The urban landscape of
Washington D.C. is in flux. Municipal policy has consistently delivered
displacement by design by prioritizing the interests of white developers at the
expense of black and brown communities. However, at the same time there is a viral
intolerance building up within the city, asserting not just a right to stay in
one’s house as it, but a right to make a home.
My research revolves around one central question: in the wake of rapidly
increasing rates of homelessness and expulsion, what alternative ways to design
the city and generate home are taken up by communities in their fight against
displacement?
Drawing on interviews I
did with members of EmpowerDC (an anti-displacement NGO) as well as my own
experience volunteering with them, I found there is radical potential for the
city to plan itself, rather than be planned by. In the wake of a disastrous
response to COVID-19 both federally and locally, EmpowerDC expanded mutual aid
projects to provide hot meals, groceries, fresh greens, hand sanitizer, masks,
and flowers to anyone who needs it—no questions asked. At a time where access
to these resources can be a matter of life or death, how can these events be
seen as a practice of home-making, of democratic planning by, for, and of the
city? As I have found, these communities have forged more than material
networks for survival. They also exhibit a way of relating to one another that
cuts back at the profit-over-people rationale driving displacement in
the nation’s capital, creating a sense of home amidst and against the threat of
displacement.
