Public Health Liberation Praxis in Addressing Real-time Issues

By Christopher Williams, MPH
Director, Public Health Liberation
Community of Practice: Southwest, Washington, DC

These materials represent Public Health Liberation praxis in response to real-time challenges facing public housing residents in Washington, DC. The Greenleaf community is threatened with displacement and experiences mental health stress associated with the looming prospect of redevelopment. The women leaders especially bear the brunt of advocacy and engagement with the Housing Authority, which has repeatedly strengthened structural racism through displacement and redevelopment policies. “All this redevelopment is causing me so much stress,” said Patricia Bishop, Public Health Liberation Board Vice Chair and Greenleaf Midrise President. Ms. Bishop has suffered two heart attacks, a disclosure that was previously published in a Washington Post article on Greenleaf. Christopher Williams, Founder of Public Health Liberation, is deeply embedded within the Greenleaf community of practice (CoP) and works alongside resident leadership in a supportive role. He provides research to improve the community’s advocacy function, serves as a sounding board, and serves as a vital form of community support to help buffer against compounding or syndemic stress. “A major driver of poverty as a major social determinant of health is due to the everyday human decisions that exploit and deprive low-income communities of agency, dignity, and a seat at the table,” said Christopher Williams. “Public health has a social mandate to disrupt these systems if we are ever to achieve holistic health.”

PBL is concerned with working within a CoP to support residents in their everyday challenges in addressing the social determinants of health. PBL looks drastically different from traditional public health because it relies on public health system engineers (PHL practitioners) to apply subject matter expertise to include housing policy to attenuate health inequity reproduction throughout the public health economy. PHL theory posits that by increasing public health engagement and accountability in other sectors that reproduce health inequity, then pathways for accelerating health equity will open.

May 11, 2022
Email to Housing Authority Board of Commissioners, Elected Officials, and Community Stakeholders

Today, the Board of Commissioners passed a resolution on the Greenleaf Master Development Agreement (MDA). Please read the totality of this summary.

• 1,410 total units in plan

• 1199 newly constructed units and 211 rehabilitated units at Greenleaf Senior.

• No more than 25% (282/1199) of the newly constructed units will be "replacement units". However, "replacement units" allow for 0%-80% AMI. It is not known what percentage of Greenleaf or public housing residents will, in fact, make up the population of "replacement units". If DCHA intended for public housing residents to occupy the replacement units, why is it asking for up to 80% AMI, which is essentially market-rate housing.

• Of the total "replacement units", 43% (282/493) will be in Greenleaf Senior, which raises several legal and regulatory issues if it is claiming that all of Greenleaf is obsolete. DCHA is extending the life of that building by 20+ years.

• Replacement units should not be confused with public housing units. Public housing residents are at 30% AMI. Even the average Black median household income in DC is around 55% of AMI.

• The project as a whole is intended to overwhelmingly cater to market renters and homeowners (at least 75% of total units). It will deepen an affordability and gentrification crisis and harden racial economic inequality. The project does not seek to expand affordable housing opportunities (e.g. >493 units) despite the urgent need for deeply affordable housing in DC, especially among African American households.

• The 493 "replacement units" are not all in actuality reserved for Greenleaf residents or even public housing residents in general.

• Further, Moving to Work allows DCHA to decide to move affordable units to transfer to other properties. Southwest has had instances where DCHA has allowed a developer that had committed to DCHA affordable units in SW to move those units to Southeast. There is nothing to prevent DCHA from doing the same with Greenleaf.

• The Greenleaf plan portends that DCHA will continue to decrease the number of public housing residents that it serves. It is currently not in compliance with Moving to Work statutory requirements on serving "substantially the same" number of residents when it entered MTW. It has been on a corrective plan for several years, but the "corrective" change in course is not immediately clear. Their bad patterns and practices are worsening.

• Greenleaf Senior is partially, if not mostly, empty. The last Board update on occupancy at Greenleaf Senior was 50%. The MDA does not specify whether Greenleaf residents in other properties will occupy the remaining empty units at Greenleaf Senior. DCHA is planning to make Greenleaf Senior a RAD property. DCHA has said that it will fill vacant Greenleaf Senior units based on an order of preferences, but that list is not publically available.

• DCHA is planning to proceed with a demolition/disposition application to HUD for Greenleaf Gardens. This would allow them to displace residents at Greenleaf Gardens and give them access to vouchers that would, in effect, move residents out in mass, as it has done at so many different properties across the city. This would allow them to reduce their Build First commitment - fewer residents, fewer number of Build First units needed.

• Certain members of the Board continue to feign ignorance that DCHA engaged in a relocation plan at Greenleaf Senior without HUD approval. It is a fact that DCHA engaged in a campaign to provide relocation opportunities to all Greenleaf Senior residents, which it how it was able to empty a large portion of the build. The Board chair Bussey-Reeder and Director Donald claim that residents' relocation was part of "choice" on the part of residents in the natural exercise of residents' housing changes. The letters that every Greenleaf Senior resident received on relocation contradict their statements.

• RAD means that residents will move from Section 8 to Section 9 (property-based vouchers). This means that residents will lose all rights and privileges that they currently enjoy under Section 8 (public housing), including recognized status as a public housing resident council. Residents will not have Section 8 rights to move to another public housing property, as they will have a property-based voucher. Residents under RAD will lose considerable rights.

• DCHA has consistently failed to build back replacement units for large projects. As the projects move beyond Phase 1, then securing financing becomes increasingly challenged and replacement units are perpetually in limbo. The original Arthur Cappers was demolished in 2001. It still had an outstanding 200+ units to be built.

• DCHA claims that Greenleaf Gardens is obsolete, but that Greenleaf Senior is not. Those positions are not logically consistent because they were built at the same time by the same firm. Greenleaf Gardens is structurally sound.

• Today's vote took place on May 11, 2022 in violation of DCHA Board regulations and bylaws. The Board has given the administration until April 23, 2022 to enter into a MDA. The administration had not been granted an extension, so today's vote was invalid.

• DCHA has to justify that a relocation plan will not move residents into a worst-off neighborhood. This will be hard to argue given the rich amenities in Southwest.