Petworth News offered the three Democratic candidates for the Ward 4 Council seat a questionnaire. Two responded. Below are the answers from the incumbent, Janeese Lewis George.

Name: Janeese Lewis George

Where is your home located? Manor Park

How long have you lived in Ward 4? Since birth (I’m a third-generation Washingtonian)

What is your current profession? I am the current Ward 4 Councilmember.

Website: janeese4dc.com
Facebook Page: facebook.com/Janeese4DC
Twitter: @Janeese4DC

Why you are running for Ward 4 Councilmember?
I am a third-generation Washingtonian, and I am proud to serve the community I was raised in. I am fighting to ensure every DC school is fully-funded, safe, and well-maintained. I am working to prevent residents from being displaced, empower more DC residents to achieve homeownership, and make housing truly affordable in our city. I am advancing legislation and budget investments that raise wages, strengthen job training, and support our Ward 4 small businesses. I am advocating to make all of our streets and intersections safe for everyone. And I am delivering more resources to our neighborhoods and stronger coordination across DC agencies to drive down crime and make Ward 4 safer.

As Ward 4 Councilmember, I consistently show up in our community to support our students, our seniors, our small businesses, and every neighbor. My team has resolved more than 7,000 constituent service requests, hosted more than a hundred community engagement events, introduced dozens of bills, and secured hundreds of millions in Ward 4 budget investments. I am running to build that progress and continue being a champion for Ward 4 families.

What is your professional and/or personal background and experience?
I am a third-generation DC resident, an all-DCPS graduate, and a native of Ward 4. I have served as Ward 4 Councilmember for the past three-and-a-half years, and I currently chair the Council’s Committee on Facilities and Family Services.

Prior to joining the Council, I graduated from Howard Law School and went on to serve as an Assistant Attorney General for the Office of the DC Attorney General and an Attorney-Advisor in DC’s Office of the Superintendent of Education. I also completed a year of service with City Year, providing support and mentorship to underserved youth.

As a student, I was elected to serve as a Student Representative on the DC School Board of Education and as DC’s YMCA Youth Mayor. I am a proud member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Incorporated and the Washington Bar Association. My husband Kyle and I live in Manor Park with our puppy Sully.

Do you believe a DC Councilmember should focus on legislative issues or Ward community quality of life issues?
A DC Councilmember must address both community issues and legislative issues–the two are deeply connected.

My team and I work closely with ANC Commissioners, Ward 4 residents, and DC agencies to resolve community issues and constituent services requests every day. It is imperative for all Ward 4 residents to have someone who will advocate tirelessly for them and step in if local government is failing them. At the same time, being in our community consistently informs what legislation we need to meet our community’s needs and address systemic problems in Ward 4. As Councilmember, I passed legislation streamlining the removal of abandoned cars after observing how slowly abandoned vehicles were being removed in our neighborhoods. I secured funding to keep a full-time librarian in every DC school after hearing from our Ward 4 school communities about the impact that losing these positions would have. I introduced a bill to hold negligent landlords accountable after meeting with tenants struggling with unsafe and undignified housing conditions in Petworth, Sixteenth Street Heights, and Brightwood. I brought a Cure the Streets team to Ward 4 – DC’s most effective violence interruption program – because most of the gun violence in our community stemmed from conflicts between neighborhood ‘crews’ that needed to be deescalated, while also holding individuals accountable.

As Councilmember, I am determined to show up for our community whenever I am called – while also improving government services and resolving the citywide issues that lead to constituent service requests in the first place.

In brief, what are your Legislative Priorities?

Community Safety:
Driving down crime and building peace in our communities through improved agency coordination, immediate interventions in our neighborhoods, holding individuals accountable when they harm others, effective violence prevention initiatives, and addressing the underlying causes of crime.

Education:
Strong, fully-funded, and well-maintained neighborhood schools and high-quality early childhood education for all families.

Affordable Housing:
Preventing our neighbors from being evicted and displaced, empowering more DC residents to own their own homes, building much more affordable housing, and passing my Green New Deal bill to create social housing that is sustainable, mixed-income, and truly affordable.

Traffic Safety:
Making major traffic safety improvements in our streets and intersections to prevent traffic fatalities and ensure every Ward 4 resident can walk, ride, or drive in their neighborhood safely.

