Community Wealth City: Washington, D.C.

When most people think of Washington, D.C., they think of a city of iconic monuments, the Smithsonian museums, and the three branches of the Federal government. But Washington is also a thriving community of more than half a million residents. In the 2000 census, Washington, D.C. had a population of 572,059 residents, of whom 59 percent were African-American, 28 percent white, 3 percent Asian, 8 percent Latino, and 2 percent mixed race.

In the last few years, Washington, D.C.’s long-term trend of population decline has begun to reverse itself. The Census Bureau’s American Communities Survey estimates that the District has gained over 9,000 residents since 2000 and the District’s official population now stands at 581,530. Alongside this population gain has been the revitalization of many District neighborhoods and a recovery of District government finances. In 1997, the District’s financial condition was bad enough that Congress created a “Control Board” which placed the District under outside trustee control. By 2006, this situation had completely turned around and the DC government had a surplus of $398 million.

Community wealth building groups have played a role in this rebound. Community development corporations supported by the Living Cities consortium, for instance, produced over 5,500 units of affordable housing in the District between 1991 and 2005. Commercial redevelopment, supported by community wealth building groups has been rapid in a number of neighborhoods, particularly those close to Metro stations, such as Columbia Heights, Shaw, and Adams Morgan. More recently, redevelopment has begun in Anacostia, one of the city’s poorest wards.

But redevelopment has created its own problems: especially the need to protect long-term residents from gentrification, as rapidly increasing rents and housing prices have forced thousands of poorer citizens to move elsewhere, often suburban Maryland. Community wealth builders accustomed to working in a “weak market” city are now finding themselves having to adjust rapidly to the different challenges of working in a “strong market”. Gaining increasing prominence are community land trusts and other forms of “shared equity housing,” which enable working people who cannot afford to purchase a traditional home to still have many of the benefits of homeownership, including the right to share in equity appreciation. City First Enterprises, for instance, backed by $10-million grant from the District’s government, aims to develop 1,000 units of community land trust housing over a 3-year period.

Community Development Corporations

Community Development Support Collaborative
www.cdsc.org
The Community Development Support Collaborative has been working since 1992 to revitalize and stabilize low-income, distressed neighborhoods in the District of Columbia - especially in the preservation of affordable housing. The Collaborative is a project of Washington Grantmakers - a coalition of more than 140 private and corporate philanthropies and is managed by the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC). A Steering Committee of 28 corporations, foundations, financial institutions and the DC Department of Housing and Community oversees the effort. Since 1992, these groups have invested approximately $15 million in capacity building grants, training, and technical assistance grants in 25 DC community groups.

Community Preservation and Development Corporation
www.cpdc.org
Operating both in the District of Columbia and the neighboring states of Virginia and Maryland, CPDC has, since its founding in 1989, acquired and rehabilitated 27 properties containing over 4,000 units of affordable housing, with a net property value of over $300 million. Roughly 50 percent of the units are located in Washington, DC, and 37 percent are in Maryland. The remaining 13 percent are in Virginia.

Development Corporation of Columbia Heights
www.dcch.org
Founded in 1984 and governed by a board composed largely of neighborhood residents and business owners, the Development Corporation of Columbia Heights has focused its efforts in three areas: affordable housing, business development, and local job creation. Since 1991, the group has developed 131 units of affordable housing. The group’s Neighborhood Job Initiative has to date placed over 1,100 residents in jobs, including 110 residents who worked on construction of the Tivoli Square Project, which involved restoring the historic Tivoli Theater and added new stores, office space, a supermarket, and a performing arts theater, Gala Hispanica.

H Street CDC
www.hstreetcdc.org
H Street CDC since its beginnings in 1984 has focused on revitalizing underdeveloped neighborhoods by developing affordable housing and commercial centers. To date, the CDC has participated in $70 million worth of commercial and residential development projects, totaling more than 330,000 square feet of commercial space, 284 units of low-income rental housing, and 47 affordable single-family owner-occupant homes. The projects have created more than 1,200 jobs in underserved neighborhoods, and provided more than $100 million in contracts for goods and services from more than 200 minority contractors.

Latino Economic Development Corporation
www.ledcdc.org/index.php?
LEDC’s mission is to improve the wealth-building capacity of low- and moderate-income Latinos and other underserved communities in the Washington area. Since its formation in 1991, the Latino Economic Development Corporation has been active in both the Adams Morgan and Columbia Heights neighborhoods in the District, offering business startup training classes, and micro-loans, as well as providing financing support for commercial corridor revitalization.

Manna, Inc.
www.mannadc.org/index.htm
Since 1982 Manna has created and preserved over 800 units of affordable housing for low and moderate-income DC residents. In that time, Manna homeowners have accrued over $50 million in equity. Manna also has developed an intensive and nationally recognized homebuyer education program. Its careful and conscientious marketing strategies and post-purchase follow-up have paid off with a very low rate of foreclosure among Mann buyers of less than 1.2 percent.

