{"id":168,"date":"2019-03-14T20:04:24","date_gmt":"2019-03-14T20:04:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/?p=168"},"modified":"2019-03-15T01:13:22","modified_gmt":"2019-03-15T01:13:22","slug":"with-barry-farm-all-but-abandoned-the-fight-for-its-future-is-just-beginning-east-of-the-river","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/168\/","title":{"rendered":"With Barry Farm All but Abandoned, the Fight for its Future is Just Beginning – East of the River"},"content":{"rendered":"

eastoftheriverdcnews.com\/2019\/03\/12\/with-barry-farm-all-but-abandoned-the-fight-for-its-future-is-just-beginning\/<\/a>
\nWith Barry Farm All but Abandoned, the Fight for its Future is Just Beginning March 12, 2019
\nAccording to Detrice Belt, president of the Barry Farm Tenants and Allies Association, officials recently cut down trees to continue demolition. It\u2019s been over nine months since DC\u2019s highest court rejected redevelopment plans for Barry Farm, awarding a major victory to residents suspicious of relocation and the city\u2019s approach to revitalizing public housing. But, while the project, now crawling into its 13th year, has paused indeterminately, few residents are left to celebrate.
\nHundreds of public housing units stretching across Sumner, Eaton and Stevens roads now house less than a dozen residents. Abandoned satellite dishes and door decorations on empty buildings suggest hasty evacuations. Some doors have been bolted shut, while others are wide open to prove there\u2019s nothing left inside.
\nDetrice Belt, president of the Barry Farm Tenants and Allies Association (BFTAA), moved last month to Northeast\u2019s Deanwood. A resident of Barry Farm for over 20 years, Belt left a neighborhood starkly different than the one she knew.
\n\u201cI\u2019m so hurt by it. It\u2019s so much on my spirit,\u201d said Belt. \u201cI miss the action and the liveliness. It was like a breathing thing.\u201d
\nThis year, DC\u2019s New Communities Initiative (NCI), a program managed by the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development (DMPED) and a strategic partner with the DC Housing Authority (DCHA) in the redevelopment of Barry Farm, will ask the Zoning Commission to approve an amended proposal for building a mixed-income community. Per a DC Court of Appeals ruling, the improved plan must address a number of logistical concerns and reconsider the impacts of relocation on current residents.
\nBut this acknowledgment did little to slow the mass exodus. Between April 2018 and January 2019, over one hundred families were edged out and moved to units across the city.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s really been like a smack in the face,\u201d said Dee Washington, BFTAA sergeant of arms. Washington left late last summer. \u201cWe had that win in April, yet they were moving forward as if we had already lost.\u201d
\nWithout a formalized plan and no timeline, no one knows what will happen to Barry Farm \u2013 while residents fear they\u2019ve lost their homes.. Nevertheless, there\u2019s a chance they might yet shape the future of the neighborhood. Following the latest wave of difficult resettlements, the BFTAA is meeting officials with a plan of its own, and fighting for residents to decide what comes next.
\n As of February 2019, less than a dozen residents still live in Barry Farm\u2019s 444-units. Continuing Relocation and Demolition Last September, Nicole Odom, a new Park View resident, received a DCHA housing voucher that expired a week later. Officially, she had just seven days to sign a lease. \u201cPark View wasn\u2019t something I picked,\u201d said Odom, an assistant organizer with Ward 8 nonprofit Empower DC. \u201cIt was a last effort to get in before my voucher expired. I moved because I had to.\u201d
\nSeeking vouchers was Odom\u2019s second choice after public housing, yet when she looked into available units, she dismissed them as \u201cterrible.\u201d Not until she voiced concerns with DCHA did she receive a voucher. She didn\u2019t officially move until a month later.
\nDCHA, a federally funded independent agency, owns the Barry Farm plot and oversees federal funding procurement, demolition, housing subsidies and community management, in coordination with NCI. In 2013, DCHA\u2019s board of commissioners also secured a contract for the plot\u2019s future developers, A&R Development and the Preservation of Affordable Housing (POAH). Despite the court\u2019s decision to vacate the zoning order, these developers will see the project through.
\nThe court\u2019s dismissal of the zoning order also had minimal impact on DCHA\u2019s timeline for demolition. In 2017, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development granted demolition approval for Barry Farm, which is authorized to continue independently of redevelopment plans. In March 2018, a month before the court\u2019s decision, the DCHA approved over a hundred project-based vouchers (PBVs) that were issued to families, like Odom\u2019s, who chose to relocate.
\nOdom considers herself lucky for having worked with officials on alternatives, especially considering she missed the voucher\u2019s initial application deadline. Others weren\u2019t as fortunate. Limited by housing availability and a lack of information, many residents scrambled to relocate under pressing deadlines.
\n\u201cResidents that didn\u2019t get an opportunity to take a voucher didn\u2019t know anything about the voucher. They were scared to take something they didn\u2019t know what it was,\u201d said Odom. \u201cA month before the vouchers expired, [DCHA] had an information session about them,\u201d she added, \u201cand that information session was two days before the deadline to apply for them.\u201d According to Odom, other residents leased homes that had failed inspections or didn\u2019t compare to previous homes\u2019 size or standard of living.