Share your position on Education issues in Ward 4, especially in light of the cuts to DCPS in the latest budget.
As Councilmember, I have fought to prevent our schools from the Mayor’s proposed cuts to their budgets. We fully reversed these cuts in 2023 and will do so again this year. Our schools should be focused on teaching and supporting our students – not trying to determine which teachers, support staff, or counselors they will need to go without next school year.

I believe it is critical for DC to better maintain its schools so students can learn in safe and comfortable environments. As the new chair of the Facilities Committee at the Council, I have expanded funding for school repairs, prioritized safety repairs like door locks and security cameras, and increased transparency and efficiency in school maintenance. I have also conducted school readiness tours at every Ward 4 DCPS school to streamline needed repairs before the new school year.

Being Ward 4 Councilmember means being a fighter for our Ward 4 schools – including securing suitable swing spaces for Truesdell Elementary and Whittier Elementary, resolving overcrowding at Roosevelt High School and Roosevelt STAY, funding a new ONSE Leadership Academy at MacFarland Middle School to provide mentorship and increased support for at-risk students, and facilitating much-needed building repairs and traffic safety improvements around our schools through the Safe Routes to School Act that I passed.

Beyond K-12 education, we also need to recognize the critical role that early childhood education plays in the lives of our families. In 2021, I led the Council in passing the Homes and Hearts Amendment, which raised the wages of early childhood education and stabilized our child care system. And this year, we will defend this critical investment from the cuts the Mayor proposed.

Share your position on Transportation issues in Ward 4, specifically bike lanes and impacts on parking and safety.
Our streets and intersections must be safe for all Ward 4 residents to be able to walk, ride, and drive safely.

As Councilmember, I have worked closely with our ANC Commissioners and neighbors to secure countless traffic safety improvements across Ward 4, including new speed bumps, humps, and tables (Quincy Street, Blagden Avenue, Illinois Avenue, and Rock Creek Church Road, for instance), all-way stops (5th and Webster, 13th and Ingraham, and 13th and Hamilton, for instance), pedestrian islands, curb extensions, and new traffic signals (Georgia and Farragut, Georgia and Varnum, Georgia and Iowa, and 16th and Blagden for instance). I will keep working closely until every parent feels safe letting their child walk down their block and every senior feels safe crossing the streets in their neighborhood.

And much-needed steep humps on streets like Quincy Street, Blagden Avenue, Illinois Avenue, and Rock Creek Church Road

I passed and funded the Safe Routes to School Act – which requires DDOT to make traffic safety improvements around every DC school so that the streets around our schools can become the safest streets in the District.

We also need to build on the progress WMATA is making in improving frequency, reliability, and safety on MetroRail and MetroBus. As Councilmember, I was proud to fight alongside our Sixteenth Street Community to make Northern Bus Barn the first all-electric bus facility in DC.

I support protected bike lanes as an important tool to improve safety, promote sustainable transportation, and save lives. It is important to expand our protected bike lane network in Ward 4 and connect it to DC’s citywide network. At the same time, it is critical to work closely with Ward 4 residents to ensure people’s needs for handicap accessibility, sufficient parking, and other transportation options are met.

As Councilmember, I have supported several critical transportation projects in Ward 4, including the Oregon Avenue Reconstruction Project, the Kennedy Street Revitalization Project, the Grant Circle Traffic Safety Project, the Eastern Avenue Rehabilitation Project, and the Metropolitan Branch Trail extension to Fort Totten and Takoma.

What do you think are the biggest issues facing Ward 4 regarding Crime and Public Safety? What are you solutions to help fix these issues?
Petworth is one of my focus neighborhoods where I have been winning us additional community safety resources like violence interruption teams and comprehensive solutions to build peace in our community.

I have worked to combat crime by focusing on the root causes and making our community safer with a three-pronged approach: prevention, intervention, and enforcement.

Prevention:
By the time a crime has occurred we can only mitigate the harm. The best approach is to prevent crime proactively. That means connecting and nurturing our young people so that they go in another direction. That’s one of the many reasons why I support funding early childhood education, youth development programs, and a safety net that meets peoples’ basic needs of housing, food, high-quality living-wage jobs. I secured funds for a new public library on Kennedy Street to bring much-needed resources and transform the corridor along with new housing and small businesses.

