neighborhoods "with the maximum feasible participation
of residents of the area and members of the group served... UPO was set up
to plan and. execute the attack on poverty in the Washington Metropolitan
Area. Its "funds came from government, foundations and private businesses,
and its board of directors was dra~n from the city's power structure. There
were no poor people on the board. 11I.2/
UPO established the non-profit Housing Development Corporation to
develop, rehabilitate and manage housing for low income families. Its other
housing efforts were to join with the Health and Welfare Council in funding
the Washington Planning and Housing Association (WPHA) and to provide
leadership to the fair housing drive of the late 1960s and 1970s.
After one year of operation, a reporter wrote, "Civil rights leaders ~nd
liberal churchmen are among the strongest critics of the program, contending
that UPO is too timid to really take on the power structure represented on
its own board, that the poor are not involved in any way that counts, and
that UPO, in one short year, has become another bureaucracy... In 1966, the
Economic Opportunity Act was amended to require .that one-third of the UPO
board represent the poor, yet a participant in the program said, "Even
though the board now legally has to have a third 'representatives of the
poor, • it is n •t the poor ~a? contro 1 the board, who decide what UPO does
with the money it gets. 11- On the other hand, a District government
11
official recently commented: 1've never been so sure that the poor,
because they have a prob 1em, are the best ones to know how to so 1ve the
problem. ·That •s why I believe the professional stnJhe experts, should play
such an important role in designing UPO programs ..._

- 22 -
 Up until the 1960s it was expected that, if anyone should represent the
poor, it should be the educated and, implicitly, the well-to-do. The
programs of the 1960s brought this into question; and in the end, it was the
UPO-funded neighborhood development centers which carefully and deliberately
organized and trained 11 the poor 11 to represent themselves. Ten neighborhood
development centers (NDCs) were established, some of them former settlement
houses such as Southwest Cormnunity House and Friendship House; others were
created to serve particular areas.
In February 1965, UPO contracted with the Washington Urban League to
administer a NDC at 1009 New Jersey Avenue, N.W. to give the Shaw/NW#l
conununit~ a voice 11 independent of RLA or MICCO which was seen as an RLA
front.nU Their program concentr,ted on the approximately one-third of
the 32,000 families· in the are~ 3 who were in deep povert.v.§4/ but all
families were eligible to participate. They began by holding citizen meet-
ings and organizing cormnittees around urgent issues. They organized on a
block-by-block basis. In 1966 they established Shaw People for Urban
Renewal (SPUR) around a call for rent supplements to bridge the wide gap
which a study had shown to exist between the maximum rents in public housing
and the minimum rents in the church-sponsored housing then coming into
being. SPUR also addressed the need to seek citizen representation on the
board of MICCO 11 Which was established by others, primarily non-residents, to
channel citizen participation in Shaw.n85/ Citizen planning meetings
developed fact sheets including federal and RLA information, and questions
for discussion guides to be distributed to the block clubs.
The policy-making body for the New Jersey Avenue NDC was the Neighbor-
hood Advisory Council (NAC) which was incorporated in 1969 as the Center
City Conununity Corporation. NAC was linked to the Shaw community and
city-wide committees or coal it ions through delegates and numerous special-
issue committees. Its staff worked in a complementary structure with the
NAC, its corrmittees and block clubs. The vitality of the block clubs was
crucial -- they were urged to meet in different houses each time, to keep a
number of committees active, to develop positions which would bring home-
owners and renters together, to report back to each other on all activities,
and to keep in close contact with and direct their neighborhood worker.
NAC's announced goals were (1) to provide opportunities for citizen
participation in action programs, (2) to develop competent neighborhood
leadership to build and direct the actions programs, (3) to develop a
permanent organizational base,86/ and (4), which was added in 1970, to
create essential services and economic activities.
In 1968, RLA had shifted from over-all neighborhood renewal· as in
Southwest to a step-by-step approach by specific Action Year Plans, whereby
acquisition, disposition or rehabilitation was limited to the specific area
of that year's plan. Therefore, RLA was not the major source of displace-
ment in Shaw; the major sources were freeway construction, followed in later
years by private reinvestment. Therefore, NAC's success in halting con-
struction of the Center Leg of the Freeway at New York Avenue was a major
achievement in preventing further displacement. NAC was also successful in
getting National Capital Planning Conmission (NCPC) and D.C. council ap-
proval of an air-rights housing development over the freeway and rehabilita-
tion of an apartment building for relocation housing. They formed the first

- 23 -
tenants council in Shaw, which· surveyed buildings in eight of the most
deteriorated b1ock s and used b1ock c 1ub action to bring about negotiated
agreements with the landlords to correct the code violations.
NAC was strongest in mobilizing its grassroots organization against
local targets. It was less successful when it came to bringing about legis-
1ative changes such as refonn of Landlord and Tenant Court or establishment
of a District subsidy or home-purchase assistance program. NAC laid some of
the blame for lack of achievement on its difficulties in dealing with
"Washington's many-headed central government.u87/ Staff and volunteers
re~ognized organizational problems; they often suffered frustration and a
sense of failure in the face of so many broad and intractable problems.
Also, the range of activities, particularly participation in government
planning, created a tremendous demand for leadership which was difficult to
.meet.
Divisive factors in the Shaw community added to their problems. The
plan whicb the community had adopted as a result of the MICCO survey was a
general land use plan: areas of Shaw felt resentment as they then saw other
areas benefiting from individual Action Years. Th~re was skepticism, par-
ticularly from Southwest displacees, that houses when rehabilitated would be
affordable by the fanner residents, and there was suspicion that the likely
beneficiaries of renewal were the black businessmen and realtors, who were
more naturally allied with the downtown business convnunity than with the
poor residents of Shaw.88/
The Model Cities Program
The criticisms of overloaded bureaucracy and ineffective citizen par-
ticipation which were hurled against MICCO and UPO were leveled at a third
federal program of the 1960s-~the D.C. Model Cities Pro9ram, which provided
millions of dollars of federal funds to improve liv1ng conditions and,
specifically, housing in the Model Neighborhood (Shaw, Trinidad, Stanton
Park and Ivy City). The crux of the problem according to the report of the
Conmission on the Organization of D.C. Government was that 11 Responsibility
for the development and implementation of the District's Model Cities pro-
gram has been divided between the citizen's group, the Model Cities Commis-
sion, and the City Demonstration Agency (CDA).n89/
One hundred and forty Model Cities Corrmissioners were elected to ad-
minister a staff (which by 1971, the second year, numbered thirty-nine) to
plan the program and apply for funds. The CDA, meanwhile, had a staff of
approximately sixty-two, and the Commission and CDA each had a .budget of
over $1 million. According to the mayor's order, the citizen commissioners
had 11 power ••• to initiate and review plans, adopt rules and regulations,
and make decisions with respect to plans for the Model City area, .. while the
CDA director 11 is responsible for the overall %~,-dance and direction of the
District of Columbia's Model Cities Program.••-1 Funds which should have
gone into program were absorbed by rival staffs, and planning was slowed by
divided responsibility. The Nixon Administration was attempting to return
the power to the city halls, which the Johnson Administration had trans-
ferred to citizen bodies such as MICCO and the Commission. In 1972, in

- 24 -
response to HUD's urging, the mayor transferred the Commission staff and
much of the decision-making power back to the city government.
Critics charged that citizens were not granted enough responsibility.
Charles Richardson, a commissioner, led a group of dissidents who attacked
the voting procedures of the 1971 Commission elections and alleged that the
Commissi7n was largely a 11 rubber stamp for the paternalistic plans of city
hall. u.!!_
Disputes a1so broke out between the sma 11 non-profit church housing
groups and the large limited dividend corporations. For example, just as
RLA was ready to grant approval to the proposal of the Deliverance Church of
God in Christ, the Commission withdrew its prior support in favor of a
proposal by Cecelia Scott and Associates, which was also backed by MICCO
and Uptown Progress, a business group. Mrs. Scott was a former member of
both the Commission and the MICCO board and was an officer of Uptown
Progress.92/
Mu.ch of the Commission program had to do with human deve 1opment--educa-
tion, training and day care programs. The program established both Economic
Deve 1opment and Housing Deve 1opment Corporations (in spite of the ex peri-
enced UPO-funded HOC under the direct ion of Reverend Channing Phi 11 ips).
The Post reported in April 1973 that the two Model Cities development cor-
poratlons had received $1.6 million up to that time, of which $400,000 had
been spent for administration. Most of EDC's "loans of $25,000 or more
[were made] to firms outside the 800-acre area." HOC, in turn, "ha[d] spent
most of its federal money to buy two fully-occupied standard apartment
buildings" ~1t hough its contract committed it to increasing the area's hous-
ing supply--..;1 The EDC and HOC were later combined into the D.C. Develop-
ment Corporation. It was clear already that the Model Cities Program was to
be terminated and replaced by the Community Development Block Grants
(CDBGs). At the last Commission election in July, 1974, only eighty of the
80,000 to 90,000 residents voted. The citizens had lost interest -- whether
because the "Great Society" program that promised the most perfonned the
least, or because citizen participation had become something of a sham, or
merely because of reduction of funds.
These three major neighborhood development organizations of the 1960s
differed widely in structure and impact. MICCO, which originated from the
neighborhoods, was led by a local black elite, pastors and business people.
The Neighborhood Development Center #1, though staffed by black profes-
sionals and activists, built its strength from the block clubs upward. The
Model Cities Commission was heavily weighted with establishment representa-
tives at least in the beginning. Both MICCO and the Model Cities program
suffered from duplication by the D.C. government of their staffs and
authority. A11 three programs suffered from the tendency of government to
tenninate programs rather than continuing them with appropriate changes as
needed.
MICCO and the churches of Shaw and Cardoza made the largest private
not-for-profit contribution to the housing supply since the limited dividend
corporations of the early part of the century (see Chapter I). The NDCs
established patterns of grassroots organizing that would serve as models for
later efforts (see Chapter VII).

- 25 -
 The federal programs of the 1960s established the principle that program
recipients, poor, relatively unskilled·, tenants as well as homeowners, had
the right to be heard and had to be organized and assisted to that end.
Their influence was potent. In one direction, they led to quasi-
governmental citizen participation structures: the D.C. government•s nine
Service Are a Conmi ttees estab 1i shed to eng age citizens in p1ann i ng service
delivery and capital improvements; the elected Citizens Assembly which
participated in planning the first annual Community Development Block Grant
proposal to be submitted to HUD by the District government; and the thirty-
six e 1ected Advisory Neighborhood Cormni ss ions, which monitor the impact of
government programs and the ever-changing needs of their communities. In
another direction, the programs of the 1960s trained a number of black
administrators, and convinced a number of lower income blacks that there
were resources and avenues of influence, particularly after the advent of
Home Rule in 1974, which could be used to change their housing and community
·conditions for the better.94/

- 26 -
 CHAPTER IV
THE DRIVE FOR EQUAL OPPORTUNITY IN HOUSING, 1958 ONWARD

Citizen efforts to clear the alleys, to develop public housing, to

regulate housing, to renew neighborhoods without displacement, and to play a
significant role in the planning process were made more difficult by racial
discrimination. During the nineteenth century, blacks were fairly widely
dispersed throughout Washington. Whites tended to 1ive adjacent to the
business center, moving north and northwest from there, while blacks in-
habited the periphery, specifically Southwest, and an area around Florida
Avenue and North Capitol Street, Foggy Bottom and the mini-ghettos of the
alleys. However, clusters of middle and upper-class black residents were
scattered among the predominantly white neighborhoods. Starting in the
1880s this changed as "a variety of groups, ranging from white property
owners and neighborhood associations to real estate agents and bankers,
conspired to 1imit certain neighborhoods to white resjdents.n95/ Strict
racially segregated residential patterns were the outcome.
The president of WHA, discussing 11 the iron band which had been placed
around so-called Negro areas 11 , traced it to the beginning of the 20th
century, saying that up to that time 11 Negro families, some belonging to a
very substantial middle-income group, lived in homes scattered throughout
the city... But subsequently, the restrictive covenants developed for
suburban subdivisions began to be adopted in city neighborhoods. In addi-
tion, 11 the Real Estate Board included in its code of ethics a paragraph
which said that no property should be sold, leased or rented to a Negro in a
block that was considered white and in case of doubt, the member of the Real
Estate Board was required to seek advice as to whether the block in question
had been determined to be white or Negro.u96/
In 1942 WHA joined with three civic associations and ten social agencies
in the Emergency Committee on Housing in the Washington Metropolitan Area to
make a study of Negro housing. As they noted, the population of Washington
had remained approximately one-third black throughout the latter nineteenth
and ear 1y twentieth centuries and 11 even the war i nf 1ux had not changed
thi s. 11 However, 11 Areas where Negroes have always 1ived have been greatly
reduced in number and size. Thousands of dwellings have been destroyed in
the past 10 years to make way for Feder a 1 buildings, apartment houses,
parking lots... Only 11 indispensable in-migrant war workers are eligible for
war housing, .. provided by private or public agencies, but provision for the
in-migrant Negro war workers was inadequate: "Of 30,000 dwelling units
provided, only 4000 were for Negroes whereas at least 7,500 should have been
allocated to Negroes according to population." WHA reported that the
Federal War Housing Center's effort to locate rooms for rent to Negroes, by
circulating 26,000 printed requests to churches, schools and organizations,
resulted in about one hundred rooms 11 many of them below minimum standards.
On the other hand, there continues to be a residue of two to three thousand
rooms for rent for white occupancy-- men preferred.u97/
This residential segregation was enforced in the newer neighborhoods and
in the suburbs by racial covenants until in 1948 the Supreme Court decision
in Shelley v. Kraemer declared them unenforceable. Homebuilders, realtors

- 27 -
and red-lining financial insti.tutions voluntarily maintained the segregated
patterns, however. The first organized community challenge came from one of
the Washington neighborhoods.

Neighbors, Inc.
By 1958, certain residents of Manor Park in far Northwest Washington had
become aware that real estate agents were steering whites away and blacks
toward their neighborhood. A resident, Marvin H. Caplan, called a neighbor-
hood meeting to discuss what was happening and to consider what counter
moves should be taken. With the aid of a substantial Meyer Foundation
grant, they fanned Neighbors, Inc. (NI), and hired Margery Ware as their
executive director.
Concluding that a larger area was needed to maintain a racially inte-
grated convnunity, they extended Nl to encompass the Brightwood, Brightwood
Park, Shepherd Park and Takoma neighborhoods, 250 city blocks in all. They
committed themselves to organize block by block to improve the community and
counter the blockbusting tactics of the speculators and realtors, and to
enlist the churches, synagogues, businesses an.d other organizations in
neighborhood stabilization. This effort was slow and arduous; to quote a
Post article of January 1962, 11 Most religious institutions have not busied
themselves with the factors behind the flight of their congregations. Nor
have they particularly welcomed Negroes. Citizens associations have held
back through their policy of white-only membership. Businessmen now seem to
be realizing that neighborhood health means good business. 11
Neighbors, Inc.'s early efforts concentrated on encouraging whites to
stay and to move into the neighborhood and on attracting middle class
blacks, but these integration efforts tended to degenerate into arguments
about quotas and exclusion. Emphasis shifted to building a good community,
one in which whites and blacks would wish to live. Committees on zoning and
land use, recreation, education, newsletter, etc., were established with
such serious intent that "people really apprenticed to become active in the
organization." Neighbors, Inc. extended its staff through internships and
conducted art/book festivals which netted $12,000-15,000 annually to supple-
ment their membership dues and a three-year Taconic Foundation grant.98/
In the early years they were unable to stop the discriminatory activi-
ties of the real estate industry but countered them with adverse publicity.
Each month they would select a flagrant example of profiteering on sales to
black families from the Lusk Directory and publicize it. They also engaged
in a successful 18-month struggle to force FHA to appraise housing in the
neighborhood for insurance purposes.
By 1982, Neighbors, Inc. was an upper middle income community where,
according to residents interviewed,99/ racial balance or imbalance was no
longer of particular concern. This was true in spite of the pronounced
demographic shift which had occurred over the some twenty years of NI 's
existence: a 23 percent black residential area in 1960 had become 83
percent black by the time of the 1980 Census. Rather than this being seen
as a sign of racial "tipping," expensive restoration of some of the large
single family housing by upper incom~ whites was seen as a possible exten-
sion of inner-city gentrification.lOOt

- 28-
 Neighbors, Inc.'s integration model was so successful that it was
adopted by a number of communities throughout the country. The residents of
NI tended to be affluent and highly skilled, and their success in maintain-
ing a bi-racial residential neighborhood stemmed from the prevalence of
homeownership, the desirability of the neighborhood and its relative isola-
tion, as well as the strong leadership provided by individuals.
The Fair Housing Associations
In the 1960s the need became acute to open up the suburbs of Washington
in order to cope with the growing black middle class demand for housing.
The Suburban Maryland Fair Housing Association (SMFH) was established in
1962 with the financial backing of two Quakers, David Scull and Joe Eise,
and guidance from the Neighbors, Inc. staff.
The association operated in relatively conservative fashion by inducing
sympathetic individuals, who were planning to sell, to place their homes on
an 11 0pen Market 11 list. Sr-FH tried to identify black families who wanted to
move. A great de a1 of preparatory work and support after the move was
needed, but the SMFH volunteers had the leisure, means and power in the com-
munity to make it work. There were problems, however, with their approach:
it was very low key; it moved slowly and conservatively, placing individual
black families in scatter fashion with the idea of minimizing opposition;
and it was in practice limited to Montgomery County.
In April 1961, the District commissioners had held hearings on means to
end racial and religious discrimination in housing. Forty groups and indi-
viduals testified as to the need for action due to the immense black dis-
placement brought on by urban renewal and other programs, and the inadequacy
of the relocation stock. The Washington Planning and Housing Association
(WPHA) called on the commissioners to pass a tough anti-discrimination
ordinance which would revoke the licenses of builders and realtors guilty of
discriminatory marketing and would prohibit registration of any title to
property carrying a restrictive covenant. They also urged the president to
issue an executive order ending the discrimination in marketing, leasing and
occupancy of all Federally-assi~Oi~ housing as reconunended by the Civil
Rights Conmission's 1961 Report.- In November, twenty civic, religious
and political groups, including WPHA, protested RLA's awarding a development
lease in Southwest to the Tiber Island Corporation, in which the W.C. &A.N.
Miller Co. was a half-owner, on grounds that the Miller firm retained
restrictive covenants and 11 a veto power 11 over prospective purchasers in its
subdivisions. The Miller f 1rm subsequently withdrew as a stockholder in the
2
Tiber Island Corporation._lO_:t
By 1963 the District and Montgomery County had issued fair housing
ordinances, and, when President Kennedy signed Executive Order 1106-3 dis-
allowing discrimination in FHA-insured housing, the VA followed suit. The
opportunity for large scale change was present. To broaden the fair housing
effort throughout the metropolitan area, a central office was needed to
coordinate the effort. The Friends Service Committee responded by opening a
District office with the aid of a Meyer Foundation grant and with backing
from Neigh~B§$, Inc. and the National Capital Clearing House of Neighborhood
Democracy._/ In 1964 James Harvey became the director.

