The D.C. Housing Authority has released a sweeping proposal to remove about a quarter of its public housing stock from federal ownership and demolish or gut ten apartment buildings.

Under a long-awaited plan to deal with the District’s dangerously dilapidated public housing facilities, DCHA would completely demolish and rebuild five properties. Another five complexes would be gutted and/or partially demolished. The city would seek financing and partnerships from the private sector, and convert the buildings into other forms of affordable housing.

“Anything that’s uninhabitable or untenable, we want to figure out how to move them to a safe space,” says DCHA director Tyrone Garrett of the plan, which needs to be approved by the DCHA Board of Commissioners.

Another four other public housing properties will see substantial renovations under DCHA’s plan.

But officials have determined that the conditions at the Kelly Miller Walk-Ups, Fort Dupont Additions, Woodland Terrace, Greenleaf Additions, and Greenleaf Gardens are not salvageable. Over a years-long process, those complexes would be completely torn down and rebuilt.

At Fort Dupont Dwellings, Stoddert Terrace, Benning Terrace, Langston Terrace, and Garfield Senior/Terrace, the buildings would be gutted (in some cases partially demolished) and rehabilitated.

More than 80 percent of the agency’s 8,500 units are in disrepair. Of those, DCHA has identified 2,610 units that it says are “extremely urgent,” with problems that pose risks to residents’ health and safety, including lead contamination, mold exposure, serious plumbing problems, infrastructure issues, and vermin infestations. The conditions in these units, which are spread out among 14 properties, are making tenants ill, particularly children and elderly people.

Those 2,610 units have been the subject of long conversations between DCHA and community advocates, who have exhorted the agency to act immediately to remedy the dangerous conditions. At the same time, advocates have worried that DCHA would move forward largely by razing its dilapidated properties and then privatizing them, a method that one attorney said would “strip tenants of their essential rights,” the Washington City Paper reported in January. They have instead wanted the agency to ask the city for more money to repair the public housing stock.

But Garrett says that private money is the only place for the agency to turn given the size of the bill for the needed repairs: a whopping $2.2 billion. He says the DCHA plans to maintain majority ownership of all rebuilt properties and manage their daily operations.

“The District is very limited in what they can offer to us in terms of funding to support this particular effort. So the only place we can go is to the private market,” Garrett says. “Working with private developers, we would look to … take charge of the daily operation and management of the properties, so the property doesn’t get too far away from us.”

The plan reflects what the director says is an unavoidable reliance on private equity.

About 2,100 units will be “repositioned,” in agency-speak, meaning that they will be removed from the purview of the U.S Department of Housing and Urban Development, which oversees and funds the nation’s public housing. DCHA then plans to completely redevelop these sites as affordable and mixed-income housing, in some cases with the help of a private developer. In the interim, they’ll give residents Section 8 housing vouchers so they can leave during reconstruction.

All residents will have the right of return to their buildings, Garrett tells DCist.

DCHA has been signaling that it was planning a shift away from traditional public housing for months. In fact, the city has already put out a request for proposals for a co-developer for Greenleaf Gardens. The agency’s new strategy is one endorsed by HUD, which under President Donald Trump has pushed housing authorities across the country to use private dollars to repair public housing.

If enacted, the process will bear some resemblance to the New Communities Initiative, which DCHA helps run. That program uses public bond financing to redevelop subsidized housing in the District in partnership with private developers. The point of the initiative is to decrease the concentration of poverty and create mixed-income housing complexes, but its projects have gotten severely tied up in litigation and controversy. The redevelopment of the Barry Farm housing project in Ward 8, for example, has been the subject of multiple legal appeals. Residents have long feared that they’ll be unable to return after the work is complete. The new mixed-income development was slated to have about one hundred fewer affordable units than the current one.

The progress at the buildings set for demolition and/or rehabilitation will be slow. No family will be required to leave their unit for many months as the agency moves through a labyrinthine process to extricate the building from under HUD’s purview. As it gets underway, the agency will hold town halls and meetings in each housing complex. But there will be no comprehensive fixes during this time to the major health and safety problems at these sites—DCHA will simply continue applying band aid repairs until it can give families their vouchers and move forward with demolition.

It could be years before tenants at all of the buildings are moved out.

There are also several hundred units in other buildings in need of urgent repair, but the agency has determined it can fix them without demolishing the buildings. These units are in Judiciary House, Langston Additions, LeDroit Apartments, and the Kelly Miller Town Homes. The agency plans to use the $24.5 million allocated to it by the D.C. Council this year to make these fixes, and some of the work will require families to relocate to other DCHA locations for 30 to 45 days. The work at these properties will begin in several months, after the agency has possession of the money it was allocated in this year’s budget.

After the rehabilitation of these properties is underway, Garrett says the agency is looking at acquiring new properties to manage as part of its affordable housing stock. The agency is also exploring master leasing properties to provide more needed housing.

As for how we got here in the first place? Garrett attributes that to disinvestment from HUD and the large amount of time that has elapsed since the city’s public housing stock was built. Around 75 percent of it is over 50 years old.

When he took over the agency in 2017, Garrett says he heard complaints from residents about the condition of their housing at every town hall he held. Last year, he ordered lead and environmental hazard testing, and found appalling and dangerous conditions in thousands of units. The overwhelming majority of them were in serious need of repair, he said.

In a November 2018 letter to HUD, Garrett outlined the severity of the condition of D.C.’s public housing stock. He asked the department for $30 million to help DCHA get the most dangerous units under control and for an additional 2,500 tenant vouchers to help get families out of unsafe units. A month later, HUD responded with a refusal, instead outlining several ways DCHA could leverage HUD procedures to demolish the properties, take them out of HUD control, and redevelop them on their own.

Still, Garrett acknowledges this is not going to be easy.

“I’m not going to say that it’s going to be the easiest road traveled, because it’s definitely not,” Garrett says. “But we need to do our best to assure our residents that we’re there for them, and we’re going to continue to be there for them. The idea is for us to create a better place for them to be able to live.”