Keeping Housing Affordable: Baldwin House
With inflation at a record high and the costs of basic supplies like gas and food rising as well, the question of affordable housing is pertinent. The more pertinent aspect of this question is; how does one take action to acquire truly affordable housing for the most economically disenfranchised among us? In DC specifically, rents have been rising in an area whose cost of living has, for years, been quite high. Considering the deeply racialized bout with gentrification city residents have been waging for years, one cannot discuss class, economic vulnerability, and gentrification in DC without talking about white supremacy.
Enter Natacia (they/them), a Black community organizer. After experiencing housing insecurity firsthand, Natacia began the Baldwin House project. Operating within the larger mutual aid network, DC Ward 1 Mutual Aid, Natacia and the other Baldwin House organizers seek to provide a solution to housing insecurity and displacement in DC via the cooperative model.
When the landlord of an apartment building on Sherman Ave. NW put the building up for sale, Natacia and their fellow organizers saw an opportunity to fight gentrification’s tide and create affordable housing for Black and brown DC residents. Through intensive research, the Baldwin House organizers realized that, by working with the tenants of the building that had gone on sale, TOPA rights could be used to acquire the building.
For context, the building the Baldwin House team is planning to purchase is located in Ward 1, an area of the city whose costs for renting is only trumped by Wards 2, 3, and 6 (Wards 2 and 6 encompass portions of the egregiously expensive downtown DC, while Ward 3 consists of portions of NW DC that were historically redlined). Although mayor Bowser has proudly congratulated herself on “investing in affordable housing in DC”, she has only committed to creating 12,000 units of affordable housing by 2025, a laughable number of units when one considers DC’s population consists of over 700,000 people. Further, “affordable” has incredibly discrepant meanings for tenants and developers/landlords.
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On July 24th, DC Ward 1 Mutual Aid/the Baldwin House organizers held an event at the building they’re buying to celebrate their wins, gather community, and create space for current building tenants to share their stories. During this event, Natacia generously allowed the team at Grassroots DC to interview them.
Explaining that they’d grown up with a Black Italian mother from a small village and a father from Louisiana, Natacia associates their investment in cultivating communal networks of support with having grown up in communal environments. This, alongside their experience teaching in an Indigenous community in New Mexico and witnessing the state’s disregard for that community, is a large part of what drives Natacia to do their justice work.
Speaking with Natacia also illuminated, to me, the depth to which there needs to be more accessible tenants rights education in DC. “Once I was able to have the tools through the tenant organizers we worked with, and knowing what things you have a right to, that completely shifted so much power in the conversations that we had with our landlord” they explained, speaking about their experience with a years-long broken window. Natacia didn’t realize their landlord was legally obligated to fix the issue until they had begun working closely with DC’s vast array of tenant organizers, naming the organization Latino Economic Development Center as a possible resource for tenants in distress..
Additionally, Natacia highlighted the trailblazing nature of the work they and the Baldwin House organizers are doing. “I'm just gonna tell you now that the conversations we had at the beginning of organizing this, talking to people who are land trust experts, talking to people who were tenant organizing experts, telling us that this was impossible” Natacia explained about the early days of the project. “The biggest takeaway I want people to have from this experience is don't let people tell you that your vision is unrealistic.”
The Baldwin House organizers continue to enact their vision; three months ago they signed the contract for purchasing the building. As they prepare for the next steps, they continue to fundraise for overhead, building repairs, and other expenses.
An upcoming fundraiser for Baldwin House will happen in partnership with local Black, queer owned bookstore, Loyalty Bookstores. Part of the bookstore’s Antiracist Book Club series, the store is soliciting donations for Baldwin House for entry into the typically free program. The book pick for the Baldwin House fundraiser is James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time. Those interested can donate/sign up for the book club here.
Folks who are able to donate can do so via the project’s Givebutter campaign. Those not in a position to donate monetarily are more than welcome to reach out to Natacia and the other organizers about how they’d like to get involved with Baldwin House. Baldwin House organizers can be reached via DC Ward 1 Mutual Aid’s social media accounts on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Updates about Baldwin House can be found on these channels as well.