- 29 -
 Meanwhile, two activists from Neighbors Inc., Helen Chevalier and Carol
Rende, concluded that unless desegregation moved more rapidly in the
suburbs, black population pressure within the city would inundate Neighbors
Inc. and make it impossible to maintain an integrated community. SMFH would
not provide them with the uopen Market lists but James Harvey did, and they
11

mimeographed thousands of copies which they distributed wherever they

thought they might reach the black community. The National Association of
Real Estate Brokers, the black realists as distinct from the white realtors,
were very helpful as was an infonmal network which passed the lists on.
With the aid of the Friends office and Neighbors, Inc., Fair Housing
associations were organized in Northern Virginia, Montgomery and Prince
Georges Counties and in the District, in Northwest and Chevy Chase. In 1964
the D.C. neighborhood groups, WPHA, CORE and the ·Urban League joined in
~rging the D.C. government to improve the administration and enforcement of
the D.C. Fair Housing regulations. They complained that the Human Relations
Council limited itself to conciliation· efforts, and, where they did refer a
· case to the corporation counse 1, the counse 1 generally refus·ed to prose-
cute. The Real Estate Commission, they alleged, w1s ;qually negligent in
checking discriminatory practices by their lice.nsees •. 04
In 1966 the Friends office carried out a Fair Housing Pledge Drive. The
Catholic Archbishop, at Jim Harvey's urging, decreed that all masses on the
Sunday of the drive would be concerned with fair housing. Although the
Methodists, Universalists, Unitarians, synagogues and other churches and
hundreds of volunteers were working on the drive, this was the first en-
dorsement by such a major institution.
By 1968 the Friends decided their catalyst function had been fulfilled.
They closed their D.C. office, turning their files and equipment over to
representatives of the seven volunteer fair housing groups who formed an
area-wide coordinating conmittee, the Fair Housing Council. The council
found, however, that depending on organizational representatives was
unwieldly. It was unable to raise funds and the group disintegrated.
The national climate was changing. The federal Fair Housing Act was
pas sed in Apri 1 of 1968 and in June, in Jones v. Ma~er Co. , the Supreme
Court reaffirmed the 1866 Civil Rights Act wh1ch guaran eed blacks the right
to inherit, purchase and sell real and personal property. The Suburban
Director of UPO, Alan McSurely, took the lead in fonning the Action Coor-
dinating Committee to End Segregation in the Suburbs (ACCESS). ACCESS
targeted Carl Freeman, a major bui 1der of segregated deve 1opments in Mont-
gomery, Fairfax and Prince Georges counties and fonned picket 1 ines at his
building sites nearly every weekend. The real estate industry bowed to
reality by deciding to open up certain suburban neighborhoods.
Housing Opportunities Councill05/
In 1969 volunteers from the Fair Housing Council, recogn1z1ng that it
took a staffed organization to maintain momentum, received a 1arge grant
from the Ford Foundation to organize the Housing Opportunities Council (HOC)
of Metropo 1it an Washington. Jim Harvey, who had returned to the Friends
Service Committee in Philadelphia, was hired as the new executive director,
and Roy Maurer and Carol .Rende came on as staff.

- 30 -
 Neighbors, Inc. and the American Veterans Committee had begun a drive in
1959 against racial designations and discriminatory advertising in the news-
papers. HOC interested the local ACLU office in an effort to enforce the
provisions on non-discriminatory advertising in the federal Fair Housing
Act. The result was a series of suits against builders for discriminatory
advert ising and an educational campaign aimed at the builders, realtors and
HUD to con vi nee them that 1ogos and mode 1s used in advertising had an
implicit discriminatory effect. HOC carried through a pilot advertising
monitoring project and primarily as a result of that effort, HUD issued
Advertising Guidelines for Fair Housing in 1972. HOC then began an inten-
sive three-year monitoring effort which culminated in a report, Fair
Housing: Unfair Advertising, a study of newspaper dis)l~ advertising for
new sales housing in metroeol1tan Washington, D.C., 97 -1975, published
under the aegis of MWPHA, w1th which HOC merged in late 1975. The report
found that 11 models in ads for new primary sales housing in the Washington
metropolitan area • • • are used illegally nearly all the time. Virtually
every ad that used models illegally used all white models... This 11 had the
effect of steering white buyers to the advertised developments and of steer-
ing minority buyers away from them. In a few· cases only minority models
were used which had the effect of signa 11 i ng the ..P-Ub 1i c that the housing
being offered was intended for the minority market.uT06/
MWPHA used its access to pro-bono services from leading law firms to
defend a number of .victims of discrimination. In 1976 the association
joined as co-plaintiff with a black realtor and her client, and with the
assistance of the Washington Lawyers' Connnittee for Civil Rights Under Law
won a $12,500 cash settlement against the D'Amencourt Real Estate Company
for discrimination in the sale of a home in a high-priced Northwest neigh-
borhood. This was a breakthrough because of the size of the settlement and
because it required affinmative action by the firm to cooperate with
minority brokers in housing sales. This helPed to open the larger housing
market to minority brokers and homeseekers.lQZ/
Other techniques used by MWPHA in support of fair housing included
frequent testimony, such as that which contributed to amendment of the D.C.
Human Rights Law to protect families with children, or to the revision of
the Real Estate Licensure Act to direct the Real Estate Corrmission to
penalize illegal fair housing acts as they do other illegal actions. The
association also assisted complainants before the D.C. Office of Human
Rights, organized testers to pro vi de evidence of discriminatory treatment,
and produced manuals and ran training sessions for the Office of Human
Rights and for private realty or property management finms.
The bulk of the fair housing effort has been on behalf of minorities
with the ability to pay competitive market prices. MWPHA also fought to
increase the supply of low and moderate income, subsidized housing in the
suburbs, and to preserve moderate-income garden apartments such as the
Falkland in Silver Spring and Colonial Terrace in Arlington so that, when
federal or private installations moved to the suburbs, black low income
employees could follow their jobs. The association drafted moderate-price-
dwelling-unit legislation for Montgomery County and Fairfax, subsequently
adopted, which provided that a given percentage of all new residential
development be priced for low and moderate income. MWPHA also developed the

- 31 -
"fair share" concept adopted by tlle Metropolitan Area Council of Governments
in 1972, which committed the participating jurisdictions to take their fair
share of low income housing.
The fair housing struggle involved almost the entire typology of citizen
housing groups: the neighborhood organizations, such as Neighbors, Inc.
which moved from a housing focus to a multi-issue focus to maintain its
stability; the socially motivated, well-to-do volunteers of SMFH with their
carefully delineated aims; the Friends as temporary catalyst providing
funds, headquarters and staff to service the local organizations; ACCESS, a
short-lived street action group with a specific target; the failed coalition
effort of the Fair Housing Counc i 1; and the two we 11 estab 1i shed, tech-
nically staffed, metropolitan-wide support groups, HOC and MWPHA, with their
ability to carry through extensive and influential studies and to call on
powerful legal assistance. Each of them made signal contributions but it
can be surmised that if first the Friends, then HOC and MWPHA, had not been
there, fair housing efforts would have· been weaker and more localized. The
three organizations provided direction, research, communication and meeting
facilities, and a crucial sense of continuity. The significant role of
foundation seed money is also evident because only. the most cohesive and
energetic neighborhood associations were able to raise substantial funds
through their own efforts.

- 32 -
 CHAPTER V
PUBLIC HOUSING TENANTS ORGANIZE, 1965-1980

James Banks, RLA director of relocation during Southwest Urban Renewal,

describes what occurred during the 1950s: 5,514 families were moved out of
Southwest, of which 1,506 were moved to public housing, approximately 27
percent to Northeast and 46 percent to Southeast. Yet NCHA already had a
waiting list of over 4,500 families~ The impact of Southwest reloca-
tion necessitated a change in NCHA tenant selection procedures and the
addition to the NCHA population of a number of disoriented families, some
with severe health problems. Prior to that time, tenant selection had been
based on family visitation, credit and other checks and required proof of
marriage. Female-headed families were excluded 109/ After that time,
NCHA took anyone eligible and acceptance was determined only by income and
family size, .and often not even the latter. In addition, NCHA's operating
costs began to exceed rental income and conditions deteriorated rapidly. A
rent increase was proposed, and this combined with the increase in activism
nation-wide and the development of conununity organizing to start a process
that would seek to transfonm public housing maintenance and management.
Rent Strike as Response to the Public Housing Crisis
In the early 1960s, Walter Washington was NCHA property manager in
Southwest. According to Phyllis Martin, a staff member of Southwest
Conrnunity House, he 11 Would walk that property, talk to them tenants. He was
good and the people respected him. That's why when we found out that he was
appointed for this job as director of NCHA, we went to him. 11 In 1966 two
busloads of approximately sixty residents went to meet with him in their
first coordinated city-wide attempt to address the maintenance problems they
faced. She describes the outcome:
And we continued going down there, and the man, he was a
politician. He'd always come out as a winner. Somebody
would raise their hand about the refrigerator, then he
would go into all the details about where the refrigera-
tor came from and how much it cost and blah, blah,
blah--and the meeting was taken up with people with their
individual problems. And it was new to us so we didn't
know. So we thought we were getting somewhere. We
weren't. 110/
Then in 1968, two VISTA volunteers began 11 trying to teach the people how
to take care of their units ••• the places were so terrible, that they
decided to call tenants together, just to talk about it. I don't know who
was the first one to say, 'Let's go on a rent strike. • But it c&me up in
the meeting. And it was about twenty-five of us start it.u_ll_l/ Martin
was one of the original organizers. Later this group was expanded to become
the City-wide Rent Strike Committee. They demanded that NCHA negotiate with
the residents in order to end the strike, and that it set up a resident
advisory counci 1, a grievance procedure, and tenants councils in the indi-
vidual properties. Martin recalled that the strike effort was aided by able
and continuous leadership. She described Henman Kitchens of the Friendship
House staff

- 33 -
 [He] was our leader--one of the best community organizers
I have seen in my life • • • • Herman trained us in all
the policies of pub 1i c housing • • • when he tal ked
about rna i ntenance problems, he set up a b1ackboard and
broke down the administration from the mayor all the way
down to the property managers. And different housing
code violations, you know, which come in numbers. He
explained how to fill out the right type of forms, how to
follow up on their fonns. Not only was he a community
leader, but he was a community teacher. You will not get
the citizens• participation in public housing unless you
educate the people about it.
What happened--when Hennan Kitchens testified [for the
rent strikers], Mayor Washington got on Sterling Tucker,
cha innan of the city counci 1. Sterling Tucker got on
Pete Ward--as the chairman of the Board of Friendship
House [and they] fired Herman Kitchens. We were just
moving so fast. We never looked back to say, 11 Who will
we take to be our 1eader in case something happens to
Herman Kitchens. 11 Then we went to Neighborhood Leg a 1
Services for advice and Willie Cook [the director] said,
11
1n order for you to have a good rent strike, you must
put your money in escrow. 11 And every meeting they was
continually telling us "Please put your money away... But
some of the peoDle, when we lost Herman Kitchens, a lot
of us panicked.~/
The strikers encountered two prob 1ems: the 1ack of education and the
contradictory advice given to them. On the one hand, Neighborhood Legal
Services was urging that the rent be put in escrow; on the other, the repre-
sentative of the National Tenants Organization said not to put it in escrow
because, a 11 eged ly, he argued, that poor peop 1e shou 1d not have to pay for
housing~ Kimi Gray, head of the NCHA advisory council, remembers
other leaders encouraging people not to pay rent:
Like I remember very clearly this Reverend--[!] do not
wish to call his name--when we had a meeting at Hines
Junior High--1 1 11 never forget it, cause that was before
Thanksgiving--and the Reverend on the stage--said, 11 Let's
pray." And as he said his prayer, he reached his hands
up and pointed to heaven and said, 11 Let everybody take
all the money you•re saving in rent. Buy big turkeys.
Feed your family. At Christmastime, buy all the clothes
you want and need. Fix your homes up. 11 Peop 1e were
1eavi ng there happy that night. They thought that was
God •s word to go spend a11 their rent money. And they
did. And those were the people that were evicted.l14/
The strike ended in 1971 when agreements were reached between management
and tenants. A new lease and grievance procedures were adopted, and the
National Capitol Housing Advisory Board was established. That 33-member
body was composed of elected members from each of the public housing tenant

- 34 -
councils and ten at-large appointees. According to Gray the major gain of
the strike was that "It made the administrative staff [of NCHA] realize that
they had to develop a working relationship with the residents so, therefore,
the city-wide Board began to gain some respect.nll5/
The terms of the sett 1ement of the strike posed prob 1ems for both the
residents and the city government. The residents were concerned about the
conditions of their units, which ironically declined because of the lack of
rent collections, and NCHA was concerned about collecting rent and estab-
lishing the principle that everyone had to pay.
In June 1971 the courts returned a judgment against eight hundred fami-
lies for non-payment of rent. According to Martin, "those that put their
money in escrow--went to the rent offices and made an agreement. And
because of the poor condition of the units, some of them [were] able to pay
forty percent, fifty percent, [or] sixty percent of their back rent." They
were able to pay in installments, but NCHA was adamant on the subject of the
eight hundred families and prepared to evict them.
The evictions became a source of controversy on the newly created
advisory board. Martin was an original member but later resigned 11 because
they were not dealing with • • • the maintenance problems of National
Capital Housing. They were dealing with people that was on the rent
strike... The advisory board, she said, felt that 11 if they don't have their
money, throw them in the street. • • • So I felt that, you want to put
hundreds of people out in the street that have families and not dealing with
what was the problem ••• what we can do to help, then I have problems with
you. So I cut loose, and came back on the local level. The only one that
came up with the best solution to deal with the problem is Jim Speight [then
Director of Southeast House] •cause he started the Rent-a-than [which
collected something in the order of $28,000]. And those that had the large
families, even though some of them was riding on the coat tail of the rent
strikers, we faid that [back] rent and stopped them from putting people in
the streets."~/
Opinion is divided on the long-run achievements of the strike. "Since
1970, all over the city, tenants councils had meetings, but very little
changed, 11 says Martin, who insists there was a "lack of participation and
lack of results." The major issue facing residents, she says, was and
remains maintenance. Gray, who joined the advisory board in 1972, saw it as
a mechanism whereby NCHA coopted the tenant leadership. A key complaint she
had was that a system of favoritism developed. Tenants were using their
role on the advisory board to move out of the large projects into scattered-
site public housing. Also, property managers directed the more active
tenants toward scattered-site housing, thus creaming off the resident
leadership. Favored residents were also given jobs working for NCHA.--11__7/
"We had major problems at each development," Gray noted:
and we'd bring our major maintenance problems to the
city-wide Board level and they would not be resolved.
Instead, they would be put aside. We did not see
the Executive Council actually negotiating with the

- 35 -
 administrative staff of -the Housing Authority to assist
the residents in eliminating the major maintenance prob-
lem~1

According to Gray, to solve the problems a more individual-property-oriented

board was needed. She said:

• • • we had to totally reprogram the thinking of the

fo 1k at the advisory board 1eve 1, because my persona 1
observation was that once they entered 1170 M Street,
N.W., caught the elevator to the sixth floor, [they
stepped] out there on the plantation. 119/
In the mid-1970s, the advisory board began to work more directly with
residents. After the election of Gray to the chair of the Advisory Board in
1976, the Board began to hold its meetings at the property level, rotating
the meeting p1aces so that more residents cou 1d become i nvo 1ved and so that
Board members would not forget that they were there to serve the residents.
The Board was expanded to sixty-three members with one representative
elected from each property plus ten public housing residents appointed
at-large. It also assumed a much larger role in ·monitoring maintenance
work, selecting materials and participating in architectural design deci-
sions.120/

Resident Control and Responsibility

The issue of control, or self-management, had long been a major concern
of the public housing tenants. They had worked to get resident managers but
when they got'these managers they were NCHA appointees not directly respon-
sible to the residents. Finally, in 1982, Kenilworth Courts became a
resident-management corporation. Kenilworth with its 464 units had been a
public housing showcase when constructed in 1959; in WHA's words 11 Well de-
signed, with a handsome C011111Unity building • • • rooms for var~fYS activi-
ties, including an auditorium and a demonstration kitchen ..._ / By the
late 1970s, the pipes were rotting, the roof leaking, the ground had eroded
and, in general, the overcrowded buildings were in dilapidated condition.
Now, the self-management corporation receives an annual budget from Property
Management Administration (PMA), it collects rents efficiently, it has a
management staff made up of residents, and they determine residents selec-
tion and other policies.
Gray feels that the Kenilworth Resident Program provides one model for
other public housing residents around the city: 11 We've got to make this
thing work so other residents will understand that they can do it also. It
can work. And it will provide better living conditions... According to
Gray, resident responsibility goes beyond the physical and financial
aspects. She notes that 11 when you deal with public housing, it's not just
bricks and mortar. [You've] got to deal with the whole family... Dealing
with the whole family means making people responsible for their actions,
giving people control over their destinies, providing jobs, education and
training--instilling a sense of pride and self-worth.

