WIN’s vision entails leveraging public lands to establish opportunities for mixed-income affordable housing and enable low and middle-income individuals to achieve homeownership, thereby fostering the creation and accumulation of generational wealth.
Affordable Housing/Public Lands/Public Housing
Big Picture/Goals
What we are working on
Building Power around Public Housing
WIN leaders are deepening relationships with our neighbors in DC public housing across the District to ensure ALL resident voices are heard and that the DCHA (District of Columbia Housing Authority) remains accountable to residents. WIN is organizing to ensure public housing properties across the District can voice and act on their concerns from lead and mold remediation to maintaining affordability.
RAD Done Right
Public Housing has been chronically underfunded year after year. In 2012, Congress created the RAD program (Rental Assistance Demonstration) with the hopes of allowing public housing authorities to work with partners who want to invest in building improvements. Alongside public housing residents, WIN leaders have researched the ways this program can succeed and the ways it can fail. We are organizing to keep residents centered in the decision-making process, build first where possible, address ongoing maintenance issues, and prevent displacement.
Public Housing and RAD Done Right We want to see renovated and updated public housing where our neighbors can live in dignity without being displaced. WIN is organizing to ensure public housing properties across the District can voice and act on their concerns from lead and mold remediation to maintaining affordability and build first.
WIN is organizing for the renovation of public housing so people can live in dignity without displacement. Specifically for:
- Commitment to working with WIN and residents in Benning Terrace, Hopkins, Judiciary House, Langston, Potomac Gardens Senior, and Family and Districtwide around their specific resident-led priorities and visions for repairs, renovations, and redevelopment.
- Redevelopment and renovation to INCREASE and never DECREASE the number of affordable units. 1:1 replacement should mean replacement in-kind so that a three-bedroom unit replaces a three-bedroom unit. If an accessible unit is destroyed, then this unit should be replaced with an accessible unit.
- Build First to minimize displacement of residents. Too often, the promise of redevelopment has led to displacement. New units should be built first before residents have to relocate.
Affordable Housing
In over two decades of on-the-ground work, WIN has worked alongside city-wide allies to produce over 1,300 units of affordable rental and homeownership units, with hundreds more in the pipeline. We have organized for the improvement and preservation of hundreds more units. Year in, year out, WIN has contributed, along with many other advocates in the District, to the effort to fund affordable housing in the DC budgets.
We are making a concerted effort to engage with hundreds of constituents throughout the District and our WIN Ward 3 Congregations Affordable Housing Work Group is prioritizing the creation of affordable housing in Upper Northwest. WIN believes that if individuals work and serve the District’s residents, they should have access to housing they can afford in the District.
FUNDING FOR AFFORDABLE HOUSING We support DC government funding for the Housing Production Trust Fund, rent supplements, operating and capital for the Housing Authority, and other sources. We stand together with allied organizations including CNHED and DCFPI in our support.
Public Lands
More recently, WIN has begun organizing for the conversion of public land in Ward 3 into affordable, dignified housing. Sites like the Chevy Chase Library, Tenleytown Library, the WMATA Bus Garage, and various parcels of NPS land have been identified for potential development. WIN envisions the use of public lands for an inclusive and affordable District.WIN envisions the use of public lands allocated to mixed-income-affordable housing and low and middle-income homeownership opportunities that help create and build generational wealth. Specifically:
- A mix of affordable units, including both deeply affordable and middle-income
- 1000 homes for Black homeownership on Reservation 13.
- When D.C. gets the adjacent RFK land, let’s turn parking lots into thousands of affordable homes, including 2,000 affordable homeownership opportunities.
- New affordable housing units on public land in Ward 3, including WMATA land, parcels adjacent to Fort, Reno, Chevy Chase & Tenleytown Libraries
- Maximize building of new homes —while preserving existing homes at properties owned by the DC Housing Authority.
