Member Statements on Public Lands Resolution-9/2026

Member Statements
21

AGAINST-Giancarlo V.

I am opposed to this resolution not out of a disagreement in principle, but a disagreement in strategy. I agree earnestly with all of the whereas statements against ills like racism, displacement, speculation, and privatization. But correctly identifying a problem and correctly identifying a solution are different tasks. While this resolution identifies a very, very real problem, I believe the solution it identifies ignores the real reason social housing has not been built at scale in D.C. or anywhere else in the U.S.: a lack of resources for it. I believe that treating the need to get resources as secondary to protecting existing public land will be both ineffective and a bad strategy, and social housing will not be won by taking such shortcuts.

The disposition of public land—whether through cheap long term leases or sales—by D.C. elected and appointed officials to build housing and other facilities has two related causes. First, the allegiance of these officials to capital, as represented by the speculators and developers who benefit most directly from these deals. Second, the lack of any other scalable models for building housing that treat shelter as a right and not a commodity. The second factor of these is key, because it traps organizers: either you want to let the market house some people, or keep public lands in public hands but house no people.

Although the Public Lands Working Group seeks to escape this trap with their resolution, I worry that it would instead push the chapter even deeper in this trap. As detailed in the resolution, the entire point of a moratorium is to allow for social housing to be built on public land, and yet the resolution, supporting materials for it, and statements in support of it hardly mention how that social housing would be built. This is because the resolution authors believe that social housing will not be that difficult to win once a moratorium is in place, and that a moratorium will unlock the political will necessary to win social housing. I disagree on both counts.

The authors of this resolution significantly underestimate the fight required to achieve social housing. There are references to social housing “being adopted by municipalities nationwide” and the fact that it is “financially self-sufficient”. These statements are both literally true, but imply that social housing is an inevitability, when in reality it is not. From Montgomery County to Seattle, there have been varying levels of struggle needed to deliver differing definitions of social housing.

Montgomery County represents an approach with very limited upfront costs. The county has used a “revolving loan fund” approach now in use by three more municipalities and three states, according to the Center for Public Enterprise’s (CPE) tracker. Essentially, for an investment that measured in the hundreds of thousands of dollars each year, the county gets over 300 units of publicly-owned social housing per year. The undeniable benefits of this approach are extolled by local writers like Will Merrifield, a supporter of the resolution, and even The New York Times, which ran a glowing feature on the program.

However, this is not necessarily what the resolution authors are proposing. They call for projects that “include permanently affordable, tenant-governed, municipally owned social housing”. Although Montgomery County has a controlling, 70 percent stake in the project identified in the Times article, that translates to only 30 percent of the units being designated permanently affordable, and there does not seem to be any reporting indicating the units are tenant-owned. In addition, hundreds of units per year is not the same scale as the tens of thousands of affordable units lost over the last few decades in D.C. None of these points are made to chastise Montgomery County for not going far enough; the adoption of this framework at this scale would be great for D.C., and if D.C. wanted a greater ownership stake, a greater percentage of more affordable units, and more units overall, it could simply put more resources into this revolving fund. But getting more resources would require a larger political fight, as was seen in Seattle.

Social housing in Seattle is much closer to the vision identified by the resolution authors. SSHD’s social housing will be publicly-owned, permanently affordable, renter-run and -governed, and even require climate standards (which have happened in Montgomery County projects, but does not seem to be required). In the first building purchased by SSHD this May, 40 percent of units—60 units total—will be for tenants making less than 50 percent of the Area Median Income (AMI), existing tenants will get a two-year rent freeze, there will be utility and rent fee savings, and free one-year public transit passes will be offered to all residents. When I read the resolution before us today, this is much closer to what I believe the authors intended.

Delivering this more social version of social housing required more revenue than Montgomery County. Earlier this year Seattle released $115 million in funds from the revenues of 5% payroll tax on incomes over $1 million—if an employee makes $1.1 million, their employer pays $5,000—that was passed to fund social housing. About $60 million of that was used to purchase SSHD’s first building. Although this is many times more significant an investment than Montgomery County, SSHD plans for a similar, if not slightly lower, number of actual units.

In order to deliver this, Seattle-ites had to fight. Even after 57 percent of voters chose to establish SSHD in 2023, elected officials did not sufficiently fund the developer. When organizers proposed their ballot measure to fund SSHD in 2025, the mayor and city council proposed their own competing measure which would have provided significantly less funding for the agency. And to truly deliver on the promise of SSHD, Seattle-ites had to elect a mayor who was inspired to run by the former mayor’s opposition to the 2025 measure, and then get legislation passed through the state legislature. It took years of outside organizing, not months of inside maneuvering.