- 36 -
 As public housing tenants gain greater control over their physical
environment, they inevitably try to control their social environment, and
this leads to demands for better resident screening. Public housing resi-
dents want it known, according to Gray, 11 that public housing is not the last
resort, .. that public housing is not 11 a dumping ground. We are not going to
a 11 ow just anyone to move on our property and cant i nue to destroy [it].
Because this is our home. These are our homes ...
• • • before you can move on our property, we check you
out. We come to where you 1i ve • • • [and] inspect how
you keep your unit where you presently 1ive. • • • We
talk to your neighbors to find out what type of neighbor
[you are]. We go to the school to check [whether] you
send your child to school. • • • We go to your landlord
to find out what ••• your rent payment [is]. 122/
Cont;nu;ng Issues of Controversy in Public Housing
Some public housing leaders take a different view of tenant responsi-
bility from that of Gray. They have organized rent strikes on the grounds
that PMA leases have a provision guaranteeing habitability. As their units
are in violation of code, they argue that they are not obligated to pay
rent. Gray takes the position that no resident who is in arrears should be
eligible for election to the board on the grounds that board members should
be models for others;· the outspoken rent-protesters consider that she has
turned their leadership ability against them by using it to deny them posi-
tions on the board.l23l
A Joint ANC-Public Housing Hearing in Southwest in May 1982, which
evolved originally around the lack of heat and hot water in some Southwest
properties during the unusually harsh winter, ai·red a number of city-wide
public housing concerns. ANCs 2-0, 5-B and 6-B and public housing tenant
council leaders and residents were joined by lawyers from NLS and the
Washington Lawyers Conunittee for Civil Rights Under Law, WISH, the S.E.
Vicariate Cluster and MWPHA. There was general dissatisfaction with PMA--
its unresponsiveness · to the official grievance procedure, its resident
transfer policy, its utility allowance policy, etc. To Gray some of these
groups like WISH 11 don•t resolve any problems, just keep unnecessary chaos
going and we don•t see the need of them... But to others, that 11 chaos 11 may
be seen as the voices of the residents which must be heard as clearly as
those of favored representatives like Gray.
It is too soon to judge whether the Kenilworth Courts mode 1 can be
adopted widely in the public housing properties. The very fact that it
exists may inspire others to emulate it, or to compete with it by developing
a successful cooperative or alternative model. In the thirteen years since
the rent strike, although physical improvement of the properties has been
agonizingly slow, the improvement in the leadership and organizational
skills of many of the tenants has been remarkable. If PMA can learn to
utilize its one abundant resource, its residents, more effectively in
controlling their own living conditions, it may compensate for much of its
perennial shortage .of funds.

- 37 -
 CHAPTER VI
THE TENANTS' RIGHTS STRUGGLE, 1964-1974

Historically tenants in privately owned buildings have struggled with

landlords over the quality of housing, the costs and profits associated with
housing and the ownership and control of housing. They have fought against
abandonment and the negative effects of urban renewal. In the District, the
tenants• rights struggle has been particularly important because the city
has been and continues to be a city of renters. Over sixty percent of resi-
dents since 1940 have 1ived in rental property. Thus, tenant issues--the
issues of maintenance, price, control and supply--become, fundamentally and
necessarily, city-wide issues.

The tenants• struggle has gone through a number of phases. From 1955 to
1964 there was mounting conflict over the enforcement of the new housing
code. Between 1964-1974, dissatisfied with the lack of progress, tenants
turned to direct action and a battle erupted as rent strikes spread across
the city. With the assistance of various organizations, tenant groups
fought landlords in the courts and before the o.c~ Council. And as infla-
tion increased after the mid-1960s, rising rents led to a demand for
controls on rents and on cooperative and condominium conversions. By 1974,
tenant victories began to multiply: a local rent control law with expanded
tenant protections, a major judicial decision which established the lease as
a contract, and the development of city-wide organizing. (See study of
Housing Regulation.)
Mounting Conflict over the Housing Code
The year 1955--the year the District adopted its first housing code--
marked a new beginning in the continuous conflict between landlords and
tenants. The code became the benchmark for what the conununity defined as
safe, decent and sanitary housing. It was adopted at a time when rental
housing markets were being disrupted by the economic decline of central
cities and the rise of suburbia, and, in the District, the massive displace-
ment of b1ack residents due to urban renew a 1 and freeway construction.
11
Blockbul~!ng, 11 inner-city disinvestment, and slum speculation were
rampant.-' The attack on slums was accompanied by the spread of housing
deterioration and blight throughout the city.
A Washington Post editorial observed in 1965:
Slums can be eliminated from the District of Columbia
11

within the next 10 years, .. James W. Rouse and Nathaniel

s. Keith wrote in a famous call to action just 10 years
ago. But the slums are still with us. They are not
everywhere the same slums, but they are noisome enough,
and destructive to the human spirit.
Washington's housing is better physically than it was in
1955, but the degree of overcrowding appears to be more
serious. We have razed some of the city's most squalid
warrens in this decade, but only at the cost of reducing

- 38 -
 the number of homes available to families of average
income. 125/

That same year, the Ad Hoc Committee on the Housing Crisis, made up of
representatives of sixty-one civic, religious and civil rights organiza-
tions, sponsored a tour ranging through the near Northwest and Cardozo areas
to highlight the critical shortage of housing in the District, 126/ and UPO
issued a report--based on a questionnaire answered by some 14,000 house-
holds--stating that "Dilapidation, overcrowding, roaches and rats [were] a
part of everyday life in Washington's poverty areas • • • • ul27/

The Girard Street Project

The Girard Street Project of All Souls Unitarian Church at 16th and
Harvard Streets, N.W. emerged in this growing crisis atmosphere. In 1962,
the church's Social Welfare Committee started 11 to help the residents on
Girard Street to find ways in which they themselves could become involved in
bettering their lives through community effort," since it "was clear that no
stopgap measures of temporary relief or charity could possibly answer the
basic need of this community of yQung adults burdened by lack of education
and emp1oyment apport unities. ~~~ The Conmi t tee camp 1a i ned that housing
on Girard Street was poor despite the housing code because legal procedures
allowed landlords to delay compliance and because courts were reluctant to
impose criminal penalties on property owners. Furthermore, the landlord had
a common law right to evict the tenant for any or no reason, and enforcement
of the housing code could mean displacement of families with no place to
go. 129/

These problems were particularly evident in the large and spacious

apartments at 1414 Girard Street. In 1962, 11 Each of the nine units con-
tained five rooms. The rent was cheap--$90 a month." However, these
characteristics overshadowed the abhorrent condition of
the apartments. • • • [A] trash heap rep 1aced what used
to be a front yard, while the building's interior con-
formed to every stereotype associated with the urban
slum--rat and roach infestation. Tenants could not cope
~ith l~b'ster crumbling down from the walls and ceil-·
lngs._
In the previous fall a torrential rain
and a leaking roof had caused a weak ceiling to give way,
flooding three out of [Karen Schuler's] five rooms. Raw·
electrical wires and rat holes were exposed by a void
fonmed by fallen chunks of plaster. 131/

Schuler, dissatisfied with the conditions of the building, wanted to move.

However, she was limited by her income--$215 a month--and the need to house
her five children, so she had to stay. She began to withhold her rent in
November 1963. On January 7, 1964, Schu 1er •s 1andl ord--Franci s X. Berry--
"succef~~~lly sought an order to evict Mrs. Schuler for non-payment of
rent ..._ Her son solicited the help of the Non-Violent A~tion Group, a

- 39 -
Howard University student organization. The group s·uggested that Mrs.
Schuler adopt the strategy

of a recent case in New York where a judge had arranged

an agreement after a dispute between [a] slum landlord
and tenants who refused to pay rent unt i 1 the heating
system was repaired. • • • The judge's solution was for
the tenants to pay rent into an escrow account which was
available to the landlord on the condition that the mQney
be designated solely for the repair of the building.~/
Mrs. Schuler did. First the group staged a sit-in in Mrs. Schuler's apart-
ment preventing marshals from carrying out the eviction. Then they coaxed
the other eight families to withhold their rents. ·
The Battle Erupts, 1964-1968
With the nine families withholding their rent, the District's first rent
strike began and the tenants• struggle moved to direct action. "The
students • next step was to persuade a Howard _Law Schoo 1 Professor, Herbert
0. Reid, to defend Mrs. Schuler... The Landlord and Tenant Court hearing
occurred on January 27, 1964 in
a packed courtroom consisting of news reporters, members
of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, the
parent organization of the Non-Violent Action Group,
representatives of the Metropolitan Washington Planning
and· Housing Associ at ion (whose interest it was to coor-
dinate new means to implement the Ho.u.sipg Codes) and
other interested groups and individuals. 134/
The 1andl ord •s 1awyer argued what were then the accepted 1ega1 pri n-
ciples--the condition of the apartment was irrelevant to the payment of
rent, the interior of the apartment was the responsibility of the tenant and
not the landlord, and the apa~ment was habitable, evidenced by Mrs.
Schuler's continued residence there~
Reid argued that the condition of the building violated the housing
code, that a contract in violation of housing code was an illegal contract,
and that, therefore, the 1andlo~~ had forfeited his claim to rent with his
6/
failure to comply with the code.___
The tenants lost their case and were ultimately evicted; however, the
arguments made by the lawyers for both sides would define the nature of the
tenants• struggle in the future. "The empty apartment building at 1414
Girard Street, N.W.," read an editorial one year later, uis like any other
slum rat-infested dwelling which has crippled the spirits of those doomed by
poverty to live under untenable conditions.- •• the building is a symbol of
our 1andlord-ori ented society because it once was the embattled site where
outraged tenants made a detennined and last ditch stand agai~J j>light and
7
payment of overpriced rent for substandard housing conditions."---

- 40 -
 Still seeking to improve housing conditions on Girard Street, All Souls
Unitarian Church interested Better Homes, Inc.--a non-profit housing cor-
poration--in the now empty Girard Street property and extended a loan to the
organization to purchase and renovate two buildings for low-rent housing in
the area. 138/ The responsibilities of the project were to be divided
between Better Homes and the Girard Street Association. 11 Better Homes
[would] handle affairs dealing with financing, accounting and major renova-
tions. The Association [would] select tenants, collect rents, and supervise
the administration of the building.ul39/
Clifton Terrace Rent Strike
In 1968, the rent strike idea spread to a building with a long history
of troubles. As early as 1964, the owner of Clifton Terrace had received
citations for 1200 housing code violations. The landlord constantly avoided
prosecution by entering into negotiations with community groups over the
sale of the building. The landlord's continual insistence on a price that
was viewed by FHA as excessive, massive community pressure, and an increas-
ing public outcry over conditions in the building created an atmosphere that
allowed tenants to publicly air their grievances. Fifteen tenants 11 Stormed
to the District Building and filed formal complaints against the landlord
for the condition of their apartments... They successfully forced the D.C.
corporation counsel to prosecute the landlord for the code violations. The
judge handed down a s.entence of sixty days. 11 Even the court officials were
shocked, unable to recollect when such a term had previously been given to a
landlord for housing code violations.ul40/
The tenants went on a rent strike on the grounds that conditions in the
buildings did not justify the collection of rent. They lost in Landlord-
Tenant Court, but their case was heard on appeal in 1970. Judge J. Skelly
Wright in the U.S. Court of Appeals reversed the Landlord-Tenant Court rul-
ing which had granted the landlord the right to evict one of the strikers,
Mrs. Javins. The judge ruled that there was an 11 i1J1plied warranty of habita-
bility.. in a lease governing rental property~/ thereby marking an his-
toric step forward in landlord-tenant law. \See study of Housing Regula-
tion, Chapter IV.)
Trenton Terrace Rent Strike
In June 1967, tenants at Trenton Terrace in Southeast began organizing
after the management company announced that rents were to be increased.
Alvin Bryant, one of Southeast Washington's first tenant organizers recalled
the situation as follows:
I was outraged at the increase. Conditions at Trenton
Terrace were so bad that there seemed to be no justifica-
tion for higher rents. The fact was that we had gone
without heat or hot water · a11 winter and a 1ot of the
tenants were ..Pretty irate about them raising the rent in
the spring.~
Bryant and some of his neighbors decided to organize their fellow
tenants. They wrote a manifesto and called a meeting which drew several

- 41 -
hundred. Bryant was later elected president, and the Tenant Council gained
the support of about one-third of the families. 143/

First, the council decided to withhold the amount of the rent increase.
In September of 1967, the management sued the tenants, but the owners agreed
to meet with the council. At that meeting "the owners agreed to collect the
rent incr~pse and set the additional funds aside to pay for needed re-
pairs."-!.~/ The tenants and landlord "negotiated over the pace and kinds
of repairs to be made.•• Tenants became frustrated about the types and pace
of the repairs and in April 1968 decided to withhold all rent 11 until the
complex was made 1ivable again." After additional negotiations the tenants
and landlord were able to work out an agreement for repairs.

The Landlord-Tenant Wars, 1968-1974

By the late 1960s, rent strikes had become a widely used weapon to force
landlords to maintain their property. Tenants became increasingly militant,
striking at the landlord where damage could be most severe--the cash flow of
the bui 1d i ng •

In 1965, tenants at 1400 Fainnont Street, N.W., began a rent strike

protesting maintenance conditions and. escalating rents. According to one
resident, 11 the building has changed ownership about three times in the past
four years with resulting rent hikes • • • three-bedroom apartments, the
1argest units, which rented for $125 a year ago, are now ~~,· ced at $179.50
and proportionate increases occurred in smaller units.••_ 1 1 In November
of that year, the United Planning Organization (UPO) and the Church Street
Community Club organized a picket march to protest the retaliatory evictions
of two tenants who were active protestors of the housing conditions of 1527
Church Street, N.W. Eight families (forty-five tenants) were given notice
to vacate. The landlord claimed fee
1 /
vacate notices were being given so that
the building could be renovated. _____
In 1968, the Fairview Tenant Council--a group representing a fifteen-
building complex in the 700 block of Brandywine Street, S.E.--held a rent
strike, and Mrs. Lena Robinson, a 24-year-old Northwest Washington welfare
client refused to pay her $100 a month rent at 1716 Eighth Street, N.W.
Mrs. Robinson, a mother of four children who 1ived on $190 a month welfare
stipend, argued that the house had serious code violations of which the
realty company was aware, and that she had not undersf~9~ the contract. A
lower court upheld her and denied the eviction attempt.-
In 1969, residents of the Carrolsburg Square apartment complex demon-
strated against thirty-two ~ercent rent hikes, and over 150 tenants refused
to pay the rent increases.:..!!!!!! Also in that year, residents in the 400
block of M Street, N.W., supported by NLS and NDC #1, staged a rent strike
over the problems of maintenance and security~
In that same year, Post columnist William Raspberry noted that middle
class blacks were becoming more militant:
Tenant councils, which used to be the sole property of
slum dwellers and public housing tenants, have sprung up

- 42 -
 in middle-income' apartment houses from the far Southwest
to upper 16th Street and Rock Creek Park. 150/
These middle-class black tenant unions were formed 11 in buildings that were
formerly all-white. 11 Blacks in these buildings tell the same story: 11 They
moved in because the buildings were well cared for, the services e\ore than
adequate and the management responsive to tenants • concerns ..._ 1 / How-
ever, as the buildings became increasingly black, the services grew increas-
ingly worse and the rent mounted.152/
As Raspberry noted, "the strife is becoming increasingly general, taking
in not only substandard buildings that house the poor but the old and sub-
stantia 1 apartments of liP.P~r Northwest and the new and expensive ones of
downtown and Southwest."_lf>_;J/ Sununing up, Raspberry noted that:

Tenant councils are springing up all over town, usually

with no other purpose than to make it possible to deal
with landlords from a position of strength. Requests
quickly become demands, and rent strikes • • • are
becoming an almost routine weapon in the tenants • ar-
sena l.lli/ · ·

In 1970, tenants at 14th and Girard Street, N. W., went on strike

and went to court to charge the city with direct resp_onsibility because it
had not enforced the housing code. The courts ruled that the city was
obligated to make repairs and charge the landlord. The city moved to evict
the tenants. 155/ A1so in 1970, ''A congressman was among 107 rent-striking
tenants in. a luxury Northwest apartment building who won a victory against
eviction. • • • The members of a tenants association at 4000 Tunlaw Road,
N.W., alleged that they had been illegally given •notice to quit' their
apartments for their participation in the organization.ul56/ Meanwhile,
middle class tenants at the Berkshire Apartments (4201 Massachusetts Avenue,
N.W.) refused to pay rent increases of seventeen to thirty percent and a
similar situation developed at the Essex Apartments at 4740 Connecticut
Avenue, N.w.15 7/
Tenants in the Trenton Park Apartments (3518 6th Street, S.E.) began a
rent strike in 1969 that continued into 1970. 11 A D.C. Court of General
Sessions jury ••• returned the first verdict in the city's history [on
December 22, 1970] that in effect [set] the amounts of rent that a group of
tenants mus~ B7Y to their landlord according to the conditions of their
Tenants at 6445 Luzon Avenue, ~~W., withheld a portion
apartments."_5_
1
of their rent for malfunctioning air conditioning._/
In 1970 city officials noted that 11 Hostility between tenants and land-
lords [had] become Washington's No. 1 housing problem. • • ... Jim Banks,
NCHA director, felt that 11 the hostility must be ended before any improvement
can be made in the inner-city housing market. 11 Banks is quoted as saying:
"It's come to the ooi11t that tenants and management can't co11111unicate with
each other at all ..._-16_0/

In 1972, residents in eleven of the forty apartments in the Bolling.

