The Ward 3 Democrats, at their meeting Wednesday, December 6th at 7 p.m., are hosting a panel on housing vouchers and their impact on rent-stabilized buildings. This virtual meeting is open to the public, but to watch the panel, you must register in advance.
The panelists are Ward 3 Council member Matt Frumin, Department of Human Services Director Laura Zeilinger, and Van Ness South Tenants Association leader Harry Gural.
A Facebook post promoting the event refers to the voucher program being discussed as “Housing Choice,” and Frumin has some related legislation in the works.
But Zeilinger’s inclusion suggests that DHS’s “Housing First” programs will also be discussed.
First, let’s explain the differences.
Housing Choice, formerly known as Section 8, is a federally funded program focused on low-income renters who need assistance, and is administered by the DC Housing Authority (DCHA). The waiting list is thousands of names long, and has been closed since 2013. Moving up the list can be a years-long process. The federal government hasn’t changed DC’s allotment in years, and local municipalities can provide additional funding, but Street Sense in DCist reported in 2022 that the District allocated only enough money to take an additional 310 people off the waitlist in the 2022 fiscal year, and 20 in FY2023. One man in the article waited 15 years for his name to rise to the top, during which time he experienced several bouts of homelessness and ended up in housing under a Housing First program.
Housing First is an approach to moving people from homelessness into permanent housing, recommended by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, and used by the DC Department of Human Services (DHS) in the administration of its own housing voucher programs, which include permanent supportive housing (PSH) for the chronically homeless, including intensive services, and targeted assisted vouchers (TAH) for individuals or households who need fewer services. We explain more here.
The DHS programs have seen rapid growth. DHS, in its frequently updated “A Path to Ending Homelessness” report, said it added more than 5,000 new PSH and TAH vouchers in the 2022 and 2023 fiscal years, more than doubling participation in programs that issued their first vouchers in 2017. Additionally, the DC Department of Behavioral Health Services and programs targeting veterans and returning citizens issue their own housing vouchers. The growth in the DSH programs corresponds with significant upswing in voucher renters in at least six neighborhood rent-stabilized buildings, first reported in 2019.
DCHA sets all voucher payment rates, including those under Housing Choice and Housing First, by determining “rent reasonableness.” HUD blasted DCHA in an October 2022 report for paying landlords rents well in excess of what it considers fair market rates. And The Washington Post and DCist reported at length in February and March on DCHA policies that allowed property owners to “command double or triple what they would otherwise collect” from unsubsidized residents of rent-stabilized buildings, creating incentives to turn the properties into de facto public housing.
In March, Council member Frumin introduced legislation seeking to address the overpayments in rent-stabilized buildings by requiring that DCHA “remove the exemption of housing vouchers from rent stabilization laws.”
Whatever the focus, the panelists have much to discuss. Register for the December 6th meeting to hear what they have to say.
Green Eyeshades says
In paragraph eight, three paragraphs from the end, the main blogpost links to a story in the Washington Post in April 2019 which was exclusively about Sedgewick Gardens. That 2019 story said nothing about other rent-controlled buildings in the District or even in our neighborhood.
The Post probably was not aware in 2019 that the corporate owner(s) and property manager of Sedgewick Gardens had engaged in a racist conspiracy preventing voucher holders from renting in buildings owned and managed by Daro Management Services throughout the District. In fact, in the 2019 story linked in the main blogpost, the Post quoted a Daro Management Services saying this: “A spokeswoman for Daro, which owns and manages Sedgwick Gardens, said the company had not taken steps either ‘to solicit or discourage voucher holders from applying’ and noted that it was illegal for landlords to discriminate against tenants receiving government rental subsidies.” But two and a half years later, in October 2022, DC’s Attorney General proved Daro was lying.