Marshall Heights Community Development Organization
www.mhcdo.org
Formed in 1979, Marshall Heights Community Development Organization has successfully developed on its own or in partnership with others a 60-unit supportive housing facility, a 469-unit garden-style apartment complex, a 220,000-square-foot complex of retail/office space which includes a major supermarket, 20,000 square feet of warehouse/industrial space, and has developed over 150 affordable homes that have been sold to low- and moderate-income buyers.

Organizing Neighborhood Equity (ONE) DC
www.onedconline.org
Organizing Neighborhood Equity, founded as a branch of Manna in 1997 and becoming an independent organization in 2005, has sought to blend community organizing and community development. ONE DC’s work has involved tenant union advocacy work, as well as developing social enterprise business ventures that employ community residents.

Community Development Financial Institutions

City First Bank
www.cityfirstbank.com
Founded as a community development bank in 1998, in its first five years of operation the bank financed more than 1,000 units of affordable housing, helped create or retain over 1,000 jobs, and originated a total of more than $100 million in loans overwhelmingly in Washington, D.C.’s poorer neighborhoods.

Unitarian Universalist Affordable Housing Corporation
www.uahc.org
Formed by the Unitarian Church, Unitarian Universalist Affordable Housing Corporation since 1989 has raised money from individuals and religious institutions to lend out as capital for housing and childcare projects in low-income neighborhoods in the Washington, DC-Baltimore region. Of its $3.5 million in capital, $475,000 comes from member churches (14 percent) and another $780,000 (22 percent) comes from other religious investors.

Washington Area Community Investment Fund
www.wacif.org
Established in 1987, WACIF provides capital and technical assistance to affordable housing developers, childcare providers, and small businesses in the DC region. To date, the group has committed or funded 207 loans totaling $15.2 million, leveraging $115 million in public and private funds. These loans have helped develop or preserve 1,486 units of affordable housing and 42 community-based facilities. WACIF has also made loans to 138 small businesses, helping create more than 430 full- and part-time jobs.

Community Land Trusts

City First Enterprises
www.cfenterprises.org
City First, a nonprofit community development group founded in 1993, is launching a community land trust initiative that aims to create one of the largest community land trusts in the country. With $10 million in support from the District government, which will leverage $65 million in socially responsible investment funds supported by New Markets Tax Credits, the group plans to develop 1,000 units of community land trust housing. Ultimately, City First aims to develop a total of 10,000 permanently affordable housing units.

New Columbia Community Land Trust
www.cdsc.org/nccl
New Columbia is a small urban community land trust that was founded in 1990 with the mission of providing residents of modest means with permanently affordable housing. To date, it has developed approximately 30 units of affordable housing, roughly half in cooperatives and half in apartments, single-family homes or duplexes.

Cooperatives

DC Cooperative Housing Coalition
www.coopsdc.com
Founded as a coalition in 1984 and incorporated in 1993, the DC Cooperative Housing Coalition is the leading trade association of housing cooperatives in the District of Columbia. The coalition estimates that there are 15,000 co-op housing units in the DC metropolitan region, the majority of which are within the District of Columbia.

Greenbelt Homes
www.greenbelthomes.net
Established to provide public housing during the New Deal, in 1952 the Federal Government decided to sell Greenbelt to the highest bidder. To avoid being bought by a private landlord, citizens in Greenbelt formed a housing cooperative and purchased the homes themselves. Greenbelt Homes today still owns the 1600 original units, making it the DC-region’s largest housing cooperative.

Maryland Food Collective
www.studentorg.umd.edu/ffc
Founded in 1975 on the University of Maryland, College Park, campus, this worker co-op is the oldest continuously operating campus-based retail food cooperative in the United States. The 4,000-square-foot store, located in the basement of the campus student union building does over $500,000 in business a year.

Takoma Park Silver Spring Co-op
www.tpss.coop
Takoma Park Silver Spring Co-op (TPSS) is a natural foods grocery store cooperative with two locations and 4,000 member-owners based in the nearby Washington suburbs of Takoma Park and Silver Spring, Maryland. The co-op first opened its doors in 1981. In February of 1998 the co-op moved to a larger location in Takoma Park. In 2001, TPSS opened a second storefront in nearby Silver Spring.

Employee Ownership

Banner Glass
www.bannerglass.com
Banner Glass began in May 1956 with a small auto glass installation shop in downtown Silver Spring, Maryland. Since its modest beginning, the company has expanded in both size and product service to include residential and commercial plate glass installation. With six locations in Maryland and four in Virginia, Banner Glass today has 100 employee owners in the Baltimore-Washington-Northern Virginia area.

TATC Consulting
www.tatc.com
Founded in 1969, TATC Consulting is a DC-based employee-owned company with over 50 employees that provides consulting services, primarily related to personnel management issues, to government agencies, private sector corporations, and nonprofit groups.

Individual Wealth Building

Capital Area Asset Building
www.caab.org
CAAB has worked for economic inclusion—narrowing the income and wealth gap in a rapidly growing economy in the District—since 1996. Among its achievements, CAAB lobbied the government of the District of Columbia to pass an IDA program. In 2004, it received its first DC grant of $200,000 to begin offering matched savings grants to income-qualified participants.