Terrace Apartments withheld their rents to force repairs, to eliminate

- 43 -
vennin, and to obtain adequate heat. The following year, the 120-member
Lynwood Tenants Association began withholding rent and putting rent into
escrow 11 to protest what they said was a deterioration of the building's
conditions in the year since the J. Cowan and Company real estate investment
company had bought it • 11 A court agreement was reached in November 1974
involving stipulated repairs to be made by the landlord and a cash award for
the tenants.lli/
By 1970, repeated rent strikes brought increasing pressure on the courts
and the government to act. By that year tenants had made significant judi-
cial and legislative gains that began to alter the balance of power between
landlords and tenants. (See study of Housing Regulation.)
The Landlords• Counterattack
The landlords fought back through the courts, their major weapon being
evictions. With evictions rising to over one hundred thousand cases a year
during the period 1964-1974, landlords were using evictions to collect rents
as well as to remove tenants that they did not desire from their property.
As indicated above, retaliatory evictions were a major concern of tenants.
Also, when a rent strike developed, landlords would sue for possession and
would often litigate cases to the highest possible court.
Landlords also ·lobbied in the city council and Congress against laws
that encumbered the use of their property, and they argued that expanding
tenants• rights and government regulation had detrimental effects on the
supply of housing. Landlords felt that the housing code provided adequate
penalties and enforcement. Raymond Rupert, Jr., of Rupert Real Estate,
11
blamed rural backgrounds and lack of education for tenants• damage.•• He
said:
It just depends on their education, that's it in a
nutshell. • • • The ones with low mentality don't have
sense enough to realize tha.t milk spilled on the floor
will sour and attract rats.__ i2 1
l6__
Landlords believed that the city council was insensitive to their posi-
tion and unfairly pro-tenant. Therefore, in 1970, a group of seventy owners
and agents petitioned the House District committee asking for
an investigation into "malpractices and misconduct 11 by
D.C. government officials; corrective measures to prod
the U.S. Marshal's Office into faster service of eviction
notices; legal definition of 11 tenant, as well as owner
responsibilities, .. and curtailment of 11 future misconduct ..
by the Office of Economic Opportunity, the Neighborhood
Legal Services (NLS) program and the United Planning
Organization 163/
After a divided city council gave preliminary approval to the bill to expand
tenant rights

- 44 -
 a crowd of 300 angry property owners, who ·filled the
Council chamber and the corridor outside, vowed to
counteract what they called the 11 tenant revolution .. with
activism of their own.
"Tax mora tori urn, tax mora tori urn • • • don • t pay property
taxes,'• several substantial looking landlords shouted at
an imQromptu rally outside the chamber following the
vote.~
Rent Control: A New Phase in the Tenants• Struggle
Rent control returned to Washington, D.C., in August 1971 with the
imposition of national wage-price guidelines, and· it soon became another
issue of conflict between landlords and tenants (see study of Housing
Regulation, Chapter V). Landlords sought to modify leases to allow for
pass-throughs of tax increases and .c.ost of building improvements, to end
leases with the end of rent control_l6_!5/ and they asked the courts to allow
rent increases for tenants on month-to-month leases~
The repeal of federal controls on rents "in 1973 galvanized the tenant
movement. On February 11, 1973, the Washington Area Federation of Tenants
Associations (WAFTA) held a protest meeting attended by about one hundred
persons at All Souls Church, 16th and Harvard. This organization, repre-
senting 150 tenant groups, was 11 considering calling for a mass rent strike
if landlords [refused] to roll back •exorbitant' rent increases that [had]
gone into effect recently." Jim Vitarello, legal adviser for the organiza-
tion, said: "We're thinking of definitely having a metropolitan area rent
strike. • • • A rent strike is our ultimate weapon--that's our A-Bomb. 11
WAFTA viewed a rent strike as a ·last resort, however, and called upon the
tenants to work through political channels first. Ernest Withers, president
of the organization, said that 11 If there is no response from government
officials, we' 11 resort to our own alternatives--that could mean a mass
strike." Withers said:
When I see such increases, I see greed. Greed is the
only justification for some of these increases. Many of
these landlords are going against the spirit qnd mandate
the government had called for in Phase Three.~/
The group 11 Voted unanimously • • • to ask President Nixon for an illiTie-
di ate ro 11 back of rent increases, some of wh i ch have approached 50 per-
cent • • • • 11 It "approved three methods of resistance--payment of the
increase with a check saying, •paid under protest,' initiation of partial
rent strikes by placing the amount of rent increase in an escrow account
each month or initiation of total rent strikes by placing the entire rent
due in an escrow account.ul68/
The tenants' concerns were validated when a confidential federal in-
ternal memorandum revealed rent increases as high as thirty-eight percent.
These increases on the average were higher than what the building owners
said was appropriate~

- 45 -
 The 1andl ords, now fearful ·of an array of loca 1 . controls, voted 11 to
ask the White House for an investigation of a recent wave of rent in-
creases • • • , " part i cu 1ar ly those above six percent. Accardi ng to John T.
O'Neill, executive vice president of the Building Owners and Managers
Association, "the directors felt only sharp increases in local government
fees and taxes would justify increases above 6 percent • • • • [The] group
wanted the federal government to step in before local jurisdictions
enact[ed] an array or conflicting rent control ordinances to soothe their
tenant constituents ... 70l
Many citizen groups pressed the city to impose controls. However, the
new council felt that it did not have the power. In April 1973, Mayor
Walter Washington asked Congress for the authority to impose local con-
trols, and on November 24, President Nixon signed into law a bill that would
give the D.C. city council that power. With this congressional authoriza-
tion, the tenants' struggles shifted to the local level. After months of
intense lobbying, the city council ·approved regulations for local rent
control. A new phase in the tenants' struggle had begun. In addition to
controlling rents, this law incorporated two of the historical demands of
tenants: compliance with the housing code and proper licensing became
prerequisites for landlords to collect rents, ·and provisions against retali-
atory evictions were adopted.
Thus, the period 1955 - 1974 started with the approv~l of a housing code
and ended with rent control. Tenants struggled during this nineteen-year
period to expand their rights. However, as in the year 1955--a time of
major political gains--housing markets began to shift and citizens were
faced with i.nflation and a changing economic base significantly altering .the
operation of housing markets in the District. Private market revitaliza-
tion, condominium conversions and gentrification became new forces that
citizen housing initiatives had to address.

- 46 -
 CHAPTER VII
CITIZEN STRUGGLES TO STABILIZE NEIGHBORHOODS: PROTECTIVE
MEASURES, 1970 - 1982

Before 1970, citizen efforts were aimed at inducing government to

improve its perfonmance--enforce housing regulations, condemn unsanitary
housing, pass housing and zoning codes, re-establish rent control, take
responsibility for relocation and, in general, perfo.nm on the conunitments of
the Workable Program for Urban Renewal. The fair housing, citizen partici-
pation and neighborhood-organizing movements of the 1960s turned citizen
attention to the societal and institutional framework within which the hous-
ing market operates. During the 1970s the swift residential change known as
gentrification became so disruptive of inner-city neighborhoods that ques-
tions as to why this process was occurring, when and where it could be
expected to occur, and what the role of gove·rnment should be in encouraging
or restraining it became a dominant citizen concern. Gentrification and
displacement due to private market action gave focus to the concern with the
societal and institutional framework.
The Course of Private Reinvestment in Washington's Inner-City
Gentrification, or reinvestment by a high income group (or 11 gentry 11 ) in
a relatively low-income neighborhood, is part of the dynamics of many cities
as properties and infrastructure age, as transportation technologies and
emp 1oyment centers change, as the popu 1at ion grows and as tastes shift.
What aroused the concern with this phenomenon in the District in the 1970s
was, first, the force and rapidity with which it was occurring and, second,
the fact that affluent whites were displacing a population which was in
large part low income black or aged.
Many analysts saw the bulge in demand as transitory to the extent that
it was a consequence of the post World War II baby boom coming of household-
forming age, of mature women entering the work force for the first time, and
of the shock of the energy crisis 171/ Additional analysis suggests,
however, that the demand for inner-city housing may be the reflection of a
change in the economic base of certain of the central cities. As the
national economy adapts to post-industrialism, the leading growth sectors
become business and professional services, many of which are linked to
central location. In such labor markets there is a shift in demand toward a
higher skilled work force which 11 disqualifies 11 part of the urban labor
supply. In property markets, the demand for central city office space
raises land values and creates pressures to shift land uses at the periphery
of the Central Employment Area (CEA) from residential to conunercial uses.
Tenants of the new office buildings create a rising demand for housing which
impinges on adjacent neighborhoods inhabited by a less-skilled and economic-
ally vulnerable population. To the extent that this is occurring, gentrifi-
cation is not a transitory problem but a long run trend.
The District's function as an administrative center for government and
private corporations and associations, its government-linked high technology
and skilled manpower, and its internation~~ 1 inkages give it a competitive
advantage over most other central cities- 2 1 This suggests that it will

- 47 -
continue to attract investm~nt arid that its amenities for high income resi-
dents will continue to grow.
The effects of this rising demand on the D.C. housing market have been
well documented: Herbert Bixhorn of the D.C. Office of Planning and
Development, in a study using city-wide data for the years 1970-1976, has
shown that the unusual housing market activity in the District has been
concentrated in a broad band around the CEA. His data identified a group of
gentrifying ·census tracts where both sales and prices were rising. These
were immediately northwest of the CEA and east of the U.S. Capitol. Another
group of census tracts due north of the CEA experienced price decreases but
increases in sales activity. Bixhorn suggested that the latter combination
could. be due to early speculative activity bringing "shells and barely
livable houses .. onto the market at lower than nonnal·prices for the area.
It is difficult to document the forced displacement w.hi ch has resulted
from this shift in. the market. Studies have indicated that much of the
displacement may occur at an early stage when "risk oblivious" individuals
move in· as group tenants or as new owners doing their own rehabilitation
work.l73/ However, the 1980 Census demonstrated the breadth of what was
happening. Sixty census tracts lie all or largely within a two-mile radius
of the employment center of the District. (See Figure 1). To the extent
that a new middle-class prefers proximity to their downtown offices, it is
these tracts which would show the effects of that increased demand. The
average increase in sales price of housing in the sixty tracts from ·1975
through 1978 was 96.6 percent compared to an average increase for the city
as a whole of 56.6 percent. Of the sixty tracts, thirty-seven showed
increased sales activity according to the D.C. Office of Planning and
Development.Jl!l Of these thirty-seven tracts, all but five had income
levels below the District mean income and all but three had a majority black
population in 1970. Over the decade 1970-1979, the black population of
these sixty tracts dropped by 54,005 persons. Some of these fonner resi-
dents may have left for reasons unrelated to the housing market. But such a
scale of displacement, even in the case of those who sold voluntarily, as
distinct from being evicted by landlords ·or public urban renewal, consti-
tutes a huge upheav a1 in these inner-city neighborhoods as we 11 as in the
relocation neighborhoods.
Citizen Response to Gentrification and Displacement
In the 1970s, while developers were constructing offices on cheaper land
to the west of the CBD, land speculators were positioning themselves in the
Old Downtown and in the transition neighborhoods. The District government,
frightened by the exodus of middle class white and black families, of
retailing, of small business and of some manufacturing to the suburbs,
addressed its energies to reversing that flow and attracting investment at
almost any cost. Citizen groups, on the other hand, saw clearly what was
occurring in their neighborhoods and concluded that the process of reinvest-
ment must be slowed and the damage to existing residents minimized. Citizen
organizations responded politically by organizing to oppose the process and
economically by undertaking self-help and cooperative housing projects and
developing strategies in finance, taxation, and economic development which,
they hoped, would limit the damage and improve·the operation of the housing
market.

- 48 -
 16

15

"'T1
.....
~ m
\0 c:
:::0
m

J .1

\
FIGURE I \
73.1
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CENTRAL EMPLOYMENT AREA, l\\\\\\\\\\1
S~owing 2-mile radius from 3 employment cores, at Connecticut
Avenue_& ' Street, at G & F Streets, and a-t the u.s. Capitol
 The Sttuggle to Save Rental Housing.
The first political response was to try to control the shift in the
composition of the housing stock from rental to owner-occupancy that was
occurring due to gentrifi.cation in the single-family housing market and the
process of condominiumization in the multi-family market. Preservation of
the rental stock and control of rents were the chief means of enabling lower
income residents to stay in their inner-city neighborhoods. The citizen•s
struggle to save rental housing consisted of a program that had several
components: rent control, tenants• rights, condominium conversion controls,
tenant education and tenant organization. Legislation to effect this pro-
gram was urged on the new city council, and after 1974, citizens were
successful in getting the council to control significantly the conditions
under which rental housing could be removed from the market.
City Wide Housing Coalition
Seeing the threat to rent a 1 housing, sever a 1 key groups and housing
organizations came together in late 1973 to form the City-Wide Housing
Coal it ion (CW-IC}. CWHC lobbied for strong local regulations to impl~ment
the federal law that authorized rent contro·l in the District. The first
rent contro 1 1aw under Home Ru 1e contained 1i mi ted condominium protections
through notification and the right of first refusal.
After lobbying for rent control, CWHC expanded· its education and
organizing act i vi ties. It pub 1i shed guides to tenant · ri ght s under the new
laws (The Tenants Survival Guide}, operated a tenant hot-1 ine, organized
tenant groups, and published a newsletter (City Wide Strutgle}. CWHC mobil-
ized tenants to put pressure on city counci 1 members. WAC had developed
into an education-lobbying advocacy groups for tenants•. rights, and accord-
ing to Jinuny Garrett, a local housing activist· and a fonner CWHC leader,
CWHC became
a unified front. It crossed racfal 1ines. It crossed
class lines. • • • [I]t pulled together small homeowners
[who were fearful of speculation]. It pulled together
political types • • • who were trying to .galvanize the
community around [the] question of speculation. • • • It
pulled together ministers--all kinds of people--because
they saw that this combination of speculation in the
purchasing market and the increase in rents were going to
[wreck] the whole city and drive poor black people out of
the yJt7.
that._S
[CWHC's] thrust was to try and counter

Having made major legislative gains, the tenant movement by 1977 reached
a crucial juncture. It had to define what its continuing political response
should be: Should it become more directly involved in the political
process? Should it have a more formal structure for its educational efforts
and a mechanism for receiving grant funds for a staff to carry out that
effort? Should it become a mass organizing movement instead of an advocacy
movement? Should it continue as a coalition focusing on legislation? Each
of these strategies appealed to segments of the movement which became frag- ·
mented, causing a vacuum in its leadership.

- 50 -
 According to Mark Looney, a tenant activist during the period, sever a 1
people thought that the tenant movement had to get directly into the politi-
cal process because, while rent control was renewed in 1977, the bill had
been weakened. This weakening of rent control was the result of a landlord
effort to decontrol rents. The city counci 1•s housing conunittee at first
had reported out a bill that would have allowed across-the-board rent
increases and automatic rent increases under hardship petitions, rent decon-
trol, unnecessary luxury renovation of rental units leading to exorbitant
rent increases and the displacement of tenants, and landlord administration
of the rent subsidy program.

As a result of this, CWHC fought the attack on rent control. It mobil-

ized tenants to pack the council chambers, disrupted the legislative ses-
sion, and called for the arrest of the housing committee.~ According
to a CWHC poster, titled--WANTED! For the Conspiracy to Murder RENT
CONTROL--two of the counci 1 members were murderers of rent contro 1. The
11
poster warned: Beware: These persons have no concern for poor and
moderate-income people ...
While CWHC was using a confrontational approach, another tenants•
organization, the D.C. Tenants Congress (DCTC), was formed out of a meeting
of the Lanier Heights and Park Plaza tenant associations. DCTC organized a
steering conunittee, sent out mailings urging tenants to call or write
council members, lobbied council members, and tried to structure the 1977
bill to expand the· tenant right of first refusal to include multi-family
dwellings and to provide a formula (an operating cost index) that would
allow for an equitable way for legitimate costs to be charged.ll2/
The final bill for 1977 was more tenant-oriented than the landlords•
original demands, yet some tenants considered that it had weakened rent
control. CWHC therefore attempted to undertake political endorsements in
the counci 1 and mayoral campaigns of 1978. Some CWHC members thought that
their political clout could be extended if they were able to elect a pro-
tenant mayor and pro-tenant counci lpersons. After exhaustive interviews,
when it came time for CWHC to vote on ,endorsements, the organization found
itself almost evenly divided among the three major candidates. The member-
ship voted to urge the rejection of all three candidates. Many of those
endorsed for council seats failed to win. The attempt at political end~~~e­
ments split CWHC 1 s membership and weakened its political clout----'
According to Looney, this weakening was evidenced by the difficulty that the
tenant leadership faced in meeting with the new mayor, Marion Barry, to
discuss a condominium conversion moratorium.
In 1979, other members of CWHC felt the correct political response
should be to organize tenants in low income wards and to develop a political
movement basedfg that constituency so poor people could control their own
1 1 According to Garrett, CWHC had gotten 11 a 11 the forma 1
neighborhoods.-
things... However, "the essence they didn•t get because you can't solve the
people•s problems with a hat-line," [you can•t solve them] "with a rent
control bill because that wasn•t a decision ••• in terms of what housing
for people and not for profit [meant]." He noted further that CWHC was
paralyzed because it could not choose between conflicting interests over how
to preserve rental housing. This paralysis was directly related to the