This is why the resolution offered by the Public Lands Working Group worries me: just wanting social housing built doesn’t make it so. To deliver Seattle-style social housing will require resources at a scale that would require a significant campaign. When resolution authors don’t specify how they want to deliver social housing, focus their next asks of elected officials on solidifying a moratorium, and claim that such a resolution “provides the foundation for a legislative fix to protect public assets” and then revert to referencing a “framework” it raises doubts about their ability to win social housing after a moratorium. And even for Montgomery County, in 2022 the then-Chief Real Estate Officer of the county’s social housing agency stated that, “the biggest hurdle… is that you have to have the governmental capacity to get into this business, and it’s not easy. There are not a lot of folks who work for governments and can do this reliably…” Passing a moratorium is a guarantee of nothing. And if we push for a moratorium with no ability to deliver social housing, then we walk right into the trap that capital sets for us—keeping public lands in public hands, but housing nobody—because we’ll only have addressed one of the reasons that public land is privatized in the first place.

This is an especially grave strategic error given who the District’s elected officials will be in 2027. With a Mayor Lewis George, Councilmember Raj, Councilmember Owolewa, two councilmembers who endorsed Janeese during the primary, two more councilmembers to be elected in the first half of next year, and one additional councilmember who co-introduced the Green New Deal for Housing Amendment Act of 2022, now is the perfect time for a campaign to pass that bill. It won’t be easy, but winning a moratorium won’t be either. And if we have a choice between staying in the public land trap, or finally escaping it, we should choose to escape. Vote no on this resolution to get us out of the trap.

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22

IN FAVOR-James S.

Comrades,

The movement behind our campaign is powerful and diverse: Internationally renowned muralist MasPaz created our campaign artwork; Will Merrifield with the Center for Social Housing and Public Investment is one of our longest supporters (Will represented a tenant union in Congress Heights and won one of the most significant tenant legal victories in the District’s history.); Robin D. with MLK Library Friends; Greg A. with Black Neighbors of 1617 U Street; and now, the Piscataway Matriarch Julie Tayak Yates. Here’s her message

"I’m writing today in support of the Public Land Working Group’s General Body Resolution calling for a moratorium on the privatization of public lands until a time when social housing can be offered as a viable alternative.

I am the Tayac of the Piscataway Nation, the indigenous inhabitants of what we now refer to as Washington DC. The soil of the land has never left our people’s feet.

I personally grew up in Washington DC and I have seen how the city has changed, not always for the better. It used to be that families and young people could afford to move here and start a life. That reality is harder and harder to find.

The affordable housing crisis is well known to me. As a tribal leader, I often hear from other Native people attempting to move to DC. As much as we try to help them relocate here, it is very difficult finding affordable places for them to live. More affordable housing needs to be created and I believe native people, such my own, would benefit from the creation of social housing.

A moratorium on privatization of public land and the development of municipal owned social housing is an important goal that I support. I encourage DSA members to support the resolution."

As I reflect on Matriarch Julie Tayac Yates’ message, I’m reminded that stopping the grift of the billionaire class taking our public lands shouldn’t be a controversial proposition for a socialist organization. Here we are.

For long term residents of the District of Columbia, the rapid gentrification of Washington DC, facilitated by land give-aways to developers, has led to the historic displacement of working class people of color from across the city. A few decades ago, the U Street corridor was 95% African American. Now it’s closer to 10%.

Will F. and I founded the Social Housing WG to combat this trend in 2022. We started by turning out one of the longest bill hearing testimony sessions in Council history in support of the Green New Deal for Social Housing Act of 2022. When the path for that legislation stalled, a number of us pursued alternative routes up the mountain. In conversations with affordable housing advocates and staff with the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development, we learned that the District has the statutory authority to build social housing now under the Request for Proposals rubric of their land disposition process.

We then focused energy on organizing residents under threat of losing public land in their neighborhood to private developers. We began with the parcel at 1617 U Street because there were many local residents already actively campaigning for this–specifically to protect their neighborhood. Through that organizing work, we’ve brought hundreds of individuals into the chapter and recruited a significant number of new members to the DSA, some of whom are submitting statements of support.

This resolution is the product of that work. When we met candidates for office we found that each one supported the goal of our campaign. We were cautioned by our chapter candidate in Ward 1, Aparna Raj, that passage and implementation of social housing legislation are years away. Given this feedback, we pivoted to a Chapter request to pause public land give-aways–at least and until–social housing is a viable alternative.

We respectfully ask for your vote in support of this resolution.

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IN FAVOR-Rondell J.

My name is Rondell Jordan. I am a D.C. resident, housing attorney, and member of the Public Lands Working Group. I helped draft this resolution, and I support it.

