Update: The D.C. Council has voted against emergency legislation that would have given Mayor Muriel Bowser the power to use eminent domain to block the construction and opening of a new halfway house for men in Ward 7. The legislation, introduced by Ward 7 Councilmember Vincent Gray, failed by a vote of 3 to 10. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson and At-large Councilmember Anita Bonds joined Gray in voting in favor of the proposal. All other Councilmembers voted against it.

Original:

Ward 7 Councilmember Vincent Gray is urging D.C. to use eminent domain to seize land from a company that plans on opening a halfway house off Benning Road NE, according to a draft of the bill obtained by DCist/WAMU. The proposal is the latest in a series of attempts by Gray and other lawmakers to prevent a new facility for men transitioning out of federal prison from opening in the District.

The proposed resolution, circulated as a draft to members of the D.C. Council on Thursday morning, asks the city “to declare the existence of an emergency” that would allow Mayor Muriel Bowser to exercise eminent domain and acquire the lot where the halfway house would sit. Gray is proposing that D.C. use the space to instead build an urban park.

The lot is located at 3701 Benning Road, where a company called CORE DC has secured a five-year, $60 million contract with the Federal Bureau of Prisons to run a halfway house.

The resolution, which Gray’s staff has requested to be placed on the Council’s legislative meeting agenda for April 6, does not make any mention of the halfway house. Instead, it says an urban park is urgently needed on the lot because “residents of Ward 7 suffer from some of the most significant health disparities and accompanying social and economic impacts.” The resolution argues that additional green space in the ward could help combat those disparities.

But Gray has been vocally — and, in his own words, “unalterably” — opposed to the halfway house in his Ward.

Gray has said he thinks the 300-bed facility would be too big, and would threaten new developments in the area near Benning Road and Minnesota Avenue NE. Cedar Realty Trust is renovating the Safeway shopping center in the area, which is also set to house a new headquarters for D.C.’s Department of General Services.

“It’s just outsized,” Gray told Washington City Paper last month of plans for the halfway house. “It doesn’t fit with what we’re trying to do over here.”

In response to inquiries about the eminent domain bill, Gray issued a statement defending his efforts.

“Downtown Ward 7 is seeing considerable redevelopment,” Gray wrote. “The immediate area will benefit from a mixed-use development plan that increases residential density as well as create opportunities for more dining and retail offerings. However, with all the development now anticipated it is important to create community-accessible green space. The building currently on the land is slated for demolition. We have the opportunity to create a public park in Downtown Ward 7 and the time to move forward is now.”

Gray added that eminent domain is “in our toolbox for exactly these situations.”

Speaking on WAMU’s The Politics Hour on Friday, Bowser expressed some caution about using eminent domain in this case.

“I use eminent domain very sparingly … it’s not something that I would embark on lightly,” Bowser said.

But, she added, she was concerned about the size of the proposed halfway house.

“We have encouraged the Bureau of Prisons to rethink how they would do that facility,” Bowser said. “We’d like to see the number of beds to be reduced, and we’re going to keep having that conversation with the Bureau of Prisons.”

Opponents of Gray’s efforts to quash the development say they threaten much-needed reentry services for people returning to D.C. from prison.

“This plan would bar returning citizen men—more than 90% of whom are Black—from participating in the District’s progress,” said Emily Tatro, Deputy Director of the Council for Court Excellence, which advocates for local criminal justice reform. “A halfway house in the District helps to reduce harm by connecting people to their loved ones, to housing and work, to health care, and to other supportive services. The newly-introduced emergency declaration and legislation would effectively prevent this progress for our returning citizens for many years to come.”

While some advocates agree that smaller halfway houses would be a more ideal setting, they say the existing CORE DC plan is the only feasible way to bring a halfway house to the city: Since D.C. does not have a prison system of its own, the Federal Bureau of Prisons has the ultimate authority over halfway house contracting decisions.

WAMU/DCist has reached out to the Bureau of Prisons to clarify whether CORE DC’s contract would allow the company to open up smaller halfway houses across the District as opposed to one 300-bed location.