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rapid increase in condomfnium ·conversions. As a result of these conver-
sions, two sets of competing interests emerged. One group could afford
higher rents and preferred that outcome rather than the prospect of condo-
mini urn conversion. This set of interests . tended to support a weaker rent
control bi 11. Another set of interests could not afford higher rents, and
these interests supported a strict rent control bill. This split also
tended to create a racial split in the housing movement. 180/
Thus a·new leadership of CWHC emerged, led by Garrett. It viewed neigh-
borhood destabi 1ization as part of a joint government/private effort that
was underway to drive poor and black residents out of the city. CWHC
challenged the popular assumption that the way to help black people was to
increase the tax base to provide the needed services. Since industry,
banking, trade and co11111erce were not going to be· taxed sufficiently, this
argument went, the tax base could be increased only by attracting middle
income people to the city who would increase the tax base. On the contrary,
CWHC argued that the only way to attract the middle class was to displace
those very people you wanted to help. The new leadership of CWHC was deter-
mined instead "to focus on the poorest sector of the population, regardless
of race, and to build a movement of small • • •. organizations with that
group as the base and to focus on solving that group's problems as a way to
address the general problem of the housing crisis in the city.ul81/
Their program• s objectives were to force landlords to maintain their
property, to strengthen rent control as a temporary measure, and to regener-
ate areas in such a way that black and poor people could afford to remain or
move back into the city. Their ultimate aim was to get "people to the point
where they .would seize housing,.. by occupying vacant buildings as in Newark
and Detroit. Thus, their program became one 11 to build a militant housing
movement. 11 This movement would 'be based on "an anti-ca~italist analysis, a
pro-poor analysi S11 with a 11 thrust toward realizing [the] notion of housing
for people, not for profit.•• The program "included everything from going to
the rental accommodations office and having hearings to ••• taking hous-
ing.11 CWHC was to become an organization engaged in direct action on behalf
of the poor instead of an advocacy organization, thereby shifting the focus
of tenant organizing to the poor sections of the city. Working in Southeast
and Far Northeast, about sixty tenant organizat18~$ were built with support
of religious and educational groups in the city.____/
CWHC eventually came to view uprooting and gentrification as part of a
national program of "spatial deconcentration," designed to systematically
reduce the number of blacks in the central city. This effort, they argued,
began after the civil disturbances in the 1960s, because people in power now
thought that black people were dangerous.· Concentrations of black people
would be hard to control, and blacks should therefore be spatially deconcen-
trated. According to Garrett, the deconcentration program required "that
large blocks of black people never congregate to develop [a] conununity," and
that blacks be relocated to scattered sites~/
Their analysis continued: Based on studies completed by the Urban
Institute, the Counci 1 of Governments (COG) had a contract to take sub-
sidized housing (235, 237, and Section 8) "and use that as the means of
sending black people to Howard and Charles Counties, to Prince George's

- 52 -
[County], to Montgomery County in small groups. • • ... According to
Garrett, 11 GAO published a report in the early seventies saying this program
is not working. And they used Prince George•s County as the example, saying
that Prince George•s county has too many [blacks]. If your objective was to
move them out of the city, you did that. But if your objective was to make
a smaller unit, you failed in Prince George•s [County]. So they reorganized
the program for Montgomery, Howard and Charles Counties.nl84/
If federal programs were leading to a disruption of black urban communi-
ties, CWHC felt that it could not raise 11 the local problem without raising
the question nationally... CWHC 11 had to create a national atmosphere •••
to raise people•s consciousness nationally... CWHC found out that seizing
housing for a hundred people while a thousand people were being put out each
day was an untenable position. Thus, they worked out a tenant organizing
and political strategy that would have used the 1982 local elections to
raise these issues.~
CWHC•s mass-based organizing failed. According to Garrett, CWHC failed
because of what he viewed as a successful intimidation of its political
organizers, particularly the 11 assassination 11 of one of the major organizers,
Yulanda Ward, at a time when their organizing was at a critical juncture.
Other observers view the failure differently. The CWHC leadership, accord-
ing to them, was disruptive of the fledgling effort of the tenant movement
because the rhetoric tended to turn-off moderates while not generating mass
support. 186/ ·
City-Wide Housing Foundation and the Return to Advocacy
Before Garrett came into the leadership in late 1977, CWHC set up the
City-Wide Housing Foundation (CWHF). This foundation was created to. allow
the coalition to supplement its activities as a membership and advocacy
organization with a fundraising and educational organization.
CWHC received a grant from the Campaign for Human Development. Since
this organization did not fund political activities, the foundation was set
up in such a way that the leadership in the coalition and the foundation
were separate. There were two implications of th~s shift: (1) the leader-
ship of the coalition was drained off, and (2) energy shifted from political
:~!~~1~~/ toTh~s. s~U~:~:t ~~~lo~eed ~:~::~~hifhe a~~al~~~~~ ~~d \hh~ ~~~~~::
tion, with less radical members joining the foundation. With the political
shift of the coalition, the foundation attempted to pick up the advocacy
work that the coalition had once done. It failed, however, because of
several factors: lack of money, lack of a membership base, internal fight-
ing between the coalition and the foundation, fBH!tenant complacency due to
lack of pressing legislptive issues after 1979.___
These political responses to efforts to stabilize the neighborhoods
caused co nfl i cts over direction of the .housing movement. The attempt at
political endorsements in 1978, the election of an ideologically left
leadership to the board of CWHC, and the rift over the foundation, created a
leadership vacuum. This vacuum came ·at a crucial time: tenant groups felt
the need for a moratorium on condominium conversion, and rent control was

- 53 -
due to expire. Two new coal it ions developed: the Emergency Committee to
Save Rental Housing (ECSRH) and the Rent Control Steering Committee. ECSRH
was formed by the Gray Panthers to get a moratorium. on condominium conver-
sions and was substantially responsible for stricter conversion laws. The
Rent Control Steering Committee was convened by Lynn Cunningham--an activist
lawyer from Neighborhood Legal Services--and supported by MWPHA, to draft
the 11 People's Rent Control Bill." While a moratorium on conversions was
passed and while tenants were successful with minimal losses in extending
rent control, the leadership of the housing movement shifted to lawyers and
a legislative approach. In essence, this was a shift from a mass-based to
an elite-based model. Two further attempts, the Housing Action Council and
the Tenant Solidarity Union,~1 to forge an effective new city-wide
leadership have not developed to play the role that CWHC initially played.
While there was conflict and a leadership vacuum at the city-wide level,
three neighborhood organizations began: the washington. Inner-City Self-Help
Housing (WISH), the Southern Columbia Heights Tenants Union (SCHTU), and the
Southeast Vicariate Cluster Tenants Coal it ion (SEVCTC). These groups have
continued the struggle to save low and moderate income housing by building
strong tenant organizations, working on city-wide legislation such as repair
and deduct, and rent control. These organizations, which according to a
Post reporter, grew out of concerns of religious groups primarily in
Northwest and Southeast Washington neighborhoods, have had notable successes
in correcting housing code violations, pushing back illegal rent increas~s,
blocking evictions and· helping residents purchase their own properties. 190/
Recent organizing to save low and moderate income housing as a way to
stabilize neighborhoods has revealed an interesting phenomenon: after
sixteen years of tenants• rent strikes, legislative gains, judicial gains,
and organizational development, many tenants still feel powerless and help-
less and are fearful of retaliatory acti~n.s.. Fear and ignorance remain
n1
major stumbling blocks to tenant organizing.__i9__
Negotiating to Save Rental Housing
To prevent displacement and to expand the options of low income resi-
dents--which now seem to consist of public housing or low-quality housing--
tenant and housing activists are focusing again on ·rental agreements in an
attempt to maintain the stock of market-rate rental units. Many tenant
organizations and 1and lords are using the 11 70 percent agreement 11 and the
Apartment Improvement Program (AI P) provided by District 1aw. Under the
rental housing acts of 1977 and 1980, landlords can raise rents without
going through the hardship petition process if the action is supported by a
vote of seventy percent of the tenants. In effect tenants can negotiate
improvements and repairs of a building with their landlord in exchange for a
rent increase, thereby allowing major improvements without the tenants•
having to purchase the building or being displaced.
This negotiating process appears particularly important at this time.
Displacement by conversion is practically nil because of restrictive legis-
1at ion; most displacement as a result of conversion is now done by middle
income tenants themselves. Economic conditions have made tenant conversions
uneconomical for low income tenants as monthly cooperative charges are now

- 54 -
significantly higher than rent levels. The District's rental housing market
seems to be faced with the specter of increasing displacement from actual
owner or management abandonment, and since the District has no prQqr~ for
dealing with financially troubled buildings, something must be done._l9_2/
The citizens• political response to neighborhood destabilization has
focused on organizing and mobilizing tenants to support passage of legisla-
tion that would control the process of gentrification. Tenants have been
successful in· obtaining protective legislation. (See study of Housing
Regulation, Chapter VI). Some citizen groups have realized, however, that
protective legislation is not enough. The resources of families and of
neighborhoods must be improved if the downward cycle of deterioration and
displacement is to be arrested. Such neighborhood stabilization requires
creative responses. The efforts of citizen groups to·develop such responses
are the topic of the next chapter.

- 55 -
 CHAPTER VIII
CITIZEN STRUGGLES TO STABILIZE NEIGHBORHOODS:
CREATIVE MEASURES. 1970-1982

Citizen struggles to stabilize District neighborhoods and to preserve

low and moderate income housing have been frustrated because of the dynamics
of the housing market. ·Not only is housing not 11filtering down 11 to low and
moderate income residents, it is ufiltering up 11 to higher income groups
because of gentrification. In some areas of the city 11 housing speculators
and welfare mothers compete fiercely for equal space.ul93/
Citizens groups have struggled to remove housing or at least buffer it
from the exigencies of the housing market. Yet citizen attempts to control
the price and availability of the housing stock for existing residents have
not lead to widespread improvement in the quantity or quality of housing.
Furthennore, the price. of housing has been difficult to control because of
the rapid movement of new groups into the District. Consequently, the key
issue that citizen groups have faced is how to develop an institutional
environment that would acconunodate both the new and existing demand for
.housing, thus allowing for stability amidst change. ·As a result, citizens
have turned to a number of strategies--sweat equity, cooperative housing,
tax incentives, comprehensive planning, and economic development tools--to
manage the reinvestment process so that its outcome would be more equitable.
Self-Help or Sweat Equity
Citizens h.ave attempted to improve the quality and availability of
affordable housing through 11 Sweat equity11 programs whereby they rehabilitate
buildings by direct investment of their labor rather than money. Jubilee
Housing, a part of the urban ministry of the Church of the Savior, was one
of the first of these efforts.
Incorporated in 1973, Jubilee Housing is a church-related, non-profit
organization with the goals of providing safe, clean and affordable housing
to low income tenants in the Adams-Morgan area, and stabilizing "the
population of low income people to approximately 25 percent of the 15-block
neighborhood's housing stock.''~J
1 1 They have acquired five neighborhood
apartment buildings--all in a high state of disrepair and with a large
number of housing code violations. The first two, the Ritz and the Mozart,
were purchased with the help of a friend who donated $150,000 for the
initial rehabilitation work, 11 Under a sale-lease back agreement with an
option for Jubilee to purchase at _any time for cost, plus funds for
rehabilitation, less depreciation ....!~~/ The tenants were able to remain
in the buildings while groups of volunteers started the rehabilitation work
in vacant apartments and public areas.
This large volunteer effort played a crucial role in Jubilee's desire to
get tenants actively involved in the maintenance of their own property.
Jubilee tenants looked upon the first efforts of the volunteers to encourage
the tenants to take part in the rehabilitation and maintenance endeavor with
suspicion. Volunteers were white and tenants felt that the youthful white
volunteers would soon abandon them. Bob Boulter, ·with the project from its

- 56 -
1nception, worked hard to gain the support of the tenants for the project.
As a result the tenant attitude is much more positive than at the beginning
of the project and all residents are involved in the cooperative management
program. Boulter would 1ike to see Jubilee Housing become self-sufficient
through cooperative ownership, because "once tenants begin to realize that
housing is an investment, their attitudes chanqe dramatically; they are more
willing to work cooperatively with management.•~96/

Jubilee has received assistance from both the federal and District
governments. HUD granted a one-time $1.8 million loan and DHCD has provided
technical assistance as well as counseling. Jubilee now operates one
hundred units for tenants, the majority of whom are on fixed-incomes. The
original goal of one hundred units a year has not been met because of the
problems of the national economy, and Boulter does not project any expansion
in the near future. Jubilee's current focus is to work more intensively
with the tenants, addressing their job and educational needs along with
their housing needs.

Under the sweat equity approach, housing consumers take on the role of
housing producers. This approach has been widely applied in single-family
housing. For multi-family housing, particularly if badly deteriorated, it
requires a high degree of organization and conunitment. Jubilee believes
that churches are uniquely suited to providing the numerous and committed
volunteers needed for large "sweat equity 11 undertakings, and that funds will
tend to follow such involvement. Unfortunately, though their model has
drawn wide publicity and interest, it has thus far had limited impact in the
District.
Cooperative Housing
In 1978, at a conmunity seminar, 11 Cooperative housing ownership was
cited as ~D answer to • • • •a full-fledged housing crisis' in the
District ..._l~_t/ A housing cooperative is a non-profit corporation that
"owns and operates the building(s) and the land it is on, • • • means that
monthly charges reflect only exact costs needed to properly operate and
maintain the building(s). No percentage is included for monetary gain by
the corporation. While the corporation borrows funds to purchase and
rehabilitate the apartment building(s) and is responsible for repaying the
lender, individual cofBRrative members are not personally liable to the
1ender for the 1oan s ..._ /
In the Rental Housing Act of 1977, one attempt to prevent displacement
was to require that tenants be offered the opportunity to purchase their
building before it could be sold to anyone else--the right of first
refusal. In 1979, MWPHA set up a Coop Housing Services Program (CHSP) to
provide direct technical assistance to tenants in the conversion process,
and to run training workshops for tenant groups and other technicians to
build their capacity for the future. Drawing on the funds the District had
from unclaimed bank balances, MWPHA set up a revolving loan fund to provide
emergency seed money to cooperative conversion projects. It also promoted
the development of networks of tenant groups and housing cooperatives
(Columbia Heights Federation of Housing Cooperatives and Sojourners Housing
Ministry in the 14th Street Area). By the end of 1981, CHSP had assisted

- 57 -
eleven completed purchases representing 692 units and w~s providing techni-
cal services to seventeen tenant groups.
Another group active in providing cooperative assistance, Ministries
United to Support Community Life (MUSCLE), was formed in 1977 by a group of
churches in Southwest to prevent displacement and to preserve a stock of low
and moderate income housing. Speculative activity was displacing tenants in
the area on either side of South Capitol Street due to proposed private
redevelopment there. There was a surge of transformation of two-story flats
into single-family homes. In 1978, the Tel-Court Tenants Association ap-
proached the staff of MUSCLE to assist it with organizing a tenant coopera-
tive. After that effort MUSCLE and University Legal Services (ULS) jointly
received a contract from the District government to provide technical as-
sistance for city-wide tenant cooperative conversion. MUSCLE and ULS now
provide technical assistance to tenants who live in buildings where fifty
percent of tenants qualify for Section 8 housing.
Like so many tenant gains, the development of ·cooperative housing as a
tool to stop displacement and to house low and moderate income families was
thwarted by changing economic conditions. 11 The movement toward tenant pur-
chase and cooperative conversions, fostered by. impending displacement of low
and moderate income tenants, 11 MWPHA •s 1981 report notes, 11 has now been
brought face to face with the bruta 1 rea 1ity of an economy in cri si s.•• The
report notes that the cooperative housing movement
began in a period of desperation for tenants who were
pawns in the developers• chess game. A lucky few
achieved success; many more were discarded from the game,
merely expendable pieces. But now the very nature of the
game has changed. It has become a rea 1 estate puzzle
that no one, including the developers who used to make
the rules, has been able to solve. The various puzzle
pieces--the cost of housing, the availability of financ-
ing, the ability of consumers to pay the costs--have
changed so dramatically that they simply don•t fit into a
coherent picture any more.
Securing Access to Credit from Local Financial Institutions
Citizen groups have long recognized that neighborhood decline and
revitalization require that existing residents have access to financial
resources, e. g., mortgage and home improvement funds. Equally, they have
recognized that private financial institutions have systematically excluded
from consideration for loans minority or poverty areas which were outlined
in red on their maps-- 11 redlined 11 --as high risk regardless of the 11 bankable 11
characteristics of individual loan applications.
As early as 1957, WHA reported that as a consequence of vigorous
District code enforcement in Marshall Heights, a truck driver was told he
must remedy ten violations in his family home. However, when he sought
financing from a number of saving and loan associations (S&Ls) and banks he
was rejected because of 11 location, 11 this in spite of the fact that he had
been making regular payments on his home loan since 1947 ~1 By 1968,

- 58 -
such 11 redlining" of areas was so pervasive that the national government
prohibited discrimination by lenders in Section 8 of the 1968 Civil Rights
Act.
In the District, the Nader organization•s local affiliate, the D.C.
Public Interest Research Group (D.C. PIRG), began an investigation into the
loan practices of District banks and S&Ls. Compiling the number and dollar
amount of mortgage funds lent by each S&L based in the city in each ZIP code
area for the years 1972, 1973 and 1974 and comparing these figures with the
total amount of mortgage money lent by the S&Ls during these years, D.C.
PIRG found that the S&Ls put only 11.6 percent of their mortgage monies into
the city. Moreover, 49.8 percent of the mortgage money they did put into
the city went to the higher income areas west of the Park and to the
Southwest, thereby leavinJJ.. 85 percent of the city•s population with little
access to S&L mortgages ...~/

As a result of the efforts of the D.C. PIRG and other groups, the
District government in 1973 under Title 34 of the D.C. Human Rights Act pro-
hibited discrimination in lending, the first local jurisdiction nationally
to prohibit 11 redlining. 11 However, as so frequently has been the case, the
District•s enforcement agency, the Human Rights Commission, was slow to take
any action, even though adequate evidence seemed to be available in the PIRG
study.
The S&Ls did react, however. In 1973 all sixteen S&Ls in the District
organized Savings Associations Financial Enterprises, Inc. (SAFE), with a $2
million capitalization, to make construction and rehabilitation loans
available in inner-city neighborhoods, with the guarantee that the permanent
mortgage financing would be provided by one of the participating S&Ls. From
this information alone, it is impossible to determine whether this effort
slowed or hastened gentrification because the question is who received the
loans--owners wishing to improve their buildings for current residents, or
11
gentrifying 11 in-migrants? Sales records in the 11 gentrifying 11 neighborhoods
show that .. red 1in i ng 11 was no deterrent to the process getting under way
because speculators relied on non-institutional finance in the early stages
but later in-migrants received institutional finance.201/
Citizen organizations participated in a joint federal-local effort,
Neighborhood Housing Services (NHS), directed at providing home improvement
finance to theretofore redlined areas. NHS, which was initiated nationally
by the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, started in the District by involving
local lenders with community organizations in the Anacostia neighborhood. A
joint board was set up to administer a program of rehabi 1itation loans to
marginal income families from a revolving loan fund (provided by the Ford,
Meyer and Cafritz Foundations originally, now by CDBG funds). In addition,
the lending institutions committed themselves to making home improvement
loans to 11 bankable•• applicants in the neighborhood, i.e., no longer to
11
redline 11 the neighborhood. A small staff to process the low-cost loans,
and monitor the rehabi 1itation work of the contractors and the code enforce-
ment and services provided by the city government, was financed by the D.C.
Bankers Association and the Washington Savings and Loan League. The
Anacosti a program proved so successfu 1 that, with the urging of MWPHA and
other community groups, a new NHS program was started in Bloomingdale/
Eckington in 1978.

