by Austin Schott

Advisory Neighborhood Commission (ANC) 1A, on October 14, approved a resolution to support the goals of a proposed equity initiative, the Park Morton Equity Plan, drafted by the resident council of Park Morton, a public housing complex on the East end of Morton Street NW, whose site is being redeveloped. ANC1A final vote approving the resolution was six in favor and one opposed with three abstentions.

“…ANC 1A supports the goals and objectives of the Park Morton Equity Plan. Wherever possible, ANC 1A encourages the District government to support the residents of Park Morton in achieving these goals and objectives.”

The plan is a resident-drafted series of recommendations to DC government authorities on how to address their public housing renovation needs including enhancing residents’ employment opportunities, enacting a renovation plan in which the city builds replacement units before demolition, and increasing home ownership opportunities.

When asked about the impact of the resolution, ANC 1A chair Kent Boese said, “I think it’s important that the Commission show support for Park Morton [residents]” and to “amplify their voice.” In addition to vocalizing support, he said the resolution demonstrates commitment to oversight.

“The residents need assistance with oversight,” said Boese. “They need assistance, pressuring and holding the DC Housing Authority accountable. That's something that we're committed to doing whether we have this piece of paper or not.”

In light of some more controversial plan recommendations, however, the commission was careful to clarify they only supported the overarching goals of the plan, rather than all content therein.

Some members of the commission, including Commissioner Dotti Love Wade, voiced reservations, on during the October 14 meeting, that the plan acted as a wish list rather than tangible strategy; ran, in part, outside of the ANC’s purview; and included “inaccuracies.”

Following the vote to support the equity plan, Commissioner Love Wade condemned the commission’s decision saying, “You will rue the day that you agreed to this document,” calling the plan “a last-ditch effort for personal gain from a few people in that development.”

One such controversial aspect of the plan is the recommendation that DC authorities designate the Wren, an apartment complex in Shaw, as a build-first site to which Park Morton residents can relocate. Commissioners have argued such a designation would get messy; if DC authorities wanted to designate the Wren as a build-first site, the Wren’s current approved unit development plans would have to be renegotiated by Zoning Commission, a process which could take years, according to Commissioner Boese in a recent blog post.

*The Council @ Park Morton President Shonta High outside the Park Morton apartments*

Meanwhile, the Park Morton resident council, the Council @ Park Morton, was frustrated because the resolution didn’t go far enough by their estimate. Shonta High, President of the Council @ Park Morton, threatened to file litigation against the ANC if they declined to support the equity plan in full. A copy of an email from High obtained by Petworth News reads:

“Whether or not the ANC can be sued, I'm unsure, but I will present the query to the attorney... Thank you for wasting 4 months of my time for a result that ended in nothing. I appreciate your time & lack of real effort in this matter.”

High later tapered her criticism in an interview with Petworth News.

Calling the resolution “overdue,” High told me, “I have no choice but to be happy about the resolution being passed because I've waited for the [commission] to do something for four months.”

“I would have had them support more of the Park Morton Equity Plan,” she said. “They leaned more on the side of the of the developer. And that's not what I wanted. I wanted them to lean more on the side of the residents.”

She reiterated her interest in seeking to sue the ANC in our interview, but only as part of a wider effort to pursue lawsuits against a variety of DC authorities. When asked for the case for the proposed lawsuit, High said, “Our rights are being violated,” insisting DC authorities had not held to their commitments to Park Morton residents.

“I was pressured out of Park Morton into an unstable living situation,” says former resident.

*Rackiel Rios, a former Park Morton resident, at her new apartment in Southwest DC*

High’s concerns are based in the fear that Park Morton residents are facing injustice, including by being prematurely pressured out of their units. Rackiel Rios, a former Park Morton public housing resident, claims she was one such resident.

Although DC Housing Authority (DCHA) and the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development (DMPED), in tandem, originally planned to build replacement housing nearby before starting demolition, finding property for new housing units proved difficult. Now DC authorities are seeking to relocate residents elsewhere so they can begin phase one of construction on the new complex. Residents, as of last fall, have started accepting vouchers to move elsewhere, including outside the neighborhood.

Rios accepted a voucher to find new housing due to upcoming demolition of Park Morton. She said her unit in Park Morton was in disrepair and DCHA neglected to provide needed maintenance or repairs.

“We had several problems in our apartment there. I had mold.” Rios told me in an interview. “We had water backing up. My refrigerator went bad, but nobody in the building wanted to help me to put a new refrigerator there because they said, ‘Well, you're moving.’”

Due to her status of her financial credit, Rios faced limited housing opportunities, but one landlord on Galveston Street in Southwest offered her a spot anyways.

Rios said she mentioned the offer to DCHA’s Park Morton Relocation Coordinators, Brittany Holloway and Katrina Jetter, before a contact warned her the Galveston Street location had a bad reputation.

Frightened by the warning, Rios returned to Holloway and Jetter and expressed concern. She voiced that she may not want to move to Galveston Street after all.

“They ball and cussed at me… raised the devil with me. [They] said, ‘I thought you said you liked the place?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I thought I liked the place, but at the same time, if I have bad news that it’s a ghetto and it’s a bad place, I don’t think I should go there.’”

“They intimidated me,” Rios said. “They told me, ‘You have to go.’”

She felt boxed into a corner, and felt pressured to make a decision in the moment – despite the fact that she still had months left before her voucher expired.

So, Rios took the place on Galveston Street.

Within days of moving she says she found a dead rat in her kitchen, cockroaches in her cupboards, and noticed her sink would back up. The walls are so thin, she said, that she can hear everything happening in her neighbors’ units.

On the night she chatted with me over the phone, she had come home to a pitch-black building. Frightened, she turned on the hall lights and climbed the stairs to her unit. But within minutes an uninvited visitor started knocking loudly on her door, refusing to identify themselves when she called out to them.

She doesn’t sleep, she said. “I sit up all night.”

This is not an uncommon story, according to Rios. Relocation Coordinators are determined to move folks out of Park Morton, even if residents are moving out of the frying pan and into the fire.

“You have to go,” Rios says, impersonating the Park Morton relocation authorities, “Building is being sold and we got to get rid of you.”

DCHA declined to respond when Petworth News asked them to comment on allegations Relocation Coordinators had pressured residents to move and allegations that DCHA had neglected maintenance or repairs if a resident were slated to leave Park Morton.

I asked Commissioner Boese what he thought DC authorities could do to more fully realize the goals of Park Morton residents. He says he hoped “We get to a place where Park Morton residents [can] own their own home and build equity,” a stated desire of the Park Morton Equity Plan.

“I don't think it's impossible, right? I think that whether it's a resident-led coop on an adjacent property… I think that it's something that we should fight for and push for. Especially when you look at the history of red lining and inequity in our society, this is one of those goals that is the right thing to do,” said Boese.

More background and updates

WAMU analyzed the Park Morton saga in detail in an article earlier this year, and Commissioner Boese gives regular Park Morton updates on his blog, Park View DC.