Intervention:
Once it’s clear that people are involved in settings where crime is likely, we need ways to help them de-escalate and get back into healthier contexts. Some examples of this approach include: mental health and substance abuse services, my work bringing new Cure the Streets teams to Brightwood Park and Petworth (this is the DC program that the data shows is most effective at preventing violence). I secured new CCTV security cameras in Ward 4 to address coverage gaps in at-risk areas to deter crime and provide more evidence for MPD to solve cases. I helped improve interagency collaboration so that we’d all work together to help resolve a trend toward violence in Petworth and around Kennedy Street. I’ve been working in our community to address conditions that worsen public safety, including blighted properties, abandoned vehicles, inadequate lighting, substance abuse, a lack of security cameras, broken locks in our schools, and supporting our small businesses.

Enforcement:
We also need to ensure there is accountability for individuals driving violence in our communities. As a Councilmember, I have coordinated with the Office of the Attorney General and the US Attorney for DC to ensure cases are prosecuted and supported legislation to make it easier to hold wrongdoers accountable for violent crimes like shootings, domestic violence, and carjackings. I’ve also supported long-term investigations that crack down on crews that perpetrate violence in our communities – like the Kennedy Street crew. I have also worked hard with my colleagues on the Council to build a stronger, re-accredited D.C. Department of Forensic Sciences. The department is now partially re-accredited but we need more progress.

Do you think affordable housing in Ward 4 is improving? What would you do to ensure access to affordable housing?
While there are hard-fought affordable housing units being added in our community, the overall cost of housing has risen sharply and too many of our neighbors are being pushed out of Ward 4.

If we keep doing the same thing, our community will become increasingly unaffordable and exacerbate displacement.

I am fighting to expand affordable housing and prevent displacement by:

Reversing proposed cuts to ERAP, HPAP, and DC’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund, which prevent our neighbors from being evicted, help more residents own their own homes, and create new affordable housing units for our community

Building more housing in Ward 4 – especially the deeply affordable housing and workforce housing that is out of reach for many people

Supporting projects that deliver new affordable housing, new retail, and green spaces to our community, including the Dance Loft Project, Takoma Station, and The Parks at Walter Reed

Introducing the Doing Right by DC Tenants Act, which holds landlords accountable when they neglect living conditions and safety in their buildings

Strengthening enforcement against vacant and blighted properties that are going unused and bring blight to our communities

Introducing the Green New Deal for Social Housing Act, which will create mixed-income, deeply affordable, sustainable, public transit-adjacent housing to serve all DC residents regardless of their income level.

Do you believe DC government and existing Zoning regulations favor homeowners / residents more, less or equal to for-profit developers? Why or why not?
Ward 4 has a housing shortage. We need more deeply affordable housing, workforce housing, and even market-rate housing. Without it, displacement will continue and our neighborhoods won’t be what they could be.

Our current rules make it easy to do condo conversions. These units can help with the housing shortage but they generally replace family-sized units with units that aren’t optimal for families and their development doesn’t generally don’t provide affordable housing.

DC’s Comprehensive Plan will come up for revision in the next term and I want to make sure it is a pro-housing plan that will help slow down displacement, help our neighbors stay in Ward 4, and allow seniors to age in place. I also want to ensure that the revised Comprehensive Plan will facilitate building new housing at the pace we need to keep our communities vibrant and diverse, and keep Ward 4 a sustainable place for longtime residents and also welcoming to new residents.

How would you define gentrification? Do you believe areas of Ward 4 has and is still experiencing gentrification? Why or why not?
Gentrification is when housing costs (and other living costs) drive out residents from a neighborhood and make the neighborhood unaffordable for working families. DC has experienced severe gentrification in recent decades with tens of thousands of residents pushed out from the city they were born and raised in. I saw this happen growing up as a child in Ward 4 when many of my friends and neighbors were forced to move outside of the District. Ward 4 continues to experience displacement in most neighborhoods – and it impacts both Ward 4 residents but also some Ward 4 businesses that struggle to keep up with the rising commercial rents. That is why it is so urgent for us to enact housing policies that prioritize people over profit, preserve affordable housing we already have, and create new housing in Ward 4 – especially deeply affordable housing, workforce housing, and affordable senior housing for seniors on fixed incomes.

Any additional thoughts you'd like to share?
In my time in office, I’ve had the chance to work with so many of you. I want to keep working together to make Petworth and all of Ward 4 a place where every child can get a wonderful education, where every person is safe, where we can walk to wonderful local businesses, where we know our neighbors, and always feel at home.