I have spent years representing D.C. tenants and protecting people from eviction. I have also been evicted myself. I signed up for Inclusionary Zoning because I needed affordable housing and never found an apartment through the program. The D.C. Auditor has since documented some of the same problems I experienced, including thousands of households waiting for a relatively small number of units and IZ units sitting vacant for more than a year on average.

So my support for this resolution comes from both sides of my experience with housing in D.C. I have represented people struggling to stay here, and I have struggled to find affordable housing here myself. I do not believe we can continue relying on private development, with limited affordability attached to it, and expect a different result.

That is especially true when we are talking about public land. We already own it. Once we give it away, we may never get it back. If that land can instead be used for permanently affordable social housing, I believe we have an obligation to preserve that option.

We also have to be honest about what has happened to Black D.C. This city has become more expensive as it has become less Black. Housing affordability cannot come at the cost of a less Black D.C. That is a price we should refuse to pay.

And at a moment when D.C.'s autonomy is under attack, I think there is a direct connection between who controls our city and who controls its land. A free D.C. cannot be a D.C. that is for sale.

That is why I support this moratorium and will be voting yes.

(https://dcauditor.org/report/stronger-dhcd-oversight-needed-for-inclusionary-zoning-program-to-reach-housing-goals/)

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IN FAVOR-Sam D.

Comrades, I encourage you to vote in support of this resolution. Increasing the affordability of housing is one of the most important class struggles we face today. Real-estate developers and policymakers, however, have crafted a byzantine policy landscape, where “abundance” liberals uncritically support the mass subsidization of housing development. But these new builds themselves actually drive up housing costs by giving developers and landlords new, astronomically expensive comparable buildings in their neighborhood to justify increasing rents, the costs of maintenance, and the need for public subsidies. One of the effects of this system is the justification of the sale of private lands, as a way to circumvent struggling city budgets. The enclosure of the commons was one of the first markers of a capitalist society that forced workers into wage labor. We need to develop social housing plans that will challenge that market-based model, but stopping the sale of public lands now is the bedrock for those later, more complex policy plans to work. Please vote Yes.

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IN FAVOR-Debby H.

DSA RESOLUTION

My name is Debby Hanrahan. I am a 60-year resident of the District of Columbia, a member of the Public Lands Working Group, new member of DSA, and long-time activist for social-justice issues. I write in support of the resolution calling for a moratorium on the giveaway of public land and air rights in the District of Columbia.

In recent decades, I have seen that the city government sometime can use public land for public purposes that enhance neighborhoods’ quality of life and do not result in the displacement of longtime residents — projects such as magnificent libraries, impressive school buildings and recreation centers. Curiously, in that same period, I have NOT seen the city government build the residential housing so desperately needed for middle- and lower-income citizens. Instead, it has indulged in huge giveaways to private developers of public land all over the city, resulting in such projects as the multi-billion-dollar District Wharf project that produced prohibitive rents and displacement of longtime residents.

In our most recent D.C. primary elections, the overriding issue was a cry for “affordable housing” broadly defined, and why we need to build more of it. After years of living in D.C. and observing housing projects, I believe the failure to meet the real needs of people is because our political leaders have long favored the profit-making ambitions of the private real estate speculators over D.C. citizens’ housing needs. Our political leaders have developed an unholy alliance that features giving this industry invaluable government support, government money, multi-million-dollar gifts of public land, tax breaks and more.

We need to end this D.C. government giveaway of public land and air rights for luxury development — this socialism for the rich. Our public land is disappearing at a dangerous pace, and once these luxury propeerties are completed and occupied at higher rents, they do nothing for the everyday, long-time residents. Instead, they exert upward pressure in the surrounding neighborhoods’ cost of living and cause the displacement of financially insecure neighbors — thus continuing the rapid wholesale displacement of Black residents of recent decades. These increasing neighborhood costs are courtesy of your D.C. government, and its sweetheart-deal arrangements with private developers in the disposition of public land.

In proposing that we secure our public land and air rights for public needs, it is vitally important that preeminent among these needs is social housing. With social housing, there is only truly affordable housing, and no upward pressures to increase living costs in the abutting neighborhood. Crucially, social housing has been shown in academic books and studies to impose downward pressure on costs of neighborhood living by offering lower rents compared to those provided in the real estate marketplace.

Additionally, a comprehensive program of social housing throughout the city will create hundreds of much-needed, good-paying, unionized jobs in the construction-related industry workforce.

If we continue to do nothing to stop gifting D.C. land for luxury real-estate projects and continue to suffer the collateral rise in the cost of living, our recent history tells us that we’re in for acceleration of more of the same — a much more expensive city, our own displacement, a much whiter population, and the loss of a city that we know and love. Thank you.

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IN FAVOR-Andy C.

