Blog / Advocacy

Join us for a previously recorded Breaking Bread conversation series on housing justice in DC, including dialogue on protecting tenants’ rights, affordable housing development and preservation, public housing redevelopment, and more.

Many people in Washington D.C. are still struggling to find a consistent income to pay their rent and people still need assistance because of the pandemic. Last month, Bread for the City attorney, Jack Meaney  the Festival of Tenants, a community event held by the Cancel Rent Coalition in D.C., where there were informational booths, community activities, and resources for tenants. The event was held in Ward 5 to target Councilmember Kenyan R. McDuffie, who has not yet pledged his support for the coalition’s demands.

Housing literally saves lives—and the combination of COVID-19 and DC’s underinvestment in deeply affordable housing will undoubtedly further racial inequity.

Bread for the City is focused on bringing an anti-racist lens to every part of our mission and that includes our generous supporters. BFC believes that our donors of color aren’t centered enough in our work. BFC knows that fundraising has white supremacy roots and is working to both acknowledge the history and be the antidote to fundraise in an antiracist way.

Today Bread for the City joins everyone who commemorates Juneteenth.  Remembering Juneteenth allows an annual opportunity for America and American’s to acknowledge the real harm done to Black people during the centuries of enslavement in this country. It’s also an opportunity for us to move towards anti-racism and flight to eliminate the race-based socioeconomic disparities that still take place in our communities.

On Thursday May 20, 2021, Bread for the City and our community members provided oral and written testimony in support of two bills currently being discussed at the D.C. City Council: the Eviction Record Sealing Authority Amendment of 2021 and the Fair Tenant Screening Act of 2021. Both pieces of legislation will benefit low-income housing applicants, particularly people of color, who regularly face discrimination and indignity during the housing application process, the eviction process, and within our criminal justice system.

What I’ve learned over the past year is that antiracism and fighting white supremacy is not an intellectual endeavor. It is an embodied, healing, lifelong journey full of mistakes, love, and discomfort. As a Jewish white woman, I wrestled with how my heritage, intergenerational trauma, and internalized antisemitism were all wrapped up in white supremacy and fighting racism. I’m writing this to reflect on my own experience in hopes that more white people will join me on an antiracist journey.

Bread for the City strongly encourages the DC Council to vote “no” on Chairman Mendelson’s proposed amendment to the eviction moratorium, the Coronavirus Public Health Extension Emergency Act of 2021.  Landlords are currently prohibited from serving eviction notices and filing new eviction cases against tenants for the nonpayment of rent.