Planning for empowerment: Upending the traditional approach to planning for affordable housing in the face of gentrification

Abstract

The recent growth and gentrification of many cities has shifted the electoral and financial power, leaving low-income households with few options through which to claim rights to the city and remain in their communities. This type of community empowerment has been theorized as a dialectical relationship between the institutionalization and the assertion of discursive rights. However, this relationship requires the interactions of diverse actors and structures of governance to change the opportunities for marginalized groups to resist and build substantive rights. Using the case of housing and community development in Washington, DC, this paper explores the interplay between multiple sites of planning that have interacted over the past 40 years. These sites – government, advocacy and grassroots – have institutionalized discursive rights and created the conditions in which these rights can be effectively exercised to create opportunities for resistance against displacement. These relationships have created a new kind of governance based on housing policy and community empowerment in Washington, DC.

Keywords:

• Gentrification
• housing
• community empowerment
• radical planning

Notes

1. Redlining refers to the process of race-based discrimination in the United State in which the Federal Housing Administration and mortgage lenders refused to lend or insure home mortgages in minority neighborhoods. This practice was legal in the U.S. until the Fair Housing Act of 1968.

2. The Urban Institute and tenant organizers estimate that a large number of the city’s rent-controlled stock exists in Columbia Heights. However, these units are not means-tested, and the District government keeps no records on the location of these units.

3. Real Estate Assessment Center scores are exclusively referred to as REAC. These scores are derived from physical inspections done by HUD staff or contractors. Buildings with failing REAC scores are reevaluated within six months. If they fail a second time, the building loses its subsidy without an opt-out, leaving tenants with no option but to move because HUD will not subsidized unsafe buildings.