I support this resolution because public land is a scarce resource and once it has been sold (or in practice given away for as close to free as they are able to get) into private hands, we never get it back. I support social housing as a goal and think we should hold our existing public lands for that purpose rather than handing them off to private developers. Private developers as a bloc are enemies of our political project and we should stand against our elected government giving them our public assets. I hope you will vote for this resolution and that our chapter will take a stand against the further privatization of our public assets.

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IN FAVOR-Lindsay G.

Statement in Support of Protecting DC’s Public Lands: A Personal Perspective

My name is Lindsay Gressard, and comrades, I write in strong support of the Public Lands Working Group’s resolution calling for a moratorium on the sale of public land and public air rights until the District has a binding framework for social housing.

For nearly a decade, I worked as a congressional staffer and Communications Director for the U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources under the leadership of the late U.S. Representative Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.). Public land was one of the defining fights of Rep. Grijalva’s career, and I soon learned through his mentorship that public land is public wealth. Once it leaves public hands, it almost never comes back–and neither do the invaluable benefits it provides us all. After all, public land is one of the most durable assets a community can hold. The Trust for Public Land found that every $1 invested in parks returns at least $3 a year in local economic benefits.

Yet, during my tenure on the Committee, I witnessed firsthand how often decision makers allow corporate interests to wrest control of our public lands for personal profit, and then shamefully flip the script by calling conservation a “land grab.” Our office grappled with the tangible consequences of this kind of industry-first decision making constantly, including most recently, the horrific transfer of land sacred to the Apache at Oak Flat to a foreign-owned mining company.

Here in Washington, DC, the stakes remain similarly high. Our public lands, including treasured and high-demand green spaces like Bruce Monroe Community Park in Ward 1, face threats of privatization that could displace vital community gardens and recreational space. And as we have seen too many times in the District, when a city trades away its green space, it does not distribute that loss evenly; it is often the neighborhoods that are already the hottest and the poorest that lose the most.

When public land and public financing are handed over to private developers like Buwa Binitie, who is currently being sued by the DC’s Attorney General for extreme neglect, the public forfeits both the asset and any real control or accountability over it. Too often, the result is rapid redevelopment that inflates land values, hikes housing costs, and drives out both small businesses and longtime residents, catering instead to wealthier newcomers, undermining the social fabric and affordability of our neighborhoods.

Privatizing public land is a capitulation to capital that trades the long-term wellbeing of our communities and the environment we share for individual CEO profits.

As a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, I affirm the imperative to halt public land and air rights giveaways and safeguard our shared environmental and social assets for future generations.

It is crucial that the city hears our unified voice: stand firm against the privatization of our public land and vote yes on the moratorium.

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AGAINST-Brandon W.

I believe that we must create a path forward in building social housing in DC that will help address the issues the authors of this resolution have laid out of developer gain at the expense of the displacement of working people.

However, this resolution as written (1) does not articulate a vision of how we will establish a social housing authority, (2) brings us into direct opposition of our two newly elected officials, Mayor-elect Janeese Lewis George and Councilmember-elect Aparna Raj, and (3) advocates for a solution that would worsen the issue of housing scarcity that lacks support from everyday tenants and coalition partners to meaningfully make an impact. For these reasons, I urge a vote AGAINST this resolution.

While the authors and advocates of this resolution have framed the moratorium as a targeted ask, they then simultaneously argue that our call for a moratorium ends if there’s a “binding framework for developing social housing on public land” with the term “framework” being left vague intentionally. In fact, one PLWG member noted that the framework could vary between an executive order from the Mayor’s office (which certainly would not result in public lands being sold to private developers) to final passage of the Green New Deal for Social Housing. These are two very different demands, and I think it’s important for us to be aligned on what exactly we are hoping to see accomplished for social housing — before setting a moratorium with a potentially indefinite end date.

This resolution also would bring us into direct opposition of our Mayor-elect and Councilmember-elect. While Janeese and Aparna have both indicated support for building social housing at 1617 U St or even socializing housing after it’s built by private developers, they have never committed to a moratorium on any housing being built on public land and public air rights. Passing this resolution before our candidates even have the chance to take office, in my mind, would not be effective and would only create distance between us and our candidates.

Finally, I believe that the moratorium solution as proposed would not be effective in delivering social housing. As Councilmember-elect Aparna Raj stated in the Save DC Public Land questionnaire, "Right now, DC is not equipped to develop and maintain social housing either in pilot form or at scale. We do not yet have a public developer, and the legislative framework to create one has not yet been passed out of the Housing Committee. That process will take time. Meanwhile, this area needs more housing now. We cannot allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good by delaying development until every piece is in place.

