Wed, Feb 24, 2021, 5:30 PM EST | Douglass Community Land Trust will host a virtual training, presented by the Public Integrity Section of the DC Office of the Attorney General for Limited Equity Housing Co-op board members via Zoom.
A 2019 report from the National Community Reinvestment Coalition found that Washington, D.C. had the highest percentage of gentrifying neighborhoods of any U.S. city, with over 20,000 people displaced in recent years.
The growing need for solutions prompted the establishment of a Limited-Equity Cooperative Task Force to provide comprehensive policy recommendations, assist District residents and the District government with improving existing limited-equity cooperatives, establish new limited-equity cooperatives, and help all limited-equity cooperatives succeed and prosper.
Also referred to as Limited Equity Housing Cooperatives, LECs are collectively owned by the residents, and each household owns a share in the building. Each household pays monthly costs, or carrying charges, for a unit from the collectively owned building. However, unlike market-rate cooperatives, the resale price is restricted to retain affordability. In other words, an owner who sells a share in the building does not receive the full market appreciation on the share. The LEC acts as an affordable housing asset for the individual household and the community in which the property resides.
Source: Coalition for Nonprofit Housing and Economic Development
"Limited-equity cooperatives are a key part of the affordable housing landscape in the District of Columbia."
Today, D.C. has approximately 4400 units of LEC housing in 99 co-op buildings.
Many co-ops are located in gentrifying and gentrified neighborhoods, representing a form of stable home ownership that has allowed low- and moderate-income Washingtonians to stay in their homes as retail, services, and job opportunities come to their neighborhoods, and as their local public schools improve.
Despite their proven success, there continue to be roadblocks that prevent the creation of new LECs, and existing LECs may face challenges in accessing assistance to sustain themselves long-term.
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As housing prices continue to soar, and lower income residents find themselves squeezed into unaffordable housing or out of the District entirely, there is a renewed sense urgency.
It’s time to take the lessons we’ve learned — as LEC members, tenant organizers, technical assistance providers, financing agents, lawyers, and city leaders — to dramatically scale up this housing form in the District.
“We came together, we paid our rent every month, we did everything we were supposed to do. We paid off our building by 2016. So in twenty years, our co-op was completely paid for... After we paid for the building and everything, of course we weren’t paying as much rent as we had been paying, but we decided that we were each going to pay a certain amount of money each month, and from that, we were able to start doing some renovations on the building, and we paid cash... We’re going to continue to keep collecting money every month, and improving our building.”
Fill out the form below to receive occasional updates and notifications from the DC Limited Equity Cooperative Task Force and how you can help advance these critical proposed policy recommendations.
Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA) laid the groundwork for preserving affordable housing by helping low income tenants become homeowners.
Almost 80% of the Limited Equity Cooperatives in DC today were established between 1980 and 2009.
The report provides a set of 16 recommendations that will allow the city to build on its success in nurturing the development of LECs.
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