Keeping DC in DC: Supporting Small Landlords & residents in the Fight Against Displacement

In January, The Community Foundation’s Health Equity Fund announced $15.7 million in multiyear investments in five transformative projects focused on collaborative approaches to increasing economic mobility and wealth building.

We are excited to share with you a special feature on one of these projects, the Connecting Community and Capital (3c) Initiative, a partnership between The Coalition (formerly CNHED) and Local Initiatives Support Corporation DC (LISC DC)  focused on stabilizing small multifamily buildings—a critical yet long overlooked part of our housing ecosystem—to help residents at risk of displacement remain in high opportunity neighborhoods.

For years, Washington, DC has been one of the fastest growing cities in the country. In 2024, the city welcomed close to 15,000 new residents—promoting job growth and new developments across the city—bringing the total population to over 702,000.

But beneath that growth story lies another troubling trend, a sharp rise in displacement, as more long-time residents and working families struggle to afford rising housing costs in the communities they’ve lived for years.

“Displacement is a major problem in The District, especially for low-income residents. But we learned from this work that it is also a major problem for the emerging middle-class,” Stephen Glaude, President & CEO of The Coalition shares. “Costs are not going down, and it is vital we develop new solutions.  We can’t let buildings decline and hope to retain rising families as well as vulnerable residents. We must preserve affordable housing, specifically naturally occurring affordable housing, to ensure residents remain rooted in their communities.”

Small Apartment Buildings: An Anchor Against Displacement

Founded in 2000, The Coalition has been a District leader in community economic development policy, programs and research, in the areas of affordable housing, small business support, and workforce development for many years. As a membership organization, The Coalition has convened nonprofit and for-profit housing developers, supportive service agencies, and tenant advocate groups across DC around a variety of community economic development issues.

In 2021, The Coalition was invited by J.P. Morgan to join the Center for Community Investment, as part of a national pilot aimed at finding innovative ways to invest in lasting systems change.

That’s when the team first embarked on a multiyear project, now known as 3C: Connecting Community and Capital, which examined ways to decrease the displacement of low-to-mid-income District residents through public policy, resident engagement, and small building infrastructure support.

“This effort focused on pushing ourselves to think differently about how we could more strategically deploy capital in a way that generated more high-value, long-term impact,” Maya Brennan, Chief Housing Officer at The Coalition recalls. “It was during this time that we really started looking into the small multifamily building landscape in DC as a space that was primed for support and investment.”

“Small apartment buildings make up roughly a third of Washington, DC's housing stock,” shares Judy Estey, Senior Program Officer at LISC DC. “Their rents are $300-500 lower than comparable units in larger buildings, and over $1,000 less than those in newer developments.”

Like The Coalition, LISC has been at the heart of community development in DC for several decades, including investing over $600 million to support over 15,000 affordable homes, including many small apartment units.

“Small apartment buildings are really the lifeblood of the housing market,” Bryan Franklin, Deputy Director at LISC DC adds. “They house not just low-income residents, but the city's shrinking middle class. And 70% of them are owned by DC residents with community roots who want to preserve affordability, provide quality housing, and build economic security for their families”

However, many of these local landlords are overwhelmed by the costs of maintaining and, in many cases, renovating small housing developments. 70% of small buildings in DC were constructed before 1976, meaning that many are long-overdue for costly upgrades to HVAC, roofing, and electrical systems.

Meanwhile, many renters—particularly those in the middle-class, with limited disposable income—are faced with a difficult choice: accept the leaky roof and broken elevator or leave. Displacement happens when they look outside DC to other jurisdictions, away from their long-time communities and jobs, unraveling the intricate social fabric woven with close friends, relatives, and churches and social organizations.

“When we think about what it means to do rental preservation work, rentals are starting to deteriorate and renters who can afford to go somewhere else, will go somewhere else,” says Glaude. “Both owners and renters want that building to be better, but without providing a roadmap for them to get better, we can't improve. That’s what this project is about, providing that roadmap.”

A Neighborhood Approach to Combat Displacement

Leveraging the data and experience from the Center for Community Investment and support from The Community Foundation’s Health Equity Fund, The Coalition and LISC DC came together to expand the 3C Initiative into a more neighborhood-centered approach, supporting landlords and tenants who rely on small housing developments in specific DC neighborhoods.

The project will provide wrap-around supports for landlords by helping them identify potential upgrades and improvements and the various resources they can leverage to make those updates, including financing and legal support.  This will include zero-percent interest and below-market interim stabilization loans offered through LISC, alongside clear recommendations to improve operations of the building.

At the same time, the project will engage residents within the neighborhood to ensure that they are informed, involved, and that building improvements meet their needs, while still maintaining affordability.

“This work is about strengthening community,” says Maya. “That means we need to bring everyone to the table—landlords and residents—to make sure they all experience that sense of belonging, power, and economic growth together.”

The project will target 16 buildings, including several co-operatives—small housing developments that are governed and co-owned by residents. Like their privately owned counterparts, co-operatives often have limited assets for major improvements.

The project will also engage landlords who are considering selling their assets, and it will help ensure that the building can continue to provide affordable housing for tenants for the foreseeable future.

“If a building is able to retain its existing residents and stay a place that is driven by DC values, those pieces together do a lot to make a person feel like ‘I belong here—even if there is displacement happening in the area,’” notes Maya. “That sense of belonging really matters.”

Creating a Sustainable Model for Anti-Displacement

Beyond supporting these 16 small housing developments, LISC and The Coalition say they hope to create policy recommendations for city officials and develop a suite of tools that could scale to the nearly 4,000 small buildings across DC.

Although DC’s Department of Housing & Community Development currently operates several programs for small housing providers, many of those programs are limited in scope and are tied to the City’s Budget, which may see dramatic cuts in FY27.

“The small building program that the city offers is dependent on money in the budget,” Franklin explains. “We need to find strategies that align with public resources but are not solely dependent on them. We believe that if we can prove concept here—leveraging private dollars and loans with limited public dollars—we can provide a policy blueprint for DC and beyond, with insights and designs that can be implemented at scale. ”