That is why I generally support moving forward with the current proposal and selecting a developer for the site. I support increased density here, and while I believe the project could have gone further on both unit count and affordability, the priority must be to move housing development forward."

I agree with the Councilmember-elect. We cannot call for a moratorium on all new housing developments before even completing the steps of having a public developer or legislation passed out of the Housing Committee — and both 1617 U St and other housing developments on public land are in dire need of new housing. I am proud to have knocked the doors of thousands of tenants across Ward 1 for Aparna and Janeese, particularly on the western side of U St near the 1617 U St development. I had countless conversations with immigrant renters and long-time residents who emphasized that we need an all of the above approach to get more housing built in DC, insisting on both the need for social housing and the need to build affordable housing of all types — including mixed-income housing at the 1617 U site. It’s also of note that there are no tenant unions or labor unions backing this moratorium. Those are the exact coalition partners that we would need to help effectively deliver on the demand of creating a social housing authority; without their buy-in, the moratorium would not have significant teeth.

Because this resolution does not define the framework by which we would end the moratorium, brings us into opposition with our elected candidates before they enter office, and advocates for a solution that I do not believe has the support of coalition partners nor the clear consensus of tenants, I urge members to vote NO on this resolution.

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IN FAVOR-Carole A.

I moved to DC from New York 40 years ago primarily because I wanted my little boys to live in a highly diverse city. Over the course of the years I have watched the things that I loved about DC begin to disappear. The Black population has been driven out due to the lack of working class housing and open land for sports and recreation. Viewsheds have been lost throughout Federal Washington due to the building of high-priced high-amenity high-rise housing — much of which was built with unnecessarily high incentives and now sits with high vacancy rates.

In the meantime, the places I have loved have been taken from the public. To wit: McMillian Park, the 25-acre park sitting above historic caverns that constituted the state-of-the-art water purification system, built when typhoid was rampant. Now, the caverns — which could have served as a needed reservoir — are gone, and in place are multimillion-dollar-plus town homes and high rise apartments, with “poor doors” designed to separate those in the few subsidized units from mixing with the market-rate tenants. We taxpayers paid to prepare the land for development, which we then GAVE to the developers. The Wharf, always easily accessible to the public, was a $95 million give-away to developers, and now blocks all views of the Washington Canal. Devoid of a mass transportation plan, the Wharf is now a traffic nightmare.

The Vacant-to-Vibrant Program of Mayor Bowser actioned (and/or gave) 56 city-owned sites between 2017 and 2019 alone, and only half have been developed. Public policy analysis confirms that millions of dollars in public asset value have been given away without enforcement of the strict housing, hiring or community promises made by those developers.

Thus we have arrived at the worst decision possible. Even as we volunteers and NGOs work to clean the Anacostia River for use and recreation, and given the willingness of the Federal Government to give 180+ aces of river front property to the people of the District, the Mayor and Council voted to GIVE the site to the NFL! It is unfathomable that DC would not embrace the opportunity to control development of that precious land, to enhance and protect the riparian acres, while developing new communities of working family housing and community amenities. Again, the NFL parties have not committed (with timelines and enforcement in place) to build affordable communities.

What is possible going forward? It is my hope that a new and progressive mayor can understand that the developers’ insistence that they cannot afford to build in DC without having DC taxpayers paying for it, is simply not true! They determine what their required rates of return are, and it is time that they make their calculations on true out-of-pocket costs. In fact developers should all want a presence in the Nation’s Capital.

I will conclude with thoughts about Social Housing. That phrase should thrill us. The concept opens many new opportunities for all classes of tenants — at reasonable cost both to the developer and to the District. Montgomery Country’s The Laurent is a successful example. Unfortunately, DC (unable to untether itself from homage to the developer) employed its “Disposition of District Land for Affordable Housing Act” for The Ethel, a supportive housing complex. The land was given for $10. But, then the developer negotiated millions in additional payouts and tax breaks.

Had a Social Housing concept been used instead, the property would still be owned and controlled by the District and its tenants. There are a number of different Social Housing financing models. Clearly, almost any one of them would have resulted in a better outcome.

All of this is to say that I am in full support of the DSC Resolution passed at the General Business Meeting last Sunday. We DC residents should retain ownership and control over its remaining public lands.

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AGAINST-Ken B.

Comrades, I am writing to urge you to vote NO on this resolution to adopt a stringent red line around the sale of public land to build housing in DC. While it is reasonable to oppose handouts to private developers, the reality is that tenants in DC need additional units built now. They cannot wait for a non-existent public housing developer to be created (a large legislative lift in its own right), properly funded, and approved to develop at the 1617 U Street site that the “Public Land” Working Group focuses on preventing the development of. It is a far more efficient use of both public tax dollars and DSA’s ability to apply pressure to the government to prioritize the expropriation of existing privately owned buildings rather than prohibiting new private development.

