Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act in Washington DC:

A Brief History

Brook Hill, Dominic Moulden & Judith Keller

Published in Issue 7.1 // Updates

Keywords: housing justice; tenant organizing; right of first refusal; Washington, D.C.

Abstract:

This update looks into the history and the current contestation of Washington, D.C.’s Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA). TOPA provides tenants of rental housing with the right of first refusal when an owner seeks to sell a property. Enacted in the 1980s, TOPA has been a crucial tool in the fight of working-class people to win true housing justice in the U.S. capital, particularly for Black and Brown working-class residents who have long been systematically denied self-determination over where they live. Since its inception, working-class Black and Brown tenants in dozens of properties have used TOPA to win ownership, and especially during the first years, TOPA was widely successful, helping thousands of tenants. Yet, in recent years, TOPA has been systemically undermined as dedicated funding was cut. In this update, we thus review TOPA’s legal framework, history, and effectiveness, as well as current organizing efforts to hold on to the act as a tool for D.C. residents to win control over their housing.

doi.org/10.54825/CHJQ5690

Brook Hill is a movement lawyer and community organizer. He is currently Senior Counsel in the Fair Housing and Community Development Project at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. Mr. Hill also sits on the Shared Leadership Team of ONE DC, a community-based organization fighting for affordable housing, tenants’ rights and workers’ rights.

Dominic T. Moulden is a community-accountable scholar, lecturer, organizer and activist. He is the founder of Elephant Free School, a Black-centered laboratory of imagination and freedom, a member of Organizing Neighborhood Equity DC, and provides technical assistance to tenant associations, both emerging and established. He was recently awarded an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Boston University.

Judith Keller is a human geographer interested in geographies of home and housing. Her research centres around climate (in)security and (im)mobility as she explores the effects of the climate emergency on people’s relationship to place and home.

Download PDF

See article reference

Topics: community organizinghousing justicelawtenants rightsworking class