Nearly a year after the Post story about Sedgewick Gardens, in February 2020, DC’s Attorney General sued Daro Management Services, Daro Realty and other corporate owners and property managers of Sedgewick Gardens and 14 other apartment buildings in the District, along with the managing director of the corporate parent of the corporate conglomerate and a real estate broker who served as a senior executive for several of the Daro affiliates, for brazen and deliberate discrimination against voucher holders:
https://oag.dc.gov/release/ag-racine-sues-major-district-landlord-responsible
Then, in October 2022, DC’s Attorney General announced a historic settlement which included a massive fine of Ten Million Dollars, a 15-year ban on the real estate broker who was the managing director of the corporate conglomerate, and loss of management control by Daro over any buildings it owned and/or managed in the District:
“Attorney General Karl Racine today announced a settlement requiring three real estate firms—DARO Management Services, DARO Realty, and Infinity Real Estate—and several individual defendants to pay a landmark $10 million in penalties for illegally discriminating against renters in the District who use Section 8 housing vouchers and other forms of housing assistance. This is the largest civil penalty in a housing discrimination case in U.S. history.” [snip]
“In its lawsuit, OAG initially alleged that DARO illegally charged Section 8 voucher recipients extra fees and posted discriminatory housing advertisements. These allegations, and more, were confirmed through numerous documents obtained in the course of the litigation, in which Defendants admitted their illegal scheme in writing. For example, in an email to defendant Carissa Barry, defendant Jared Engel instructed her: ‘No voucher/sec-8 – find ways to reject, applicant must meet every requirement (credit, security deposit, income, etc), in the case that we have to lease to them which we should find every way out of, don’t put in renovated units. No transfers.’
“OAG also uncovered evidence that DARO implemented strict new standards for rental applications to prevent subsidy holders from qualifying. In an email to defendant Steven Kassin, defendant Carissa Barry [the real estate broker and senior executive of affiliated firms] wrote ‘off the record I am doing everything I can to reduce if not eliminate the section 8 program from our communities. We have tightened our screening criteria as much as humanly possible…’ OAG also discovered that DARO refused to accept subsidies from certain programs entirely, including renters in D.C.’s Rapid Re-Housing Program and those receiving housing assistance through the Community Partnership for the Prevention of Homelessness and Pathways to Housing.
“Under the terms of a settlement agreement, the three real estate companies and its principals will be required to:
* “Pay $10,000,000 in civil penalties for illegal housing discrimination … [snip]
* “Permanently stop managing residential property in D.C. … [snip]
“Forfeit a professional license: Carissa Barry will be required to surrender her District of Columbia real estate licenses and not seek reinstatement or seek to apply for a new license for 15 years.” [snip]
https://oag.dc.gov/release/ag-racine-announces-largest-civil-penalty-housing
The Attorney General’s office posted a copy of the Consent Order containing the settlement agreement here:
https://oag.dc.gov/sites/default/files/2022-10/Daro%20Consent%20Order_fully%20executed.pdf
The Washington Post covered that settlement in detail, in October last year, including this quote from then-Attorney General Karl Racine:
“Racine said at the news conference that enforcing anti-discrimination laws is vital to preventing displacement of longtime residents.
” ‘This discrimination has perpetuated Jim Crow racism that pushes Black and Brown families out of certain areas of the District of Columbia,’ he said.
“D.C. officials documented discriminatory practices at 15 buildings owned or operated by the companies named in its lawsuit, throughout Wards 1, 2 and 3, according to court documents. The buildings, officials said, were concentrated in some of the District’s most affluent areas.
“Building managers that ferret out applicants receiving government assistance in the form of vouchers and other aid programs violate the city’s Human Rights Act, which bans source-of-income discrimination.” [snip]
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/20/dc-voucher-penalty-settlement/
In my opinion, Daro may have been able to exclude so many voucher holders from its properties by concentrating voucher holders into a few of its properties, such as Sedgewick Gardens. The high number of voucher holders at Sedgewick Gardens may have been part of Daro’s coverup of its deliberate racist conspiracy to exclude voucher holders from every other building Daro owned or managed in the District. The Attorney General did not allege such a coverup in the amended complaint filed in May 2022 or in the settlement agreement. But clearly Sedgewick Gardens was only a small part of a much larger, more disgusting story.