\nBelt, going from a house to a no-pets apartment, had to get rid of her two dogs. \u201cEven though these people moved, they are still having issues,\u201d she said. \u201cWe\u2019re having more issues off the property than we did on the property.\u201d
\nWhile there is no official timeline for Barry Farm\u2019s redevelopment, DCHA said in a statement that families planned to return to the redeveloped site in 2020. \u201cDCHA remains committed to the development of Barry Farm and is evaluating its next steps,\u201d said the agency. \u201cOver the last several months, numerous Ward 8 families made the decision to relocate from the Barry Farm community while demolition and redevelopment are underway. These families will not be overlooked or forgotten.\u201d
\nWhat\u2019s Next? By Christmas, Barry Farm was all but cleared out, and hundreds had settled elsewhere. Now, a quiet has fallen over the hollowed-out properties. Few clues remain that suggest a housing controversy. A door on Eaton Road still reads, \u201cWe not moving\u201d in spray paint. Another sign on a boarded-up Sumner Road house claims that the move-outs are illegal.
\nIn just under a year, residents gained a victory, followed by a major loss. \u201cA lot of people are feeling defeated. It may look like we lost,\u201d said Belt.
\n\u201cAlthough there\u2019s a resolution for residents to return [to Barry Farm], the more we see a delay in [redevelopment], the harder it is for residents to come back,\u201d said Daniel del Pielago, an organizing director for Empower DC. The nonprofit organization advocates for Barry Farm residents and is critical of the city\u2019s treatment toward the neighborhood.
\nSince the ruling, the New Communities Initiative has begun collecting community feedback on a new proposal. A series of six meetings from September to October provided criticism of the old plan and asked residents what they would want from a new and improved Barry Farm.
\nAccording to NCI director Angie Rodgers, the new plan will reduce the number of units to 1,100, some 300 fewer than originally proposed. Fewer units would mean more backyards and parks and bigger bedrooms. Additionally, Rodgers is planning for a new community center.
\n\u201cWe came out of this process with a plan that was different than what we went into it with,\u201d said Rodgers. The plan \u201creally responded to all of the folks who plugged into the process, either by coming to the meetings that we hosted or by us going to other already planned community meetings.\u201d
\nAs a mixed-income community, the complex would be divided evenly between public housing, affordable housing and market-rate units. Critics of the original plan pointed out this would result in 100 fewer public housing units. Rodgers countered that some Barry Farm residents are already living in public housing replacements, located in nearby Sheridan Station and Matthew\u2019s Memorial, that make up for any lost units.
\n\u201cWhen people make a criticism of communities or of mixed-income development, we\u2019re listening, and we\u2019re tinkering, and we\u2019re trying to make this development better than the last,\u201d said Rodgers.
\nNCI and DMPED received support from DC Councilmember Anita Bonds, chair of the Committee on Housing and Urban Revitalization. \u201cI am grateful that DCHA and DMPED have held numerous community meetings to engage with the residents and make them aware of the returning process,\u201d said Bonds in a statement. \u201cI trust that residents will receive the support they need.\u201d
\nBelt thinks now\u2019s the time for the residents to lead development. Since the neighborhood was cleared, Belt has been coordinating rides and planning conferences to keep residents involved in the fight for Barry Farm.
\nThe fight is changing, though. Amid relocation and disorganization, after countless meetings with city and housing officials alike, the BFTAA wants Barry Farm to determine its own fate. The redevelopment planning process is back at square one, and Belt thinks it\u2019s time to meet officials toe-to-toe.
\n\u201cWe\u2019re trying to build our own plan,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s at the same stage as the Housing Authority \u2013 talking with residents about what they would like to see,\u201d she added. \u201cWe want home ownership opportunities. We want town homes back. And we want some businesses in there.\u201d
\nAccording to Rodgers, the NCI will begin collaborating with Advisory Neighborhood Commission 8C next month on a new submission for Barry Farm, with hopes of delivering it to the Zoning Commission this spring.
\nWard 8 Councilmember Trayon White could not be reached for comment.
\nThe Barry Farm Tenants and Allies Association holds meetings on the third Saturday of each month at Empower DC. All Barry Farm residents are welcome.<\/p>\n

Mary Bolton 202-390-1208<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

eastoftheriverdcnews.com\/2019\/03\/12\/with-barry-farm-all-but-abandoned-the-fight-for-its-future-is-just-beginning\/ With Barry Farm All but Abandoned, the Fight for its Future is Just Beginning March 12, 2019 According to Detrice Belt, president of the Barry Farm Tenants and Allies Association, officials recently cut down trees to continue demolition. It\u2019s been over nine months since DC\u2019s highest court rejected redevelopment plans for Barry Farm, awarding […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-housingarchive"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}