Baldwin House: Building Community Power for a New Type of Development
Ward 1 co-op experiences the limitations of D.C. housing policy — and the power of neighbors taking development into our own hands.
By Gabrielle Newell and Mandy Lee
When longtime Washington D.C. community organizer Natacia Knapper got the news that their building would be sold, their community sprang into action. The six tenants of the building formed an association with the support of Housing Counseling Services, and the Ward 1 Mutual Aid Network began investigating what it would take to prevent the building from being turned into more luxury condos and contributing to the gentrification of D.C.
Together, they began to hatch a beautiful vision: the community could buy the building and create an affordable housing cooperative that could center queer and transgender Black, Indigenous People of Color, and be a hub for mutual aid activities.
After much planning, dreaming, and visioning, these neighbors and organizers convened to create the Baldwin House Community Collective. We named the project Baldwin House, to honor James Baldwin’s truth-telling and revolutionary work, the kind of work we need to reclaim the place of Black and brown, displaced and native Washingtonian, poor and working-class, queer and trans communities in Ward 1 and across DC.
Our experience
We got some good news, and some bad news. The good news is that Washington D.C. does have a process in place for tenants to make a bid to buy their rental building when it goes for sale: the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA). The bad news is that for Baldwin House, that would mean coming up with $2.5 million in order to match the market-rate offer the seller had.
Over the past 14 months, organizers around Baldwin House decided to do the outrageous: raise at least $620,000 from neighbors to become the investors and developer to save this building from being converted to luxury condos, and instead create tenant-owned affordable housing and a community hub.
We realized we would have to do it ourselves if we wanted to protect our community, our friends, and our neighbors living in the building and imagine a radically different future for the property. As a mighty group of about a dozen people combining our free time, skills, willingness to learn, and love for our community, we managed to counter an offer on the building that would have kicked out residents on Christmas Eve with only a few weeks’ advance notice.
- We negotiated a contract and fundraised a deposit for the building ($125k), plus raised funds to cover all unpaid rent during the pandemic and to support all tenants who wished to move elsewhere ($307k).
- We cobbled together pro bono support from developers, architects, lawyers, and real estate experts to guide us to an amazing milestone in our journey: closing on a loan to officially acquire the building this December.
- We’ve raised over $448k from over 500 donors and made a successful bid to buy the apartment building.
Now, we need an additional $172k by early November and then the building will be ours — if we don’t gather enough funds, the deal falls apart and we lose our chance at actualizing Baldwin House. We deeply believe in this project, and need community support to achieve our dream. Help make Baldwin House a reality by donating here.
“Those who say it can’t be done are usually interrupted by others doing it.”
– James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son
What have we learned from this ambitious feat? There’s a gap in the affordable housing pipeline — TOPA is intended to enable tenants to buy their buildings and save affordable housing. However, TOPA requires tenants to match a market-rate purchase price, a financial burden that places home ownership out of reach for most tenants. How do we take a market-rate price, and somehow produce below market rate, affordable housing?
If TOPA is going to be a tool for affordable housing, we need low-interest loans
When it comes to small buildings mobilizing to buy their rental housing, this is not a realistic system. Most tenants can’t move this much money. Recognizing that, how is the TOPA process actually supposed to work? Is every low-income tenant expected to come up with hundreds of thousands of dollars for the opportunity to buy their building?
The answer: the First Right Purchase Program (FRPP), one of the District’s key tools to help tenants buy their building using TOPA, through low-interest loans. A smart policy mechanism, but there’s a problem — the program has gone dormant. Mi Casa — a nonprofit affordable housing developer — and many other organizations have approached DHCD and many others about these egregious barriers. While the program still exists, there is no formal application process and projects haven’t received funding from this program in years. It’s beyond time to reactivate this program.
Instead of properly supporting the FRPP, the City prefers to route TOPA projects through the Housing Preservation Fund. However, the Housing Preservation Fund requires a higher interest loan, which means that some of the most important TOPA projects — in high-demand locations, with high acquisition costs, deeply affordable rents, and critical repair needs — are challenged to comply with the higher financing costs to exercise their rights. Will Bien Duggan, a Project Manager at Mi Casa, Inc. underscores the importance of the FRPP for organizations like this:
“Yes, these projects are risky, but that is why FRPP is necessary, because the consequences of not taking action to finance these acquisitions often results in a permanent loss of that affordable housing, and displacement for the tenants.”
What comes next
We demand action:
- DHCD must reenergize FRPP. This program enables tenants to act quickly to gather the needed funds for the TOPA process. Without it, they miss their window. And not only did it enable tenants to act swiftly on the timeline TOPA requires, but also the loan was low-interest and scaffolding a process accessible to tenants of multi-family buildings, unlike traditional financial underwriting. Want to get involved in our advocacy? Contact baldwinhousecoop[at]gmail[dot]com.
- Make Baldwin House a reality by helping us power this people-backed project to create affordable housing owned by people facing displacement from DC, and create a community hub. We need to raise $172k by early November to hire a values-aligned architect and development consultant and to support our down payment. Check out different ways to contribute: online here, or help us skip the fees using this information here
We can’t wait for the day that we are painting murals on the walls, growing vegetables where there used to be a parking lot, welcoming kiddos for free childcare, training neighbors to defend themselves from eviction, serving free community feasts, and seeing coop members live with a newfound feeling of ownership and collective care. We can’t wait to organize with other communities trying to buy their buildings in Ward 1 and beyond and advocate together for the policy changes we need to make this process more feasible. Thanks for considering helping us get there — and how our experience can make it possible for others, too.
To learn more, check out the Baldwin House website at baldwin-house.org.