DC Earned Income Tax Coalition
www.dceitc.org
DC EITC Campaign is a coalition of nonprofit, business, community, labor, immigrant, and religious organizations that was created in 2000 to support enactment of a DC Earned Income Tax Credit. The campaign led to the establishment of a DC EITC equal to 10 percent of the federal EITC, which has since been expanded to 25 percent of the federal credit, the campaign’s goal. The group also works to ensure that eligible residents have the tax preparation assistance to claim the money they are owed. In 2004, roughly 45,000 EITC claims were filed in the District, infusing more than $20.1 million into the local community.

Policy

DC Fiscal Policy Institute
www.dcfpi.org
The DC Fiscal Policy Institute conducts research and public education on budget and tax issues in the District of Columbia, with a particular emphasis on issues that affect low- and moderate-income residents. It is also a leading partner in a local outreach campaign that informs low-income workers about the Earned Income Tax Credit and other tax benefits for which they may qualify and highlights opportunities to get free tax preparation services, which served 1,700 families and individuals in 2003.

Social Enterprise

Fresh Start Catering (DC Central Kitchen, Washington, DC)
www.dccentralkitchen.org
This social enterprise venture, founded in 1996, has rapidly grown to serve over 400 clients a year, including The Smithsonian Institution, The Washington Ballet, The Washington Business Journal, the Meyer Foundation, the Department of Commerce, Fannie Mae Foundation and Georgetown University. Proceeds from the business fund DC Central Kitchen’s anti-hunger and job training programs.

Melwood (Upper Marlboro, Maryland)
www.melwood.com
Based in Prince George’s County, Maryland, Melwood has become one of the nation’s leading social enterprises. From humble beginnings in the 1960s (in 1966, the organization had a total budget of $31,000), Melwood has grown into a $72 million organization (with earned income contributing 85 percent of its overall budget) that provides job training, employment, housing, and recreation to more than 2,100 people with disabilities.

Sage Flowers (Springfield, Virginia)
www.sageflowers.biz
Sage Flowers is a full-service flower shop that since 2006 has been owned by Offender Aid and Restoration of Arlington County, a local non-profit that has been working since 1974 to help Arlington County inmates prepare for a successful reentry into the community. Profits from the business support the job training and other prisoner reentry programs of the parent nonprofit.

Transit-Oriented Development

Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA):
Joint Development program
www.wmata.com/bus2bus/jd/jointdev.cfm
Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, which runs the Washington DC “Metro” bus and rail transit system, has been one of the nation’s leading practitioners of transit-oriented development. Annual lease payments exceed $6 million a year and the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor in nearly Arlington, Virginia is widely seen as one of the most successful transit oriented development projects nationwide.

University-Community Partnerships

Center for Social Justice, Georgetown University
http://socialjustice.georgetown.edu/index.html
The Center for Social Justice, first formed in 2001, aims to promote and integrate community-based research, teaching and service by collaborating with diverse partners and communities. Key programs include a program that recruits an estimated 200 Georgetown students each year to spend four to six hours a week teaching immigrant students in DC public schools English and other subjects, designing courses that build in opportunities for direct or indirect service in the local community as part of the curriculum, and support for community-based research projects.

Center for Urban Progress, Howard University
www.coas.howard.edu/hucup
Founded in 1995, the Center for Urban Progress has developed a working papers series in community development, including a dozen papers posted on its website, has employed over 90 graduate students in research, development, and service activities, has engaged over 4,300 graduate and undergraduate students in service-learning and research activities, has partnered with over 100 community- and faith-based organizations.

Community Research & Learning Network
www.coralnetwork.org
The Community Research & Learning Network (better known as “CORAL”), which was incorporated as an independent nonprofit in 2003, acts as a network for community partnership efforts at seven DC-area colleges: namely, American University, Catholic University of America, Georgetown University, George Washington University, Trinity University, University of the District of Columbia and the University of Maryland-College Park.

Engaged University-University of Maryland, College Park
http://engagedu.umd.edu
The Engaged University has worked since its founding in 2002 to create and catalyze opportunities for the University and its surrounding communities to engage in mutually beneficial research, learning & action. The group’s work includes community capacity building, leadership, civic engagement, adult education, and youth development activities. These include the design and administration of after-school and summer programs at two middle schools, the development and teaching of local oral history & asset mapping courses at a local high school and a series of parent involvement classes in Spanish for elementary school parents.

Washington Semester, Transforming Communities Program, AmericanUniversity
www.transformingcommunities.net/index.htm
American University’s “Washington Semester” Transforming Community Program aims to introduce help students learn the art of transforming communities by putting them in contact with the individuals who have faced the challenges and experienced the rewards of this work. During the course of the semester-long program, students meet with representatives of all three branches of government, the advocacy and litigation community, grassroots nonprofit organizations, educational institutions, and policy organizations.