- 59 -
 In 1977, MWPHA received' funding for Project LEND to promote ugreenl in-
ingn and neighborhood reinvestment in areas against which the financial
institutions had been discriminating. MWPHA held workshops in conjunction
with neighborhood organizations to assist them in developing reinvestment
strategies and co-sponsored with the D.C. Neighborhood Reinvestment Commis-
sion two large workshops in Bloomingdale-Eckington and in Anacostia on a
city-wide housing finance plan and how to effectuate it. This led to pas-
sage of legislation providing .that local lending institutions be selected to
receive D.c.· Government deposits on the basis of their employment and neigh-
borhood lending practices. Also, in 1978, with MWPHA's active support, a
11
Home Loan Review Conunittee" was established by the Metropolitan Washington
Savings and Loan League to review appeals from citizens who were denied
mortgage loans.
MWPHA urged District corrmunity groups to assess the banks and S&Ls in
their areas, as provided for by the federal Home Mortgage Disclosure Act of
1975 and the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) of 1977, to determine 11 Whether
the conmunity boundaries [drawn by those institutions] exclude any low or
moderate· income or minority neighborhoods, whether there are legitimate
credit needs in the neighborhood which are not being met, and how .a particu-
lar institution's record compares with that· of other institutions in the
area."202/ If an institution with a poor compliance record should apply
for a new branch, relocation or merger, MWPHA suggested that the comnunity
organization should bargain with it for improved servic~ and, failing that,
oppose the application.
In early 1976, Perpetual, the largest S&L in the District, purchased
land at the. corner of 18th Street and Columbia Road in Adams-Morgan for a
new office. This set off a prolonged debate within AMO, the community
organization, pitting those who favored development and the presence of the
S&L against those who feared cornnercial development and gentrification and
opposed the S&L because of its discriminatory lending practices in the
past. The end agreement with Perpetua 1 provided for a conmun i ty board "to
oversee loans and disapprovals made by the new branch, and Perpetual agreed
to make funds available for financing cooperative an~ c~ndominium projects
03
including units for moderate and low income fami 1ies."-'
The D.C. Bank Campaign, launched on June 15, 1979, charged Riggs Bank
with providing millions of dollars of credit to Chile and the Republic of
South Africa, while refusing to make more than a token number of home mort-
gage loans to low i~'b'fl/ neighborhoods. Local depositors were urged to
withdraw their funds.- . The Campaign, which was a coal it ion of indivi-
duals and organizations, including MWPHA, met with representatives of the
U.S. Comptroller's Office to present evidence that Riggs National Bank was
not fulfilling its obligations under CRA. Later, in 1980, Riggs applied for
two new branches and the Bank Campaign called for a formal hearing, which
was held in November with broad conununity representation. As a result,
Riggs agreed to make mortgage· loans to non-deposito rs and to take steps to
increase lending to low and moderate income people~ 0 1

Tapping the National Credit Market for Funds

In addition to insuring that· residents who wanted to remain in their
neighborhoods and improve them were not denied access to credit, citizen

- 60 -
groups wanted to insure that a sufficient supply of funds would be made
available. The availability of funds became a particularly acute problem in
the 1970s as interest rates rose, and it became evident that both private
and federal housing dollars were falling further and further behind the need
for construction and rehabilitation generally, but specifically for the
needs of lower income families.
MWPHA was aware of the experience of other states whose housing finance
agencies (HFAs), by borrowing with tax-exempt revenue bonds, were able to
raise housing funds at several percentage points under conventional market
rates to finance housing construction and rehabilitation. MWPHA produced
the first draft of housing finance legislation that was made possible under
the Home Rule Act and lobbied vigorously for what five years later became
the D.C. Finance Agency Act of 1979. The D.C. HFA's board was appointed in
October 1980 by the mayor, with six public m~mbers, two of them representing
experience in housing finance, two in housing development and two represent-
ing 11 Cormnunity" interests (plus three ex-officio members from the D.C.
departments most concerned).
It was a sad irony for the District that it became the forty-third state
to acquire an HFA at a moment which combined the highest interest rates in
U.S. history with a determined assault by the U.S. Treasury and the Congress
on state issuance of these federally tax-exempt bonds, which both regarded
as unjustified stat~ raids on the U.S. Treasury's revenues. However, The
HFA sold its first bond issue in August 1982 and raised $15.2 million to
lend to developers of five apartment buildings for low income families. It
was a small beginning to what could become a powerful intermediary institu-
tion--intermediating financially between the costs of lenders and the
charges which lower income tenants, owners and cooperators can bear--inter-
mediating also in a programmatic way between the v1ew of government and the
particular view of neighborhood residents as to their housing needs.
. . . . Tax Incentives to Reduce Displacement and Expand Housing Supply
As the gentrification process unfolds, neighborhoods are affected by two
forms of speculation:. selling of. properties rapidly for high and quick
capital gains, and holding property while wait.ing for a better market
environment in which to improve or sell that property. Citizen groups
turned to tax incentives to militate against the negative effects of rapidly
increasing sales and to insure that property and structures were not with-
held from the market, particularly as housing prices escalated in the 1970s,
making it difficult for low income and elderly homeowners, facing rising
property taxes, to hold onto their homes.
In June 1974, MWPHA held a public forum on speculation, "reverse
blockbusting 11 and displacement. As an outcome, they organized an Anti-
Speculation Task Force. Using ordinances and experiences from other states,
MWPHA staff and volunteers drafted detailed reconmendations for a 11 Circuit
Breaker 11 on the property tax and an anti-speculation tax. The "Circuit
Breaker, 11 a means of pro vi ding graduated ·income tax credits to offset a
portion of the property tax burden for lower income taxpayers, had been used
in other states to protect the aged. MWPHA urged that it be broadened to
all low income homeowners and tenants as an anti-displacement measure. The

- 61 -
 ,
"Circuit Breaker" in the fonn of Schedule H of the D.C. income tax forms,
went into effect in 1976 and permits residents to file for a property tax
relief rebate from the District government, regardless of whether they pay
income tax or not.
A number of citizen groups from inner city neighborhoods had ardently
supported the proposed anti-speculation tax and it was finally passed in
1978, after prolonged hearings, as the Real Property Transfer Excise Tax,
which levied a special tax on the sale of property held for short periods
and resold at gains above specified percentages of purchase price. Some
months after passage, the Post reported that "High prices, rent control and
the new speculation tax inlBUrDistrict of Columbia have sent many investors
35 miles north to Baltimore.n206/ But, later, a Post writer added that in
seven months of enforcement, "fewer than 15 .Dercent of the people who have
sold homes have complied with the law."~' The D.C. Department of
Finance and Revenue's Real Property Tax Division reports that up until the
tax was allowed to expire in October 1981, there were several thousand
sellers who filed for exemptions and seven cases of people who paid the tax,
one of whom was reimbursed. A number of sellers who filed for exemptions
did so on the grounds that they had made the dw~ll ing habitable. Many
buyers of those exempted properties are now pursuing remedies through the
courts because the sellers failed to honor their warranties of habitability.
In the case of both the speculation tax and the circuit breaker, citizen
groups had fulfilled their function by recognizing the problem, researching
it and gaining passage of remedial legislation. They then considered it the
responsibility of the city government to publicize and monitor the effec-
tiveness of each program.
Citizens lobbying for property tax changes were more successful in cases
where the benefits went to all homeowners, not just to those of lower in-
come. The citizens associations wannly supported the change from a single
to a differentiated rate structure, which shifted some of the tax burden
from housing to commercial properties, and the home-owners exemption, which
shifted the burden from homeowners to rental properties, both residential
and commercial. The Citizens for Fair Assessment (CFA) did an excellent job
of documenting the considerable inequities in residential assessments
between areas (which favored high income areas), inequities between proper-
ties within neighborhoods, and time lags in reassessment (which favored
those engaging in speculation). CFA negotiated energetically with the
Department of Finance and Revenue for improvements in assessment administra-
tion, better citizen infonnation, and improvements in appeals procedures.
They seem to have been effective because they were a narrow-focus group of
dedicated and skilled members and they were riding a currently very popular
issue--rising property values and assessments.
Citizens have been appa 11 ed by the existence of vacant 1and and aban-
doned buildings at the same time there exist inadequate housing supply and
displacement. Yet the only one of the property tax reform groups, aside
from the D.C Tax Revision Commission, which has looked at the broader
implications of the tax for housing and economic development has been the
League for Urban Land Conservation (LULC), founded in 1975. LULC focused on
one reform stemming from the analysis of Henry George, a nineteenth century

- 62 -
economist. It proposed shifting the burden of the property tax from the
improvements (buildings) to the land on which they rest by reducing the tax
rate on the value of buildings and raising it on the value of the land in
progressive stages. The effect of this is, theoretically and has been in
practice in the major Pennsylvania cities, to discourage the holding of
undeveloped or underdeveloped land, and to encourage housing and commercial
development. LULC has suffered ineffectiveness because their economic
message was complex, and because the only groups who fully understand the
implications of that message are property interests and some community ac-
tivists concerned that a higher tax rate on land would raise the tax burden
in those inner-city neighborhoods where land values are high yet the density
of development is still low.
Planning for Heterogeneous Communities
From the 1940s through the 1970s, neighborhood groups in Marshall
Heights, Shaw, 14th Street, Adams-Morgan, and Southwest, to name a few, had
attempted to plan their neighborhoods within a city-wide planning vacuum.
NCPC•s professional planners were helpful when called upon, but their
planning was concerned with the city as national capital, not with the
economic and social development of its neighborhoods. At the opposite end
of the spectrum were the community planners of MICCO and Model Cities, who
saw that residential planning involved staging and relocation, conmercial
and public services, capital improvements, and planning for education,
health, daycare, employment, etc. Their plans seem to have been treated as
wish-lists by District and federal officials, to be gratified for a time,
then dropped.
The Home Rule Act required that the District develop a comprehensive
plan, and serious citizen planning efforts were. undertaken by the Downtown
Planning Task Force of MWPHA and, independentl{, by the Citizens Planning
Coal it ion which was organized in 1978 by Caro Gidley Currie and others.
The coal it ion has representatives from all eight wards on its board, al-
though interest in its activities is strongest in the inner-city where
gentrification and proximity to downtown make the. 1ack of a comprehensive
plan most serious. As their opening salvo, they addressed a letter to
Mayor-eJect Marion Barry in 1978 calling for significant citizen input into
the planning process and for a plan that recognized the need for housing
citizens of all income groups in the city. Their major thrust is to see
that a comprehensive plan is adopted which is more than a statement of
goals, objectives and incentives. They want a plan which spells out in
precise zoning tenninology the distribution of land uses, densities, etc.
throughout the neighborhoods and the downtown.
MWPHA 1 s planning task force, and in particular board member and archi-
tect John Wiebenson, worked persistently for the goal of a more humanistic-
ally scaled and diverse downtown that would be alive with activity day and
night instead of merely during office hours. To this end, the task force
met repeatedly with the Pennsylvania Avenue Development Corporation (PADC)
planners and those of the newly established D.C. Office of Planning and
Development. PADC•s 1975 plans had called for a massive 11 Superbowl 11 design
for a new residential neighborhood of some 12,000 housing units north of

- 63 -
Pennsylvania Avenue between 7th and 9th Streets, N.W. MWPHA's Wiebenson pro-
posed a smaller scale, more diverse use of the four blocks in question to
get sufficient housing units to form a community while enabling the partici-
pation of smaller, local developers, and linking the new community to sur-
rounding activities. MWPHA also expressed strong reservations about heavy
land subsidies going to residential development unless it included a mix of
income groups.
· MWPHA' s task force, ANC 2-C and the Citizens Planning. Coal it ion (both of
the latter represented by Tom Lodge), the preservationists of Don't Tear It
Down, and the Committee of 100 on the Federal City urged the District
government to expand the role of housing, on a scattered basis, throughout
the plan for the redevelopment of the Old Downtown. By 1981, they had a
forum in the newly appointed Mayor's Downtown Committee, on which they were
all represented. However, their influence was largely overwhelmed by
intense developer interest in office-building construction in the area, due
to the shift in the city's economic base discussed earlier.
Creating Viable Neighborhood Economies
As part of the gentrification process, the growing officeworker popula-
tion which is pressing outward upon the neighborhoods is said to look for
certain amenities in the Downtown--opportunities for face-to-face contact in
restaurants, cafes and hotel lobbies, cultural activities· such as gallerfes,
theatres and museums, retailing and consumer services of diverse types, all
in an attractive environment. If it is attractive enough, they may also
want to live in the Downtown. These diverse activities to attract office-
workers and tourists also transform the Downtown into a neighborhood which
would provide types of jobs suitable to the unskilled as well as the profes-
sionals. The business community involved in the downtown planning effort
has stressed the office employment and tax-revenue generation which would
result.
Representatives of citizen groups saw the Downtown in a larger context,
serving the city as a whole. They have called for the preservation of old
buildings and low-cost space for the arts, entertainment and other services,
and retailing. They feared that the tax and zoning incentives for the pro-
vision of housing and other services, as proposed by the deve 1opment in-
terests, would be costly and ineffective. lnstead, we advocate creating a
11

special tax district incorporating the entire Central Employment Area to

raise extra revenues for providing housing in this area and providing funds
for ••• write-down of rentals for desired uses, developing and maintaining
public spaces, and oroviding technical assistance and revolving loans to
small businesses ..._20_B1 They urged these uses to provide the transitional
jobs for District residents unqualified for the office jobs. Looking back
on the experience of all public planning and renewal efforts, they urged new
legislation to prevent the issuance of demolition permits before new build-
11

ing plans have been approved and a date for the start of construction has .
been assured, so that we do not get into the position of creating a surface
wasteland while awaiting development."
The counterpart of the position taken by C0111Dunity representatives on
11 11

the Mayor's Downtown Committee has been the efforts of organizations in the

- 64 -
neighborhoods to develop economic activity and employment for their resi-
dents. In April 1978, the D.C. Neighborhood Reinvestment Commission pub-
lished its report, Toward a Local Partnership for Neighborhood Development,
which laid out in considerable detail the history, good and bad, of neigh-
borhood economic development efforts in the District, the experience in
other cities, and the strategies the District government should follow to
make such development possible. The report also pointed to the negative
role played by public urban renewal in being responsible for the forced
relocation of 1625 neighborhood business (as of the end of FY77), nearly
half of which ceased to exist as a result.

The need for public support was recognized when in 1979 the D.C.
Neighborhood Pl atfonn Convention called on the mayor to make neighborhood
economic development 11 the number one priority 11 for his Office of Business
and Economic Development. To that end, it asked that neighborhood organiza-
tions have a role in planning for, and opportunities for sharing equity in,
public and private sector development, particularly around Metro stops. As
a corollary to employment, it urged that the public school curriculum be
"reevaluated, especially in relation to adult education, arts and humanities
employmentA business management skills training and (other) job-oriented
courses." £09/

From the citizens• viewpoint, experience suggests that the most favor-
able residential models are those of Adams-Morgan, Mt. Pleasant or Dupont
Circle--mixed-income communities which create a demand for and supply of
services in an interdependent mixed residential/commercial setting. The
least favorable model may be the single-income community, whether uniformly
poor, as in areas of Anacostia, or uniformly affluent, as in urban renewal
Southwest. Both suffer from being predominantly residential with little
commercial development to serve resident needs. The successful models
became what they are because they were spared both excess (in the form of
urban renew a 1) and inadequate government attention (in services, code en-
forcement, etc.)and they were not 11 redlined 11 as areas east of the Anacostia
were. Citizen groups recognize that creative use of neighborhood stabiliza-
tion strategies--sweat equity, cooperative housing, finance, tax, planning
and economic development--can create conununities that are well maintained,
safe, and affordable.