While it might be on its face contradictory for socialists to accept any privatization, in reality socialists and communists have long understood that while socialist transformation is underway, some degree of private or market driven economic activity can be necessary to provide for the needs of the working class while communists consolidate their government and expand state capacity to meet the needs of the people. For example, in the early days of the Soviet Union, the Bolsheviks privatized large segments of the economy, particularly land ownership, under the “New Economic Policy.” The NEP was in many ways a compromise driven by inefficiencies of state ownership under “war communism” and popular resistance to collectivization in much of the country, and Lenin himself described the measure as “taking one step backward to take two steps forward later on.” In the end, the NEP was largely successful in its goal of increasing agricultural production and revitalizing the Soviet economy. Eventually, much of the private industry developed under the NEP would be collectivized and nationalized, paving the way for the state-run economy that would beat the Nazis in World War 2.

Like the citizens of the early Soviet Union, renters in DC cannot wait until a social housing developer is funded, staffed, and ready to break ground. We need to increase the number of rental units now, and this proposal stands directly opposed to that reality. All this proposal will accomplish is to stymie the construction of housing–social or otherwise–in DC. This will not strengthen our chapter or its hand in DC politics, but rather isolate and marginalize us from other progressive political forces in DC that support social housing but also see the need for immediate construction and housing development, including local unions and our own electeds. Despite the assurances of speakers for this resolution, the reality is that this will not help our electeds execute their agendas, and in fact will put us into direct conflict with them. Not one of Metro DC DSA’s electeds have signed on to support this “moratorium,” and in fact have promised to expand construction and create new units of housing for DC tenants. This may necessarily entail the sale of public land, and I believe we should save our leverage with electeds for critical issues around abolition and internationalism (eg reducing MPD headcount and overtime and canceling its contract with Cellebrite), expanding and protecting TOPA and rent control, and passing the Green New Deal for Housing Act rather than expending it on a relatively niche issue. We must pick our battles carefully, and I do not believe that this would be a wise one to engage in. Please join me in voting NO on this resolution.

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AGAINST-John Q.

My name’s John Qua and I’m a co-lead for the Social Housing Working Group. I’m writing in opposition to the Public Lands Resolution (R1). I’ll keep it brief: I want to see the city pass a social housing department and I don’t think this resolution strategically, politically, or organizationally guides the chapter in the direction of achieving that.

Strategically, the resolution puts the cart before the horse: we need to actually establish a citywide social housing department through the City Council and Mayor before we can organize with the demand that specific parcels of land are built under any kind of social housing program.

Politically, this is outside of the demands our working groups have organized to build awareness and pressure around, and also outside of the demands our recent winning candidates campaigned on. We have helped build a movement for housing justice in the city around: re-expanding TOPA, expanding rent stabilization, and establishing a social housing department. Both Janeese Lewis George and Aparna Raj campaigned on these as priority parts of their platform, and we can hold their feet to the fire around all of these if they renege on them. This introduces a new demand just as we have achieved governing power to enact what we’ve organized for years for.

Organizationally, I don’t understand who the audience is for this resolution, or how this helps us build organizing power for housing justice with residents or tenants. It’s a confusing banner to organize under because it’s an unworkable ask that requires some of our other priority demands (a social housing department) to be met first. It seems to have ties to a NIMBY movement that would split our chapter around the current role of the private housing market before we even have achieved a public developer to contend with that market. And it’d immediately throw us into some of the most contentious public debates around public land around 1617 U St and the RFK Stadium even as the plans for their development are or are nearly completed.

I’d encourage members to vote no on this resolution for all these reasons.

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IN FAVOR-Francisco F-P.

Hi comrades! Thank you for taking the time to read these statements! I’m a member of the Public Lands Working Group (PLWG) and we’ve been intentional in crafting this resolution and planning next steps.

The PLWG work is to pursue a targeted ask: Temporary moratorium placed on the sale of public lands, which right now can be sold for $1, until the city develops the administrative framework for social housing (resolution explainer linked!).

Janeese and Aparna’s huge electoral victories will translate into many hard-fought wins, and it’s our hope that this can stand alongside those wins which stop the private extraction carving up our city.

The term “framework” is left undefined so that we can work with staff and other stakeholders to decide the scope. In theory, the framework could be an executive order, final passage of the GNDPH, etc.

If the chapter adopts the resolution, the PLWG wants to coordinate with the chapter and local organizing groups on the following:

• help to organize residents to ask their council members to protect public lands and support a temporary moratorium;

• organize residents to email and call staff this fall to ask for language in the city budget/BSA which prohibits revenue from the sale of public land and air rights, and resources used to conduct such sales; and.

