in

DCHA Says It Can’t Spend More Money on Public Housing Repairs, Even if the Council Found Extra Cash

[ad_1]

When budget season arrives in D.C., it’s pretty much unheard of for government agencies to refuse increased funding from politicians. Count this as yet another way the D.C. Housing Authority stands out from the crowd.

The embattled agency stands to get a hefty chunk of change from the D.C. government in Mayor Muriel Bowser’s new budget. She’s proposing to send the (nominally independent) public housing authority $115 million over the next two years for badly needed repair work. But At-Large Councilmember Robert White was calling for a much greater commitment from Bowser given the agency’s well-documented issues maintaining its properties. As the Council’s new housing committee chair, White is proposing a $100 million annual investment in DCHA’s capital projects over the next five years.

The response from DCHA Executive Director Brenda Donald: Thanks, but no thanks.

“Advocates were in a meeting with her a few weeks back and that number came up and she just laughed at that,” Eliana Golding, a senior policy analyst focused on housing at the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute, tells Loose Lips. “Her message was, ‘We couldn’t spend $100 million if we had it, we don’t have a plan for that.’”

Donald has spoken before about the authority’s problems getting money out the door. And improving the agency’s capacity to spend money in meaningful ways was a big part of her focus when she took the job nearly two years ago. But the fact that DCHA is still struggling in this department is a bit perplexing to activists, considering that Bowser has held up Donald as an experienced government veteran that can stabilize the agency’s processes for whomever takes it over next. And the rhetoric that DCHA would be better off without more money seems to cut against warnings from Donald’s predecessor, Tyrone Garrett, that the agency had something like a $2 billion maintenance backlog as recently as a few years ago.

[ad_2]

Source link

What do you think?

Written by enovate

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

GIPHY App Key not set. Please check settings

Kimora Williams Fights for Equity as a Black Woman Lacrosse Player

D.C. Book Clubs: Spaces for More Than Reading