- 65 -
 CHAPTER IX
CITIZENS' HISTORICAL STRUGGLES AND CONTEMPORARY PUBLIC POLICY

In recent years citizen organizations have asserted the right of citi-

zens to housing that is safe, decent and affordable and to housing over
which they have some control. Owners have asserted their right to use their
property with as few encumbrances as possible. These competing claims have
been made in a constantly changing political and economic environment,
creating tensions between citizen groups and property owners and between
citizens and government officials. Throughout the changes which have
occurred, citizens have voiced a relatively constant set of demands. In
identifying these historical demands, and the successes and failures at-
tendant on them, we can draw some lessons and policy implications for today.
Citizens• Historical Demands
Our review of the 92-year period, 1890-1982, reveals that citizens have
made eight basic demands in their attempt to improve housing in the Dis-
trict. They have demanded:
o affordable housing
o safe and decent housing
o dweller control over housing
o non~discriminatory access to housing
o reform of Landlord and Tenant Court
o power to plan, or participate in planning, their communities
o stable communities where they can remain if they wish
o responsive political and administrative structures
The Demand for Affordable Housing
The demand of concerned citizens for affordable housing for low and
moderate income residents has been a continuing thread throughout the
period. Over the years, citizen organizations have supported various pro-
grams to achieve that goal: combining private and public resources to
establish non-profit or limited dividend housing corporations that can plan,
finance, construct, renovate and manage housing; public housing similar in
location and type to private housing, to compensate for the inability of the
market to meet low income needs; land write-downs and short- and long-term
financial assistance to bring down costs; rent control to protect tenants
from excessive rent increases; and conversion controls to maintain the
existing supply of rental housing. Recently, citizen organizations have
added assistance in organizing and financing low-yield cooperatives, and
negotiated rent settlements which permit rental housing to remain on the
market while ensuring that it be adequately maintained. These demands are

- 66 -
based on historical evidence that the private market will not adequately
provide affordable housing for low and moderate income residents.
The Demand for Decent Housing
Throughout this period, citizens have also continued to demand decent
housing for low as well as middle income tenants. The eradication of slums,
in particular, and the maintenance of housing generally, have been tied to
the adoption and enforcement of housing regulations and codes that would set
minimum conmunity standards for safe and decent housing and that would
specify the rights and responsibilities of both tenants and landlords: Tied
to this demand has been a call, until recently ignored, for swift and effec-
tive action by the city administration and the courts to prosecute landlords
who do not maintain their property.
The Demand for Dweller Control
Over the years, citizens have added to their demands for participation
in decisions that affect their housing, demands for control over those deci-
sions. Tenants have used the judicial process, the legislative process,
rent strikes and negotiation to gain these rights. They support tenant
management in public housing, tenant ownership and cooperatives, negotiated
landlord-tenant agreements, and "repair and deduct 11 legislation to extend
these rights.
The Demand for "Open" Housing
Certain city-wide citizen's organizations opposed racial discrimination,
in law and in practice, from the beginning of this period until federal and
District law effectively put an end to overt housing discrimination in the
1950s and 1960s. At that time, citizen concern shifted to the developments
affecting their neighborhoods which had racially discriminatory overtones.
Public urban renewal was referred to as "Negro removal," and private urban
renewal or 11 gentrification" were resented because of their effect in replac-
ing lower income black residents with middle and upper income whites. The
citizen organizations which reflect integrationist views have sought pol i-
cies to keep neighborhoods open to all races and income. groups. Some citi-
zen groups, however, have adhered to a conspiratorial view that the white
middle class recapture of inner-city neighborhoods was deliberately en-
gineered by government and business interests. In the District, citizens'
demands have thus shifted from the right to "open 11 housing to the right to
remain in one's neighborhood and in one's city.
The Demand for Reform of Landlord and Tenant Court
Citizens have demanded a dispute settlement mechanism that is more than
a rent collection agency as many believe Landlord and Tenant Court to be.
Since the 1930s, citizen organizations have repeatedly complained about the
court's docket being overloaded and its structure biased in favor of land-
lords. And they have repeatedly called for the establishment of a housing
court which would accept tenant and landlord complaints on a equal basis.

- 67 -
The Demand to Plan
Si nee the 1940s, a number of citizen groups have demanded a comprehen-
sive plan for the city, within which neighborhood planning decisions could
be made. Lacking an adopted plan, citizen organizations in the 1950s sup-
ported zoning refonm as an alternative way of restraining development
pressures and preserving their neighborhoods. In 1974, the Home Rule Act
mandated a comprehensive plan but citizens are still demanding effective
participation in the development of that plan.
The Demand for Stable Communities
Since the beginning of urban renewal, vocal citizens have demanded that
government cease disrupting their communities and provide instead the
resources with which they could stabilize their own homes, businesses and
environment. They have argued that slum eradication, urban renewal and
gentrification have resulted in the continuous 11 uprooting 11 and relocation of
black families and that this has put burdens on and weakened the social
structure of 1ow income neighborhoods. They have a1so argued that federa 1
and District resources have been unduly concentrated. in the downtown area to
the detriment of the neighborhoods, and that the private financial institu-
tions have discriminated against the low income neighborhoods.
The Demand for Responsive Political and Administrative Structures
Behind all these demands lies the citizens• evident frustration over the
years with the difficulty of access to a local government which originally
had no independent housing department and, until recently, no planning of-
fice or agency responsible for c·ommunity or economic development and which,
in fact, admitted to very little responsibility in those fields. Only with
the advent of Home Rule did this situation change. However, citizens are
still trying to get the administration of many housing services and of
enforcement responsibility decentralized to the neighborhoods, and to gain
access to revenues which would allow them to be more effective in handling
their own housing, planning and neighborhood development needs.
Citizen Gains
It is worth rehearsing the gains which were consequent upon these
citizen efforts:
o in 1934, the establishment of the Alley Dwelling Authority, later the
National Capital Housing Authority
o in 1955, enactment of a comprehensive housing code
o in the 1960s, open housing and, later, open marketing
o in the 1960s, neighborhood planning in Shaw and Northwest #1 and
church-built low and moderate income housing
o in 1967, the public housing tenants organized over maintenance; in
1969 they carried out a massive rent strike and the NCHA Tenants

- 68 -
 Advisory Board was organized; in 1982 Kenilworth Courts became the
first tenant-managed NCHA property
o in 1965, there were virtually no tenant or low income protections;
now there are centro 1s on rents and conversions and the right-of-
first-refusal when a multi-family building is sold
o in 1965, there were no low income cooperatives; today there is a
sustained movement
o in 1974, the Javins decision changed tenant-landlord relationships
and the housing code became the standard for fulfillment of contract
o in the 1970s, financial "redlining" was stopped and the banks and
S&Ls made commitments to all city neighborhoods
o in the 1970s, the 11 Circuit Breaker" on the property tax and the
anti-speculation tax were passed
o in 1980, the D.C. Finance Agency was established.
Functions of the Citizen Organizations
Whether it was WHA in the 1940s and 1950s, with its housing inspections,
or MICCO, the Neighborhood Development Centers, Model Cities Commissioners,
the PACs, Neighbors, Inc., AMO, or other neighborhood or civic associations
or coalitions, citizen organizations have brought their intimate and current
knowledge of conditions and priorities in their neighborhoods to city hall.
Being non-governmental, they have been free to adopt, investigate and
propose novel ideas and programs. They frequently have been able to call on
extraordinary talents from the legal, architectural, research and federal
communities, as regular volunteers or on a pro bono basis. As a result of
these attributes, their proposals have frequently inspired and assisted in
formulating government policy.
The history suggests that there are a number of forms of citizen organi-
zations ranging from the broad-based, staffed organizations, which have
advantages in dealing with government, to the cooperative, condominium and
tenant associations, which can deal with the specific needs of their resi-
dents and negotiate with property owners. In addition to researching and
developi n~ new housing, tax, finance and economic development ideas for
governmen and advocating those ideas effectively, citizens organizations
must monitor the administration of programs in housing and housing-related
areas. Many more organizations such as Jubilee, MWPHA, MUSCLE, the churches
and others are needed to engage in direct action in the rehabilitation and
management of housing.
History also suggests that single-issue housing groups may be outmoded,
except for those involved directly in the construction, renovation or
management of housing, because the problems of public housing, low income
private housing and displacement are rooted in lack of employment related to
broader problems of the urban and national economy which require a
multi-issue approach. Federal and District housing subsidies large enough

- 69 -
to be effective today appear to be a thing of the past regardless of who is
president; and local legislation, except for 11 repair and deduct, .. is in
place and the great court struggles are over.
Consequently, what we wi 11 need in the future are more direct action
groups (churches, syndications, non-profit and low-yield corporations to
produce and rehabilitate housing for lower income residents); well-funded
and organized technical assistance groups to advise the direct action groups
in producing or rehabilitating units and the tenant or coop groups in
managing multi-unit housing; and a stronger city-wide housing organization
to coordinate the available technical assistance, to maintain· pressure on
the District government for enforcement, and to provide liaison between the
direct action groups and the various citizens organizations.
However, the need for ad hoc housing groups mobilizing around a specific
crisis will always arise. ~istory indicates that their vigor is related to
crisis and that these groups face a conflict of objectives if they attempt
to institutionalize to fulfill the functions of the direct-action and
city-wide groups. These mass-mobilizing organizations may be coalitions
such as the Washington Area Federat1on of Tenants Associations, City-Wide
Housing Coalition, the Housing Action Council or the D.C. Tenants Solidarity
Union. Or they may be ad hoc responses to crisis, such as the Public
Housing Tenants Rent Strike!Organizing Committee of the 1960s.
Technical assistance and financial resources will be needed for the
activities of all these diverse organizations ranging from the broad coali-
tions and city-wide membership groups to the tenant-purchase or tenant-
management groups in particular buildings. This makes the suptort groups of
predominant importance: the legal resource groups (such as N S, University
Legal Services, Harrison Inst1tute tor Pub I ic L_aw and the Lawyers Conunittee
for Civil Right Under Law), the groups giving technical assistance in
structuring and carrying through programs (such as MUSCLE, MwPHA, Jub1 lee,
etc.) and the groups carrying on research on housing issues (such as D.C.
PIRG, Greater Washington Research Center, UDC's Institute for District
Affairs, City-wide Housing Foundation, MWPHA and its Housing Opportunities
Center). In addition to these housing-related organizations, there are
community-oriented groups which perform the important function of integrat-
ing housing with other issues of the neighborhood and city (the ANCs, the
civic and neighborhood associations, the D.C. Citizens Planning Coalition,
etc.).
Public Policy Recommendations of Citizen Groups
Representing Consumers of Housing
Citizen groups have made a number of recommendations over the years as
to ways in which the District government might respond to issues they have
raised. Many of these recommendations are still applicable.
Issue 1: Affordability
Due to the drying up of federal funds and the pressures on the District
budget, the ability to build or renovate housing for lower income indi-
viduals will depend in the future on a patchwork of elements which are dif-
ficult for non-profit or other inexperienced developers to combine--putting

- 70 -
together such things as syndications of federal tax· advantages including
those advantages dependent on gaining historic designation, using Finance
Agency bond financing, assistance from pools of local financial institu-
tions, government provisions of surplus properties owned by the District
government or acquired through tax delinquencies, or owned by the public
school system, RLA or HUD. MWPHA has long urged the District government to
amend its procedures so that it may take control of properties with severe
code vi o1at.i ons or tax de 1i nquenc i es and offer them at cost to deve 1opers of
low and moderate income housing.
Recoaaendations:
The District government should:
1. continue rent control on existing units,
2. strengthen the technical advisory capacity of citizen city-wide
organizations to act as such a one-stop advisory centers,
3. strengthen the staff resources of the HFA .or DHCD so that they can
provide such advice, and
4. call on the pro bono organizational skills of the city•s housing
law finms to offer clinics to advise would-be developers of low and
moderate income housing on the tax, finance and regulatory aspects
of their proposals. This is seen not as packaging but rather as
presenting the various options which are available.
Issue 2: Safe and Decent Housing
Serious code violations are still prevalent in lower income housing.
Strict enforcement of the housing regulations have been a dominant citizen
demand for at least fifty years. Since the District does not have adequate
inspection and enforcement machinery, it must seek other ways to ensure safe
and decent housing.
RecODIIlendations:
The District government should:
1. budget funds to abate serious housing code violations rapidly
itself, or
2. pass repair and deduct legislation to allow tenants to abate
serious violations.
Issue 3: Dweller Control
Tenants of public and private housing have argued that tenant alienation
can be reduced and responsibi 1ity enhanced by either tenant management,
which leads to shared responsibility and negotiation with ownership, or by
tenant conversion to ownership.

- 71 -
 Reccmnendations:
The District government should:
1. move as quickly as possible to expand tenant management or coopera-
tive ownership in the low-density public housing properties.
2. do. everything it can to facilitate cooperative ownership for
moderate income families including:
a) urging local financial institutions to provide mortgage
finance for the purchase of individual units, as the Federal
National Mortgage Association does in other states, to make
the units saleable; and
b) enlisting the assistance of national cooperative assistance
groups--the Cooperativ& Housing Foundation, National Associa-
tion of Housing Cooperatives and the Cooperative League of the
U.S.--in District projects.
Issue 4: •openu Housing
Two types of discrimination have existed in the District: individual
racial/social discrimination and economic discrimination (the displacement
of an economic and racial class from a neighborhood by gentrification). In
the open-housing area, currently the D.C. Office of Human Rights is involved
in fact finding; citizen groups believe it could call on private organiza-
tions to do·studies, such as the study of discriminatory advertising by HOC,
and should call on the Washington Lawyers Committee for Human Rights Under
Law to appear with complainants when property owners appear with their
1awyers.
Recmaendation:
1. In the open-housing area, the D.C. Office of Human Rights should
use the services of citizens technical assistance groups to extend
its influence.
Issue 5: Landlord and Tenant Court
There have been calls for refonn of Landlord and Tenant Court for the
last forty years because of the inequity of a court which will only hear
complaints from one party to a dispute. Little has been done and Landlord
and Tenant Court is still viewed merely as a collection agency for the land-
lords; and the overwhelming caseload of the court imposes excessive costs on
all parties involved.
Reccx.endation:
The District government should:
1. should move as quickly as possible to adopt a dispute-settlement
mechanism which can efficiently dispose of landlord and tenant com-
plaints on an equitable basis. This mechanism might be a housinq

- 72 -
 court, as has been called for by MWPHA and as exists in other
cities. In addition to the hearing officers in such a court,
housing inspectors are attached to the court along with ancillary
services that support court decision-making.
Issue 6: Planning
Citizen organizations have long desired a sufficiently specific compre-
hensive plan to control commercial development pressures on their neighbor-
hoods and to provide them with a reliable context within which to do their
neighborhood planning. Citizens have complained that they are. not given a
sufficiently active role in the city planning process.
Rec011111endations:
The District government should:
1. develop a specific land-use plan which incorporates accepted neigh-
borhood plans, and bring zoning into confonmity with it.
2. wherever possible, instead of providing elaborate briefings on
draft plans, present citizens with clear and brief alternatives and
ask them to respond to those, so that they may genuinely part ici-
pate in plan development.
3. in the course of deve 1oping the comprehensive p1an, encourage a
full debate of the density issue, making it clear that office
development will be controlled but that, in a 11 magnet 11 city of
fixed boundaries the alternative to higher residential densities is
to force the poor into more and more 1imited areas or out of the
city entirely.
Issue 7: Neighborhood Stability and Economic Development
A repeated citizen demand is that for stable neighborhoods which re-
quires economic development of the neighborhoods.
Recommendations:
The District government should:
1. encourage neighborhood-based groups to convert into 1oca 1 deve 1op-
ment corporations (such as the 14th Street PAC) and engage in
job-training activities (such as the Old Anacostia Repair Service).
2. provide funds for these activities from the increased taxes from
future development of the central employment area, and from an
equitable use of the proceeds of industrial revenue bonds to finance
small-scale development in the neighborhoods as well as large
development downtown.
3. reinstitute the speculation tax and should more aggressively to
bring vacant land into use and deteriorated properties up to Code
leve 1.

- 73 -
Issue 8: Responsive Politieal aad Administrative Structures
Citizens seek neighborhood institutions capable of neighborhood
planning, housing and economic development, and of enforcing and monitoring
government regulations in the housing and employment area.
Reconmendations:
The District government should:
1. not fragment communities by establishing competing and overlapping
structures as occurred in the past in the cases of the PACs, Service
Area Committees, Model Cities, MICCO, the NDCs, etc.
2. strengthen the ANCs' ability to plan, to support neighborhood
housing and economic development efforts, and to monitor and enforce
government regulations in the .neighborhoods. This would be enhanced
by reliable funding by a central ANC office to provide technical
support when needed, and by giving the ANCs standing to sue where
developers have not perfonned on promised local hiring and subcon-
tracting.

- 74 -
 NOTES

lwashington Star, December 19, 1883.

2Georg e M. Kober, Hi stor
the City of Washingto~n-,--;:;D:-.~.~~~~:-~-....;;....,::--~,_,;;,;,....;;....,~..;;;.;;;;..~!..-,;..~~o:.:.mp:..:;a_n....;.y.;.:,
1907), 3rd ed., 1927, p. 16.
3Ibid.
4James Borchert, Alley Life in Washington (Urbana, Illinois: Univer-
sity of Illinois Press, 1980), p. 45.
the District of Columbia, Rent and
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~o~f~C~o~lu~m~b~i~a (Washington, D.C.: U.S.

6James W. Ring, typescript of speech on January 11, 1944 ( Metropo 1i tan

Washington Planning and Housing Association Archives (MWPHA)), p. 5.
7Ibid.
8Appleton P•. Clark, Jr., "The Limited-Dividend Housing Companies of
Washington, D.C.," ·paper read before the National Conference on Slum
Clearance, July 7, 1933, repri·nted in the Public Utilities Commission, Rent
and Housing Conditions, pp. 94-96. --
9Letter from the vice-president of the Public Utilities Commission of
the District of Columbia in Public Utilities C~nunission, Rent and Housing
Conditions, p. 33.
lOJames Ring,~· cit., pp. 7-8.
llJohn Ihlder, typescript of statement to Banking and Currency Com-
mittee, United States Senate, April 29, 1947, p. 3, (MWPHA) Archives.
12J. Bernard Wyckoff, "A Capsule History of the Washington Housing
Associ at ion, •• ( n.d.), MWPHA Archives.
13According to their letterhead of 1934, members included Mrs.
Archbold and Mrs. Glover of the great land-owning facilities; two Delanos
(the President's uncle and Mrs. Roosevelt); Colonel Ulysses S. Grant III;
Major Campbell Johnson of the U.S. Selective Service Commission; Clarence
Phelps Dodge; Canon Anson Phelps of the National Cathedral; Rev. Robert Wood
Brooks of Lincoln Congregational Church; Judge James A. Cobb; Mrs. Archibald
Hopkins of Dupont Circle; Dr. Warren Falls Draper; the investment banker,
William J. Flather Jr.; the merchant Joseph D. Kaufman; Leifur Magnusson;
Stanton C. Peele, Esq.; Laurence Schmeckebier of Brookings Institution;
former secretary to President Wilson, Joseph P. Tumulty; J. Bernard Wyckoff
of Nation's Business; and Florence D. Stewart of the Junior League.
14James Ring, speech, January 11, 1944 (MWPHA Archives), p. 9.