• organize around reforming city code so that the sale and disposition of public land and public air rights to for-profit housing developers is prohibited.

The moratorium would provide the city an immediate win against disposing public land for more luxury housing, and serve as a tool to get us towards a permanent end to the theft of our public assets by pushing towards de-commodified residential alternatives such as our social housing movement.

At the most recent PLWG meeting (8/17) there were 50+ attendees, which included local ANC commissioners and representatives of the DC Green New Deal Coalition and Center for Social Housing! The meeting was to discuss this resolution. To the PLWG this demonstrates a readiness among community members to include more projects to our ever growing and positive socialist movement that materially benefits working people.

The following organizations have endorsed the resolution: Piscataway Indian Nation, Center for Social Housing & Public Investment, People’s Justice Institute, Save DC Public Land: The 1617 Project, Black Neighbors of 1617 U Street NW, More Affordable DC, DC for Reasonable Development, DC Library Renaissance Project, SPACEsInAction (SIA), The Elephant Free School, Talk2Me Nation, Rising Voices DC

The resolution itself isn’t the endpoint, otherwise we’re basically just putting out a press release. This effort needs a tangible document policymakers can reference, and advocates can use in meetings/organizing which has the backing of an influential organization like our chapter. If you have questions, please feel free to ping me on Slack (@Francisco Flores-Pourrat)! If I don’t have the answer, I’ll make sure to connect you with another member of the PLWG who does!

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AGAINST-Joe R.

I strongly encourage everyone to vote AGAINST this resolution. This isn’t a position the chapter should take, and would likely put us in conflict with our soon-to-be newly elected Socialists in Office (SIOs) before we’ve even started. I do not foresee any scenario where a Councilmember Raj or a Mayor Lewis George would support such a moratorium. Having spent six months campaigning nearly 24/7 in Ward 1, there is overwhelming support for building more affordable housing of many types and through a variety of policy solutions. Others who are more equipped can speak to the nuts and bolts of why this proposal isn’t feasible and the local coalitions and political dynamics at play, but put simply it would not be wise for us or our electeds to become the face of a moratorium that would almost certainly be framed as slowing down building more housing in the middle of a housing crisis. This is putting the cart before the horse when we haven’t even established a social housing authority in the District, and there has been a longstanding push to do so through Councilmember Lewis George’s Green New Deal for Social Housing Act (alongside other priorities such as restoring TOPA and expanding rent control). This proposal would not be additive or beneficial, rather it presents significant risks of derailing the yearslong efforts around these other priorities, which we know our SIOs and other progressive candidates campaigned on. This is not a values statement to make us feel good, it’s a political question with real stakes. Vote no.

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AGAINST-Sam M.

Members should vote NO on this resolution. We must be committed to the principle of opposing land privatization, but this resolution is wrong for three reasons.

First, land disposition is a tactical decision and a tool that may, in some manner, be used in developing social housing. This resolution opposes even long term leases, which would include the financing vehicles imagined in the Green New Deal for Social Housing. Although members would support the democratic governance and affordability of social housing developments, this resolution would provide grounds for the chapter to oppose those developments — particularly if the development in question were to exceed a certain density or height or otherwise offend the aesthetic sensibilities of neighbors.

Second, this resolution will needlessly put the chapter in conflict with the socialists taking office in the spring and pulls us away from co-governance. Socialists in office in DC will face constraints and pressures to adopt capitalist-reformist policies. As a chapter, we must be prepared to keep the pressure on those elected officials to maintain a class analysis in their policies and politicking. Taking a rigid line on those policies is not the same as a principled stand, but rather would bring brittleness to that relationship. DC’s electoral system forces a personalist politics and while we should struggle against that, the horizon of working class power is far closer than local parliamentarism. As such, it is our responsibility to maintain constructive relationships with socialists in office. If we treat our relationship with them as secondary to cleanly-delineated party doctrine, we are sacrificing the exercise of working class power at the alter of self-serving virtuousness. The censure of Councilmember Zachary Parker was admirable, but tactical analysis must acknowledge how limited his office’s engagement with the chapter and other grassroots organizers was after his first election. When we have the opportunity to keep elected officials in line with the needs of the working class, it is our responsibility to uphold that framework and operate flexibly within it.This resolution undermines that.

Third and finally, this resolution fails to contemplate the land acquisition needed for both social housing, public housing, and the general provision of public goods by the district. It’s not enough to take a position in the negative, but to envision a more just alternative. Constructive politics is one key to broadening the appeal of socialism in DC and this resolution does not accomplish that. If we articulated a general land policy, it should prioritize the war of position to build a socialized city over a futile war of maneuver chasing anti-development anger from project to project.

