Photo by Erin.

Public housing isn’t what it used to be in the city. While most people associate the D.C. Housing Authority with managing properties for low-income renters, they’ve recently crossed over to the house-flipping business.

With renovations akin to luxury condos like marble countertops, hardwood floors and stainless steel appliances, the Housing Authority is selling single-family homes at market rate, WAMU reports. A city-owned rowhouse at 14th and Euclid streets NW sold for $920,000 last month—after the Housing Authority put in $281,716 worth of work into it. When all is said and done, 26 houses will have been have been renovated and sold at market rate.

Critics like Parisa Norouzi of Empower D.C. insist that the authority’s actions add to D.C.’s increasing gentrification issues, as most residents can’t afford the renovated homes’ prices, “not even workforce housing, not even housing for someone of moderate income, much less low income,” Norouzi told WAMU. “It really calls into question the ethics of what the housing agency is doing.”

What’s worse, argues Norouzi, is that the homes stood vacant for so long amid an increase in homelessness across the city.

The agency’s response: we’re still for the people. Proceeds from the newly sold homes will support the upkeep of existing public housing and help create new affordable housing units, especially in a time when Congress has underfunded their work. It has made it “difficult to maintain public housing developments and multifamily buildings, let alone single-family homes that are scattered through the city,” Kerry Smyser, the authority’s’ deputy director for development told WAMU.

So, housing for all?