- 75 -
 15washington Herald, March 14, 1935.
16wyckoff, A Capsule History ...
11

17D.C. Emergency Housing Committee, 0 Third Report of the Planning

Subconunittee," July 9, 1946 (MWPHA Archives).
lBNational Capital Housing Authority, Press Release, April 1, 1947
(MWPHA Archives).
19Ihlder, statement to Banking and Currency Committee, April 29, 1947,
pp. 6-7.
20Ibid.
21Ihlder, Supplement to statement to Banking and Currency Co11111ittee,
pp. 4-5.
22Held in 1936 under joint sponsorship of Washington Housing Associa-
tion, local churches, Americans for Democratic Action, National Capital Park
and Planning Commission, and the federal Public Works Administration.
23washington Housing Association (WHA) Annual Report, 1938 (MWPHA
Archives).
24MWPHA Archives.
25D.C. Committee on Enforcement of Minimum Housing Standards, "A
Bill, .. August 11, 1949 (MWPHA Archives).
26wHA, A Housing Court for the District of Columbia, .. May 25, 1949
11

(MWPHA Archives).
27wHA, 11 Housing Letter, 11 May 1957 (MWPHA Archives).
28washington Star, November 15, 1955.
29ulysses S. Grant, III, letter to Thomas J. Groom, chair, Zoning
Advisory Committee, December 17, 1955 (MWPHA Archives).
30Ibid.
3lwashington Post, December 10, 1955.
32Ernest Henry, 11 The Use of Conmunity Chest Funds for Propaganda and
Lobbying Purposes," Washington, D.C., June 2, 1945 (MWPHA Archives).
33Home Builders Monthly, vol. 10, 1954.
34community Chest of Washington, D.C., 11
Executive Committee Report, 11

1954 (MWPHA Archives).

- 76 -
 35w; 11 iam Jones, The Housing of Neroes in Washington, D.C. (Washing-
ton, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1929 •
36sarnes, Wi 11 i am Robert, "The Origins of Urban Renew a1: The Pub 1i c
Housing Controversy and the Emergence of a Redeve 1opment Program in the
District of Columbia, 1942-1949. 11 (Ph.D. Syracuse University, August 1972,
p. 120.)
37Ibid., p. 123.
38Jbid.; see pp. 106-146 for a discussion of these hearings.
39Jbid.
40Jbid.
41A "slum11 was defined by the American Public Health Association as an
area where the majority of the homes were deemed "not fit for human habita-
tion ...
42wHA press release, September 12, 1949 (MWPHA Archives).
43According to the Washington Star of February 20, 1949, sixty percent
of the land was v~cant.
· 44public Hearing before the D.C. Commissioners, February 25, 1949
(MWPHA Archives).
45washington Star, February 11, 1935.
46washington Times, February 4, 1935.
47wHA, 11
Facts About Marshall Heights, 11 (MWPHA Archives).
48washington Star, February 20, 1949.
49wHA Roundtable Conference, statement to Housing Subcommittee,
Banking and Currency Committee, U.S. Senate, December 12, 1949, p. 2 (MWPHA
Archives).
50ibid.
51washington Post, May 18, 1949.
52wHA press release, September, 12, 1949.
53D.C. Federation of Civic Associations, Testimony before Senate
Appropriations Committee, March 5, 1948 (MWPHA Archives).
54Ibid., (Emphasis added).
55 Ibid. , p. 3-4.

- 77 -
 56washington Star, Sepiember 24, 1949.
57o.c. Federation of Civic Associations et al., Testimony on Housing
Act of 1949 before Committee on Banking & Currency, U.S. House of Repre-
sentatives, 1949, pp. 4-5 (MWPHA Archives).
58statement by Anna Miller, executive director, WHA.
59wHA, ... Annual Report, 1949-1950, 11 p. 6.
60wHA, Letter regarding estab 1i shment of 51 urn Clearance Counc i 1, March
15, 1950 (MWPHA Archives).
61James W. Rouse and Nathaniel S. Keith, "No Slums in Ten Years, A
Workab 1e Program for Urban Renewa 1, 11 Report to the Conmi s s i oners of the
District of Columbia, January 1955.
62wHA Urban Renewal Committee, Report of the Subconmittee on Recom-
mendations 7, 10, 11, 20 in "No Slums in Ten Years," pp. 2-7.
63James Banks, interview, January 1983.
64charles Horsky, president, WHA, testimony before the District Com-
missioners, May 14, 1956, pp. 3-4 (MWPHA Archives).
65D.C. Redevelopment Land Agency (RLA), "The Southwest Urban Renewal
Area," July 1970, p. 2.
66southwest Neighborhood Assembly, Southwester newsletter, June 1968.
67RLA, 11
Southwest Relocation Data," revised October 1970, p. 3.
68Margot Hornblower, 11
Tract Splits Southwest," Washington Post,
August 1, 1974, p. Hl.
69Ibid., p. H3.
70for instance, in planning the new town at Fort Lincoln, the contest-
ing citizen groups 11 United on only one issue: they opposed the heavy low
income emphasis, leaving one building a 120-unit public housing project for
the elderly as the legacy of the initial effort.•• WHA, Report of the Urban
Renewal Committee to the Board of Directors, March 13, 1961 (MWPHA
Archives), p. 243.
71Howard University Community. Service Project--Second Precinct
(Washington, D.C.: Howard University, August 1962), p. 20.
72congressman Walter Fauntroy, interview, November 1982.
73Reverend Fauntroy's New Bethel, Reverend Gibson's First Rising Mt.
Zion, the United Church of Christ, The Church of God, The House of Prayer,
United Conception Church, The Temple Church of God in Christ.

- 78 -
 74Reverend Ernest Gibson, interview, Washington, D.C., November 1982.
75Eugene L. Meyer, "Urban Renewal and Housing: Rhetoric and Reality,"
in The Federal Social Dollar In Its Own Back ard, ed. by Sar Levitan,
(Wash1ngton, D•• , Bureau of Nationa Affairs, 9 , pp. 238-241.
76Ibid.
77Ibid., p. 257.
78Gibson, interview.
79walterene Swanston, Comrnunity Organizations:
11
the Voice of the
Poor," in The Federal Social Dollar, p. 204.
80Ibid., pp. 206-207.
81Banks, interview.
82Howard Croft, interview.
83H Street north to Florida Avenue between 6th and 1st Streets, N.W.
84some 6000 fami 1ies in Census Tracts 46, 47, 86 and 87 who in 1968
had a median income of $4025 and unemployment of over nine percent. One-
third of the housing was 11 Substandard" and more than three-fourths of the
area was subjected to dislocation due to urban renewal, freeway construction
and expansion or relocation of five schools.
85urban League Neighborhood Development Center (NDC), Monthly Report,
December 1966.
86urban League NDC, OEO Submission, FY69.
87urban League NDC, OEO Submission, FY68.
88croft and Fauntroy interviews.
89conunission on the Organization of the District of Columbia Govern-
ment, 11 Report of the Task Force on Housing" (Washington, D.C., U.S. Depart-
ment of Housing and Urban Development, January 1972), p. 39.
90District of Columbia Model Cities Program, Second Year Plan, 1971.
9lwashington Post, March 20, 1971.
92Ibid., September 2, 1971.
93Ibid., April 23, 1973.
94Banks, interview.
95Borchert, Alley Life, pp. 4-14.

- 79 -
 96colonel Campbell C. Johnson, president, WHA, "Statement Regarding
Integration in Housing in the District of Columbia, .. October 22, 1953 (MWPHA
Archives).
97wHA, 1943 Report to the Community Chest of D.C.
98carol Rende, interview, January 1983.
99Neighbors, Inc. community office.
lOOcaro1 Rende, interview, April 1983.
lOlwashington Planning and Housing Association (WPHA) Report on the
Commission Hearings, April 1961 (MWPHA Archives).
102wPHA, 11
Housing Letter," November 1961 (MWPHA Archives).
Hl3A group formed with Neighbor, lnt.;.'S a:sistance in 1959 to dissemi-
nate information concerning residential displacement and volunteer efforts
to oppose it.
104wPHA statement to the District Commissioners, 1968 (MWPHA Archives).
105Later this be~ame the Housing Opportunities Center of MWPHA
106MWPHA Housing Opportunities Center, Fair Housing: Unfair Advertis-
ing, a study of newspaper display advertising for new sales housing in
metropolitan Washington, D.C., 1972-1975, pp. 46-52.
107MWPHA, 1976 Annual Report.
108sanks, interview.
109Ibid.
llOphyllis Martin, Director, Southwest Community House, interview.
llllbid.
112Ibid.
113sanks, interview.
114Kimi Gray, president, National Capital Housing Authority (NCHA)
Tenants Advisory Board, interview.
115Ibid.
116Martin, interview.
117Gray, interview.
118Ibid.

- 80 ;. .
 119Ibid.
120Ibid.

12lwHA Report on Reexamination of the Need for a Central Relocation

Service, 1958, pp. 6-7 (MWPHA Archives).
122Gray, interview.
123Joint ANC-Public Housing Hearing, St. Vincent•s Catholic Church, M
and North Capitol Streets, May 1982.
124oownie, Leonard, Mortgage on America (New York: Prager Publishers,
1974), pp. 3-41; D.C. Commission on Resjdentia1 ·Mortgage Investment,
Strategy for Change: Housing Finance in Washington, D.C. (1977), pp. 4-10.
125uThe Slums After 10 Years, .. Washington Post, February 8, 1965.
126uHeated Debate Marks Tour of Slum Housing in District, .. Washington
Post, December 8, 1965, p. D4.
127senjamin Fogerty, 11
Squalor in Sl urns--A Report on D.C.' II Evening
Star, October 3, 1965.
128Quoted in Kar 1 Henry Strauss, 11 From Feuda 1ism to Javi ns: A His-
torical Perspective on the Landlord/Tenant Relationship, .. a report prepared
for the Metropolitan Washington Planning and Housing Association, May 1977,
p. 18.
129strauss, Ibid., p. 17.
130 I b i d. , p • 18 •
131Ibid., p. 19.
132 I b i d. , p • 18 •
133 Ibid. , p. 19.
134lbid.

135lbid.' pp. 19-21.

136lbid.
13711 An Unhappy Memory, .. Washington Afro-American, April 24, 1965.
138lbid.
139nThe •House• They Lived In, 11 Washington Afro-American, Apri 1 24,
1965.
140strauss, 11
From Feudalism,•• p. 26.

- 81 -
 141Javins v. First Nationa~ Realty Corp., U.S. App. D.C. 369, 428 F.2d
1071 (1970).

142Davi d Satter, 11 Tenant Unions Gain Support in Southeast, 11 Washington

Post, August 11, 1968, p. D7.
143Ibid.
144Ibid.

145nTenants Open Housing Drive," Washington Afro-American, April 3,

1965.

146"A11 in Picketed Apartment Ordered Out, 11 Washington Post, November

2, 1965.
147ncourt Okays Eviction, Sets Re.-Rental Terms, 11 Washington Star,
October 16, 1969.

148usw Tenants Sue About Rent Raises, 11 Wash~ngton Afro-American, May

17 t 1969.

149"Tenant Rights Backed," Washington Star, October 30, 1969; and

"Battle at 436 Continues Until a New Day in Court," Washington Afro-
American, August 5, 1969.

150wil1iam Raspberry, 11
Rent War Goes Up in Class,•• Washington Post,
December 11~ 1968.
151Ibid.
152Ibid.
11
15Jwi 11 i am Raspberry, Landlord-Tenant War Spreads, 11 Washington Post,
October 20, 1969.
154lbid.

155 11 140 Tenants Win New Day on Eviction Action by District, 11 Evening
Star, August 22, 1970.
156urenants Win 1st Round in Eviction Case, .. Washington Post,
October 7, 1970.
157nJury Tri a1 Promised in Luxury Rent Strike, 11. Washington Post,
April 17, 1970.

158r-1aurine Mclaughlin, "Scale of Rents Set in Tenants• Stri'ke,"

Washington Post, December 23, 1970.
159winston Groom, 11
Judge Backs Rent Boycott," Washington Star-News,
December 11, 1973.

- 82 -
 . 160christopher Wright, 11
No. 1 Housing Problem Cited," Washington Star,
March 9, 1970.
161 Leon Dash, 11
Tenants Win Pact on Repairs, II Washington Post,
November 28, 1974.
162sue Cronk, ••Landlords Blame Tenants for Slums, Score Repairs Plan,"
Washington Post, August 16, 1965.
163Harvey Kabaker, "'Tenants• Rights• Proposal Caught in Crossfire
Here,a Star, March 15, 1970.
164Leonard Downie, Jr. and Richard E. Prince, 11
D.C. Backs New Rules on
Tenants, •• Washington Post, March 4, 1970.
165Bob Woodward, 11Some Leases Fixed to Allow Rents to Rise," Washing-
ton Post, February 19, 1972.
166fugene L. Meyer, 11Court Asked to Allow Rise in Area Rents,•• Wash-
ington Post, January 7, 1973.
167Jerry Oppenheimer, ••Tenant Group Considering Rent Strike," Evening
Star, February 12, 1973.
16Bwi11iam A. Elsen, ••Tenants Ask Nixon to Cut Rent Rises," Washington
Post, February 12, 1973, p. Cl.
169Jack Kneece, "Area Rents Rise 38%, 11 Evening Star, March 8, 1973.
Ask Probe of Raised Rents, .. Washington

- 83 -
 172Margaret M. Reuss and' Jerome s. Paige, "The Changing Urban Economic
Base: An Essay on a Broader Framework for Analyzing Neighborhood Revitali-
zation," Working Papers in the Social Sciences, College of Liberal and Fine
Arts, University of the District of Columbia, Fall 1981, pp. ·sl-60.
173Margaret M. Reuss and Jerome S. Paige, "Elements of the Stages of
Neighborhood Revitalization in Washington, D.C., .. Working Papers in Eco-
nomics, Department of Economics, University of the Di str1 ct of Co 1umbi a,
June 1978.
174tierbert J. Bi xhorn, "The Use of MAGIS to Develop a Model of Neigh-
borhood Change, .. MAGIS (D.C. Office of Planning and Development, March
1980), pp. 5-8.
175Jimmy Garrett, interview, 1982.
176urenants Block Rent Decontrol, .. The City-wide Struggle, Fall 1977,
p. 1.
177Bob Jenkins, interview, April 14, 1983.
178Looney and·Evelyn Onwachi {1982), and Garrett interviews.
179Looney, interview.
180Garrett, interview.
181Ibid.
182Ibid.
183Ibid.
184Ibid.
1851bid.
186sarrett, Onwachi, Looney, Lynn Cunningham, interviews, 1982.
187Garrett, interview.
188Looney and Onwachi interviews.
189Looney and Cunningham interviews.
190Bill Black, ••3 D.C. Groups Push for Renters• Rights," Washington
Post, August 14, 1982.
191Roger Turpin, interview, 1982; and Southeast Vicariate Cluster
Tenants Union, interview, 1983.
192Mike Crescenzo, interview, 1982.

- 84 -
 193rerry Flood, The Marietta, (Washington, D.C.: Jubilee Housing
Inc., December 1980), p. 11.

194sob Boulter, Wendy Johns, Luis Grillo, interview, February 10, 1983.
195Ibid.

196Ibid.

197Blair Gately, "Housing Crisis: Ownership May Be the. Solution,"

Washington Post, May 18, 1978.

19~WPHA "From Rental to Cooperative: A Tenant Initiative.".

199WHA Housing Letter, August 1958.

200D.C. Commission on Residential Mortgage Investment, Residential

Financing Practices in the District of Columbia, May 6, 1976, p. 10.

201Margaret Reuss and Jerome S. Paige, "Private Neighborhood Revitali-

zation, Low-Income Residents, and Public Policy,•• unpublished, May 1979; and
Jeffrey R. Henig, .. Gentrification in Adams Morgan, Political and Conunereial
Consequences of Neighborhood Change," G.W. Washington Studies, No. 9
(Washington, D.C.:. George Washington University, 1982).

202MWPHA, The Advocate, June 1979, p. 6.

203Henig, .QJ!· cit., p. 45.

204Laura Murray, 11 Ri ggs Bank Is Target of .Area Boycott, 11 Star, June
16, 1979, p. B-1; Kenneth Bredemeir, 11 Riggs Bank,'' Post, Augustl6, 1979;
Martha M. Hamilton, 11 Riggs Accused of Failing Area----,re,ghborhoods, .. Post,
November 13, 1980.
205Nancy L. Ross, 11
Preliminary Approval Given Riggs Branches,•• Post,
May 16, 1981.

206washington Post, December 11, 1978.

207Ibid., February 12, 1979.

208Memo on Priori ties for Downtown to the Mayor• s Downtown Cornnittee
and Staff from Committee Members, P. Childs, M. Reuss and M. Schlefer, March
9, 1982, p. 3.
209D.C. Neighborhood Platfonm, adopted October 20, 1979.

- 85 -
THE D.C. HISTORY AND PUBLIC POLICY PROJECT
STAFF 1982- 1983

Steven J. Diner, Project Director and Author

Helen Young, Project Administrator and Editor
Sam J. Dennis, Author
Jerome S. Paige, Author
Margaret M. Reuss, Author
Irving Richter, Author
Linda Coleman, Research Assistant
Ira Denson, Research Assistant
Audrey Hair, Research Assistant
Marian Ricks, Research Assistant
Katherin Thomas, Research Assistant
Kenneth T. Jackson, Historical Consultant
George V. Zito, Project Evaluator