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AGAINST-David P.

The proposal for DSA to endorse a moratorium on public land disposition is poorly thought out, not suitable for the problem it seeks to address, and revealing of a perspective that seeks to use DSA to advance a narrow agenda separate and apart from the actually existing tenant movement in the city, without consideration for how that affects our ability to achieve our program. In fact, nothing about this topic appears in our program outside of the section on the Social Housing working group, which I co-chair as part of our Green New Deal working group, because all of our work has been focused on advocacy and organizing to support passage of the Green New Deal for Housing Act, in tandem with a coalition of labor, tenant, and community groups called Green New Deal for DC. There is no such group behind this resolution.

In fact, the last time there was a coalition with MDCDSA behind a public land use issue, I led our participation, and we won reforms to the DC Comprehensive Plan that already ensure that we maximize affordable housing produced out of the sale of public land. The last time the working group that put this resolution forward was active in DC politics, they were acting outside of DSA as an independent group sending election questionnaires to Ward 1 candidates in the Democratic Primary asking about their support for public housing at 1617 U St, a proposal that has already been substantively shot down by all relevant policy makers and community groups (would they have endorsed against Aparna on this basis?). Now they simply want to relitigate that issue in hopes of resurrecting the supposed possibility that Mayor Muriel Bowser, the avatar of neoliberal DC, is going to decide in her lame duck era to simply implement Janeese Lewis George’s housing agenda, something she opposes with every fiber of her being. Why would anyone believe this is likely to happen? If it isn’t likely to happen, then what is the point of this resolution at all?

I support the focused work of MDCDSA to support passage of the Green New Deal for Housing Act because I believe we should both use public land for public housing (something the bill mandates), and that we should acquire ownership stakes in existing housing to turn it into public housing. There is no way we can win decommodified housing without the capacity of our state government to one day intervene substantively in the housing market through a Department of Social Housing, as the GND for Housing bill envisions. This resolution doesn’t do anything to get us closer to that date - it undermines the agenda of our newly elected Socialists in Office and moves us farther away.

Why? If you understand one thing about housing markets, it is that they operate very closely in symbiosis with the business cycle. When materials and labor and borrowing costs are cheap, more housing is capable of being built. This quite simply didn’t matter in the 2010s era of low material, labor and financing costs, because despite relatively fast private sector housing construction (compared to the rest of the country), no one in DC government was willing to drive the value of land down at the expense of property and asset owners by building at-cost public housing that would undermine developers and home prices. In fact, we were begging people to realize this was a problem in the late 2010s land use debate, citing evidence like the failure of Metro to develop their Fort Totten station parking lot due to developers citing “overcapacity” and “inability to charge higher rents”. Now, in 2026, all of those things are expensive, but it’s never been easier to acquire existing properties from desperate landlords drowning in mortgage or upkeep costs. If Mayor Lewis George wanted to dispose of public land at places like 1617 U St, which, thanks to the previously mentioned efforts of MDC DSA, Empower DC, and many others, already is maximizing Inclusionary Zoning at 30% of total units, she could acquire multiples of those units in the form of existing properties in need of lower rents, forward thinking ownership, or both, and build a much stronger public portfolio by doing so. She could link the fortunes of residents with disparate tenancies, whether tenants in market rate units, rent controlled units, subsidized projects like Inclusionary Zoning, tenants with subsidized vouchers or in fully public housing, and bank tenants to stabilize the housing market at the foundation with a huge dose of solidarity. There is a ton she could do, thanks to DC’s unicameral home rule government that allows the mayor a wide latitude of control.

But asking her to focus on the priorities of a few loud voices who’d rather skip the hard work of building a unified chapter program and socialists in office strategy by only working in DSA when it’s convenient to them, simply for a symbolic resolution that wouldn’t actually achieve anything or put us in stronger position to achieve our ends, is simply asking to be ignored. If we don’t give Mayor JLG new tools through DC Council legislation, everything she does unilaterally can simply be reversed, even if she did decide she would like to pull money from every other program to compete with data centers for skilled labor and materials and financing in order to make the smallest dent in the housing market you could possibly make in 2027. Again I just say, why? For what? To relitigate 1617 U St? There is quite simply no reason for DSA to be involved with that or with this topic unless it is part of an actual strategic campaign with our Socialists in Office committee, Stomp Out Slumlords, Green New Deal, Political Engagement, AdCom, and everyone else working together seamlessly, as envisioned by our priority campaign structure. None of those groups are going to mobilize in support of any action that results from this resolution if it passed - I don’t even know how they would, because there is no theory of change, tactic, or metric of success here that makes any sense for us to pursue.

Vote no and let’s get back to the work of preparing to co-govern.

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