A little history

Let’s start in June 2007. Then-Deputy Mayor Neil Albert was tasked with finishing up the financing for (then-)Broadcast Center One, the new mixed-use development on top of the Shaw/Howard Metro. There was one little sticking point. The city, through the (former!-)NCRC had signed a Community Benefits Agreement with ONE DC guaranteeing a certain amount of the retail space to local businesses, and a certain number of the (then-)condos to be affordable. At this point, Shaw residents had been fighting for new affordable housing at 7th & Rhode Island Ave NW for almost six years. After a positive initial meeting in January ’07, Neil Albert stopped returning our calls.

ONE DC members, fed up with waiting around, announced their intention to occupy the mayor’s bullpen on June 26th until they got a confirmation from Albert that the deal was still good. Within an hour of the email going out on June 19th, Albert’s scheduler was on the phone, asking for a meeting. ONE DC called off the occupation, and spent the rest of the summer and fall negotiating the fine print and drumming up support for the truly affordable housing proposed for the site.

Finally, victory. November 14, 2007, Mayor Fenty held a press conference, with CMs Evans and K. Brown, to announce the city’s proposal to subsidize 110 apartments affordable to families making less than $50,000/yr at Parcel 42 on 7th St NW, at a cost of $7.8 million. All three spoke about affordability being the number one priority. ONE DC made the cover of the Business Journal. The city even put press conference photos on DC.gov:

Fast forward a few months. The development team is told that Fenty has other ideas for the affordability sudsidy. The development is in limbo. Calls go unreturned. Evans, Kwame and Fenty all refuse to meet with the same ONE DC members they’re pictured with here. (That’s longtime Shaw resident Pat Penney on the mic.) And then in May 2010 we learn that Horning Brothers, the lead developer, has been told to reduce the building size to 54 units, and to make the “affordability” income level start at $70,000/yr, and go up from there.

Knowing all this, if you were a longtime Shaw resident, wouldn’t you choose to build an intentional community at Parcel 42?

Which of these two photos depicts people who need truly affordable housing to be able to stay in their city? Which group would you trust with vacant city-owned land?