UPDATED 3:21pm on 13 March 2024 to include response from DHCD Director Colleen Green.
The Bowser administration officially launched the Housing in Downtown program with a hardhat tour at the Elle, what will soon be the District’s first office- to-residential conversion in the Golden Triangle Business Improvement District.
Once completed, the Elle, which is the former Peace Corps headquarters on 20th and L streets in Northwest, will have 163 residential units. Due to this project’s inclusion in the District’s tax abatement program, some of those units will be available to tenants earning below the Washington Metropolitan Statistical Area’s average median income.
However, this office-to-residential conversion wouldn’t be protected under the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA), a nearly 40-year District law that allows tenants first dibs at the purchase of their apartment building when their landlord wants to make a sale.
“The Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act is a different type of conversation that adds 18 months of time to when a building is for sale,” said Nina Albert, D.C.’s deputy mayor for planning and economic development and one of several people who joined D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) at the Elle on Monday morning. “That could limit investors’ interest in doing business in the District and we don’t want that to happen. We want people to have opportunities for home ownership but we don’t want to deter investors. There’s a shared interest and intent to strike that right balance.”
Such a perspective has sparked concern among tenant advocates who fear further decimation of TOPA.
Sources told The Informer about a late February email in which developers and associations — including Jair Lynch Real Estate Partners, District of Columbia Building Industry Association (DCBIA), and Housing Association of Nonprofit Developers (HAND) — lobbied the D.C. Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) for TOPA exemptions that target buildings 25 years or newer and those receiving government support.
DCBIA didn’t respond to a request for comment.
DHCD has provided millions in gap financing to help tenants leverage their option to purchase. In an email to The Informer, DHCD Director Colleen Green cited the Baldwin House Cooperative Association’s purchase of property via crowdfunding and a $2.2 million loan and Worthington Woods Tenant Association’s soon-to-be rehabilitated 394-unit apartment complex as the most recent instances of the agency doing so.
Green also told The Informer that “it’s….within reason to look at how the process can be improved with sensible feedback from all interested stakeholders.” She expressed enthusiasm for continuously engaging “responsible housing advocates” on how to preserve affordable housing in the District through TOPA.
In a statement, Jair Lynch Real Estate Partners acknowledged TOPA’s historical significance while requesting all stakeholders to find ways to enhance the preservation and production of housing that’s accessible to everyone. HAND also responded to The Informer’s inquiry, saying that its primary focus is informing policy makers about the aspects of TOPA that “pose risks to vulnerable populations and jeopardize the District’s ability to produce and preserve affordable housing.”
HAND’s spokesperson wouldn’t specify further.
Those exemptions, if materialized, would build upon previous exemptions that narrowed the scope of TOPA over the years. For instance, the D.C. Council approved the 10-year exemption of office-to-residential conversions during the last budget cycle.
In 2018, the council exempted single-family homes from TOPA, much to the chagrin of D.C. residents, including then-council candidate Janeese Lewis George. She later defeated then- Ward 4 D.C. Councilmember Brandon Todd, the architect of that legislation, in his 2020 reelection bid.
In recent weeks, D.C. Jobs With Justice conducted two town halls while partnering with the D.C. metropolitan area Democratic Socialists of America’s Stomp Out Slumlords Coalition on a walking history tour about TOPA.
On Tuesday, the Stomp Out Slumlords Coalition organized a rally on the front steps of the John A. Wilson Building in Northwest. Dozens of organizers held up signs designating housing as a human right and expressing love for TOPA.
Damiana Dendy, a housing organizer who’s affiliated with D.C. Jobs with Justice counted among those who took to the microphone, imploring the council to not only preserve TOPA but secure funding that will allow tenants to follow through with the process.
Doing so, Dendy said, would prevent further displacement at a time when D.C. residents are grappling with increasing living costs. Dendy and colleagues later engaged in dialogue with staff members of At-large D.C. Councilmember Robert White (D).
This meeting, Dendy explained, counted as part of a preemptive strike against developers who, to their knowledge, have yet to put further TOPA exemptions in writing.
“Considering that this is the fourth huge wave of gentrification and privatization that’s pushed on the city the hardest, [the breakdown of TOPA] would exacerbate it like crazy… It wouldn’t help with affordable housing,” Dendy told The Informer. “D.C. Councilmember Robert White said in one of the oversight hearings that he wouldn’t touch TOPA, but that wouldn’t mean he wouldn’t amend. We need to make sure he doesn’t gut it.”
Through TOPA, tenants have been able to purchase rental properties during sales, preserve affordable housing and prevent displacement. In the process of doing so, tenants form tenant associations, make purchase offers, and oftentimes assign their rights to a community-based organization charged with developing the property in a manner that ensures tenants can stay.
The largest concentration of TOPA deals, according to a report conducted by the Coalition for Nonprofit Housing and Economic Development, took place in Wards 1, 4, and 8.
When tenants at 11 Nicholson Street NW declared their right of first refusal in 2021, they immediately searched for a community-based organization that would help them transition into a limited equity cooperative and start the modernization of their apartment.
After plans fizzled with Square and Lot, Inc., tenants partnered with Mi Casa, a provider, facilitator and advocate for inclusive, affordable housing in underserved communities throughout the D.C. metropolitan region. After that, they acquired a low-interest loan that turned into mortgage payments on par with what they had been paying for years.
Even though the modernization of 11 Nicholson Street is five years away, and the extent of such a project has yet to be determined, some residents, like ChelseaDee Harrision, are embracing the realities of homeownership.
Harrision, a millennial teaching artist, serves as a board member and secretary of the 11 Nicholson Cooperative, Inc., which has been in existence since 2022. She told The Informer that, in her role, she keeps her fellow residents up to speed about building operations so they, as a collective, can weigh in on a course of action.
She said the most difficult, yet interesting, part of her job involves reminding her neighbors about the increased level of involvement that’s required of them as homeowners.
A portion of residents’ mortgage goes to a property management company that answers to the cooperative. Both entities will soon collaborate on the repair of a boiler, Harrison said. That situation, she told The Informer, provides an opportunity to continue building rapport with residents and making them more comfortable with their new responsibilities.
“These are regular, everyday people who just wanted to keep their home and took matters into their own hands,” Harrison said. “Some people have lived in this building for decades and never owned a stake in where they lived. The mindset from renter to owner is a shift. There are enough residents who get it. It begs the question of what do you do when given collective power.”