Green Eyeshades says
In the fourth paragraph of my first comment, about the October 2022 settlement, I wrote that the settlement included “a 15-year ban on the real estate broker who was the managing director of the corporate conglomerate ….” The real estate broker was not actually the “managing director” of the conglomerate, a different individual defendant held that position. But the real estate broker was a senior executive of one or more of the corporations in the conglomerate that included Daro Management Services.
The bracketed description for “defendant Carissa Barry” in paragraph seven of my comment is correct. She was “[the real estate broker and senior executive of affiliated firms],” and she did lose her real estate licenses for 15 years.
Green Eyeshades says
In a story posted online today, December 12, a Washington Post investigation about disruptions in rental housing caused by violent tenants and mentally-ill tenants (and some tenants who were both) included details about several violent tenants who receive housing vouchers from one or more sources in the District government:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/12/12/dc-permanent-supportive-housing-problems/
The story says nothing about whether the buildings where the incidents took place are rent-controlled buildings or market-rate buildings. But veiled references which deliberately withheld the names of certain buildings imply that at least some of the incidents occurred in buildings like Sedgewick Gardens.** [see footnote]
Readers don’t know for certain because the Post wouldn’t say.
The main blogpost above refers explicitly to Sedgewick Gardens as being one of the situations which prompted the Ward 3 Democrats to hold their meeting on December 6. If situations like Sedgewick Gardens are what Ward 3 Democrats were hoping to reduce or eliminate by holding their December 6 meeting, it seems odd that today’s story in the Post made no mention of the Ward 3 Dems’ meeting on December 6.
Until Ward 3 Dems disclose the YouTube video of their December 6 meeting, members of the public who were unable watch the meeting online will have no idea what took place at the December 6 meeting.
[footnote]
**The Post story today recycles the same 2019 Post story about Sedgewick Gardens that the main blogpost above linked to in paragraph eight. The following paragraph is, by coincidence, the eighth paragraph in today’s Post story:
“D.C. Council member Matthew Frumin (D-Ward 3), whose ward includes a stretch of Connecticut Avenue in Northwest Washington that is home to many program participants, encouraged the eviction court change and called it ‘a very big step’ among many — such as more effective social services — needed to address how the city deals with chronic homelessness.”
In that paragraph in today’s story in the Post, the words “a stretch of Connecticut Avenue in Northwest Washington” are a link to the 2019 Post story, which is here:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/dc-housed-the-homeless-in-upscale-apartments-it-hasnt-gone-as-planned/2019/04/16/60c8ab9c-5648-11e9-8ef3-fbd41a2ce4d5_story.html
But, as I pointed out in my first two comments on this blogpost, the presence of problem tenants at Sedgewick Gardens was only a tiny part of a much larger, much more disgusting, story of deliberate racism and anti-voucher discrimination by the owners and managers of Sedgewick Gardens. The Post just refuses to include that context whenever it needs to recycle its Sedgewick Gardens story.
Green Eyeshades says
A few days after my last comment above, Ward 3 Democrats finally posted the YouTube video of their “Ward 3 Democrats December Meeting and Panel Discussion on Housing Vouchers and Rent Stabilization” which occurred December 6:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlTZWKx3kjQ
I hope readers can take a few minutes this weekend to browse that recording. I recommend, in particular, giving attention to a case management expert from DC’s Department of Human Services (DHS) who provided a reality check about DHS case management “services” to tenants who use vouchers to pay part of their rent. Watch time stamp 01:33:34 through 01:35:44. Watch also time stamp 01:52:25 through 01:56:55 for an example of a resident of a Connecticut Avenue highrise explaining a potential threat to safety followed by reactions from the moderator and the same DHS expert.