D.C. Councilmember Robert White (D-At Large) says that if he’s elected mayor he’ll guarantee a job for any D.C. resident who wants one, a massive initiative he says will serve to tamp down on crime by creating thousands of new green jobs for everything from planting trees to installing solar panels.

White made the announcement Thursday at the Dix Street Garden in Ward 7, a formerly empty lot which has since been turned into a community garden and urban agriculture operation run by two longtime residents as a means to revitalize the neighborhood. White said the new program — Jobs Guarantee for D.C. — would follow the garden’s example by addressing both public safety and the threat of climate change by using green jobs to give people alternatives to crime.

“The vast majority of people involved in violence in our city don’t want to be. But the streets are offering them a better opportunity than our government is. We can change that, and we have to,” said White. “This monumental program will drive down violence by giving people a real alternative to crime while addressing one of the most pressing issues of our time, which is climate change.”

The jobs White is considering would largely be with the government, up to 10,000 new positions. That would represent an almost 30% increase in the size of the city’s current workforce of 33,000, and cost an estimated $1.5 billion a year. White equated the initiative to the summer jobs program famously launched by the late Marion Barry when he first became mayor, and said that the cost would roughly equate to the annual increases the city’s budget has seen in recent years.

White conceded that his program would represent a “significant expansion” in the size of government, but said that residents would soon see the benefits.

“People see the needs in their communities, they see the litter, they see the storm drains, they see the condition of public housing, they see the needs in our community gardens and spaces that could be community gardens,” he said. “And so what residents see, there’s an opportunity to improve their communities in a way that they have wanted for a long time.”

A similar programs was launched in Boston last year, though on a smaller scale. In 2016, Philadelphia unveiled its own massive green jobs program. White’s plan also mimics the Green New Deal rolled out by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York).

In her two terms in office, Mayor Muriel Bowser has similarly looked to the government to provide jobs and training that could serve both to promote economic opportunity and promote public safety, especially in neighborhoods where both crime and unemployment are high. While the average unemployment rate in D.C. was 7.3% in 2020, it was significantly higher in areas east of the Anacostia River where a majority of homicides take place — 13.1% in Ward 7 and 17.1% in Ward 8, according to the D.C. Department of Employment Services.

In 2018, Bowser created the Infrastructure Academy, which connects residents to jobs in infrastructure with companies like Pepco and Washington Gas. As of March of this year, city officials say almost 2,000 residents have completed job training there. Bowser has also expanded Barry’s legacy summer jobs program by allowing more people to qualify, and has also increased the wages that are paid. More recently, DOES said it would offer internships and apprenticeships for students as a means to tamp down on a spike in carjackings.

But White said many of those programs have not been well-run or overseen, and that Bowser’s overall management of DOES has been criticized by lawmakers.

“Mayor Bowser has not taken a deliberate approach to getting people in our city employed. How many times have we seen our neighbors go through one Department of Employment Services program or another and leave with no more job prospects than when they started? She’s spending a lot of money, but she is not solving the problems,” he said. “[Our] plan will be substantive and planned for many years out. It’s not something that’s going to be slapped together, that’s going to disappear. We’re going to track our outcomes so that we’re seeing the progress that we’re making, both in terms of the impact on community, but also the jobs and the next step jobs for for the people participating in this program.”

White’s jobs plan is the second such plan he’s unveiled so far related to public safety, showing how it has become one of the critical issues of the mayoral election leading up to the Democratic primary on June 21. Bowser has similarly focused on public safety, pushing the council to approve her plan to hire more police officers. White said he would soon unveil more plans focused on crime and violence, and said Bowser’s approach wouldn’t yield long-term results.

“What the mayor has done on public safety has been shallow and has been slapped together, and every single program has fallen apart as quickly as it was slapped together,” he said. “We can’t continue to do this.”