The opening of CORE DC’s new men’s halfway house has already been delayed several times over the past several years.

The tug-of-war began back in 2018, when the Federal Bureau of Prisons awarded a five-year contract to CORE DC for a new halfway house. That move sparked opposition from Hope Village, the halfway house in Southeast D.C.’s Woodland neighborhood that had held the Bureau of Prisons’ contract for years. Hope Village, nicknamed “Hopeless Village” by some in the reentry community, had long been criticized by advocates and returning citizens for poor reentry services and unsafe conditions.

From there, CORE DC repeatedly struggled to secure a location in the city. When it tried to locate a space for a halfway house in Ward 5, a group of neighbors sued the zoning commission in response — and ultimately, Douglas Jemal, the prominent D.C. developer who owned the location CORE DC intended to use, decided against executing a lease with them.

Ward 5 Councilmember Kenyan McDuffie was initially opposed to a new halfway house in his ward and repeatedly pressed the Bureau of Prisons to reconsider its award to CORE DC. (He later dropped his objections, but Jemal’s decision made that a moot point.) In 2018, the Washington Post reported that Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen had also opposed a halfway house in his ward because the proposed location was close to both condos and a nightclub that served largely LGBTQ+ clientele.

Meanwhile, returning citizens and advocates continued to call attention to the conditions at Hope Village, where they said men were denied access to services, disciplined over minor rule violations, and in some cases sent back to prison without getting the chance to make their case at a hearing.

When CORE DC lost its opportunity for a lease in Ward 5, its ability to retain the Bureau of Prisons contract was thrown into question. Ultimately, in June of last year, the Bureau of Prisons announced that CORE DC had secured a location at 3701 Benning Road NE and would be able to open its halfway house.

The decision brought relief to those worried about the future of a halfway house in the District — which advocates have said repeatedly is necessary to help returning citizens find employment and the services they need so that they can effectively transition home from prison.

“For us, that was the fear we had for so long — that there would not be a halfway house in the District,” Chiquisha Robinson, the co-chair of a coalition of nonprofits called the Reentry Action Network, said in an interview last year.

But the saga wasn’t over then, because the announcement of the Ward 7 location set off a new wave of opposition. The neighborhood’s ANC commission launched a push to prevent new construction by getting a historic landmark designation for CORE DC’s proposed site. They argued that its history as a meat rendering plant was worth preserving, but the Historic Preservation Review Board ultimately voted against the designation.

And most recently, Gray launched another offensive against CORE DC, which threatened one of the other contracts they own for services in the city —  a contract for a family homeless shelter. Gray introduced a disapproval resolution to the Council that threatened CORE DC’s homeless shelter contract; the effort ultimately failed.

A coalition of faith leaders wrote in a letter, first reported by Washington City Paper, that Gray’s attempts to thwart CORE DC’s contract for homeless services seemed to amount to “legislative blackmail.”

Gray himself told City Paper that the disapproval resolution was his way of saying “we’ve been trying to get your attention for months and what you’re trying to do on Minnesota and Benning is not of a scale that resonates with me in terms of re-entry programs.”

D.C. hasn’t had a men’s halfway house of its own for about a year. The Hope Village halfway house closed last April, weeks after men inside the facility filed a class action lawsuit over the conditions. Some people went on home confinement through a CORE DC contract, while others have been finishing their sentences at a halfway house in Baltimore and other jurisdictions outside of D.C.

Jack Brown, the CEO and president of CORE DC, said in an emailed statement that he found Gray’s proposal “deeply unfortunate.”

“This effort once again disregards the needs of our fathers, brothers and sons returning home to the District after periods of incarceration,” wrote Brown.

A spokesperson for CORE DC was unable to provide a timeline of when construction of the halfway house would be completed or when it might open.

This story was updated with a comments from CORE DC CEO and President Jack Brown, Vincent Gray, Emily Tatro, and Muriel Bowser, and to clarify CORE DC’s timeline for opening. It was also updated to reflect that the vote of the D.C. Council was 3 to 10, not 3 to 7.