DC Councilmember Anita Bonds Discusses Limited Equity Co-ops

VERNON OAKES: Good morning, everybody. This is Vernon Oakes. Welcome to Everything Co-op. This morning, we have the distinct pleasure of having Ms. Anita Bonds. She’s a councilmember at large for the council of the District of Columbia, and she’s the chairwoman of the Committee on Housing and Neighborhood Revitalization. Good morning.

ANITA BONDS: Good morning. It’s a pleasure to be here with you.

VERNON OAKES: It’s a pleasure, absolute pleasure to be here. We’re downtown in their office, and we have a chance to see you, and I’m so glad that you took out of your busy schedule to be on the show. Thank you.

ANITA BONDS: You are welcome.

VERNON OAKES: And I’m also really pleased that you started the limit equity co-op housing task force. How did you learn about co-ops or get involved in co-ops?

ANITA BONDS: Well, co-ops have been around since the, what, 1950s, with the national housing bill that was passed by congress in those days. The whole idea was to help people live very limited income, have an opportunity for ownership. Since I’ve been on the council the past six years, I’ve had an opportunity to talk with members of cooperative living, particularly the limited equity co-op members. And they’ve had a multitude of issues because they’re independent and they sort of govern themselves, it depends on who is the governing body as to whether or not all members of a co-op feel that they have equity in the product, so to speak. And I’ve run across a couple of problem areas. And so I said this is an ownership model.

My goodness, we should ask that more of these types of structures and living conditions to be a part of the District of Columbia. As you know, we currently are not just in a housing crisis. I mean we’re sinking under the high cost of housing in the District of Columbia. And if you look at even those persons who are at the high end, $150,000 or more income, they too are suffering. It’s very hard to afford a two-bedroom, two-bath, and have to have pay as a renter $7,200 which is the case in one of the [SOUNDS LIKE: shaw] communities, okay?

VERNON OAKES: $7,200 a month rent?

ANITA BONDS: $7,200. Yes, yes.

VERNON OAKES: I didn’t know it was that bad. Wow.

ANITA BONDS: At the old Himes School location, it’s $8,300 a month. And we won’t talk about the Wharf. And I mentioned these locations because these are very desirable housing. Everyone wants to be in what’s new, the glass and the chrome. Everyone, even the senior citizens that I meet with, they say, well, we want one of those units too. And, you know, cost is prohibitive in most cases because seniors, they’re on a very fixed income. So it was through all of that that really piqued my interest. And I thought if we could do anything since we know that ownership is the way your city survives, that the limited equity co-op model, we need to look closer at. So, that’s really what got me involved.

VERNON OAKES: Fantastic. I mean co-ops are formed when there’s a community problem. I had one gentleman from Senegal, that first month that we were on the show say that co-ops are formed to solve community problems. If there’s no community problems, there’s no need for a co-op. And the community problem that you’ve just outlined is the cost of housing has just gone crazy. And I didn’t know it was that high. I mean you just told me something I did not know.

ANITA BONDS: Yes, it is. It is.

VERNON OAKES: I can’t imagine $7,200 a month to pay. You got to be making, I don’t know, $20,000 a month to be able to do that at 30% of your —

ANITA BONDS: Now, we do have a few millionaires in the district but not anywhere near what our population is. Our populations is 700,000. I gather we may have 200 millionaires. But millionaires tend to be already — they own there. And so it is the rest of us that we’re most concerned with. How can we create ownership opportunities for particularly those that have lived in the city for many years and love the city, newcomers who say, oh, my God, I love this place, you know, and they want to be here, and they want to raise their families here. And, so, my goal as chair of the council’s housing and neighborhood revitalization committee is to focus on how do we maintain the affordable housing we have, and how do we actually create more? And so that’s what I’ve been working on night and day, 24/7.

VERNON OAKES: 24/7/365.

ANITA BONDS: 24/7. It’s such a big issue. And that’s why we do it that way.

VERNON OAKES: It is a huge issue but you talked about ownership, so I want to go back and just tell everybody out there listening the four types of co-ops. We’re talking about housing but there are four times, and it depends on who owns and controls that business. So if it’s owner-controlled by the people that work in the business, if the employees own it, it’s called a worker co-op. So they can have any kind of business owned by the employees. If it’s owned and controlled by the people that uses the services, it’s called a consumer co-op. Housing is one of those. It’s a consumer co-op.

ANITA BONDS: All right, excellent.

VERNON OAKES: Okay, credit unions are examples of consumer co-ops.

ANITA BONDS: Correct, yes.

VERNON OAKES: REI would have a new recreation equipment — they have a new office, new store here, one of their superstores in D.C. It’s a consumer co-op. So there are different types of co-ops. The other two, normally, farmers have been using but artists are beginning to use them. On one side of farming is purchasing what they need, the seed, the fertilizers, the gas, equipment even. So farmers come together and they form a purchasing co-op to buy things so they can buy it in volume and get a lower price and normally a better quality of stuff.

ANITA BONDS: Well, let me share with you —

VERNON OAKES: Let me give you the fourth one first. The fourth one is —

ANITA BONDS: I relate to these.

VERNON OAKES: Okay. The fourth one is on the other end of the farmers, you have the marketing co-ops. And that’s when the farmers come together and they send their milk or their different things that they produce and then they sell them to markets that the farmer could not get to, and you have Cabot Creamery, Ocean Spray, Sunkist, those are all different types of marketing co-ops. Some call them producer co-ops because they add value to those products. So these are all of the types. And in the district, I had a group of artists come to me, and they wanted to a buy a house together, okay?

So that’s why the artist, in terms of a purchasing, wanted to buy a house and have a studio in there so that they could live because of the cost of housing is so high. So, that would be just another example of it. Yes, go ahead and tell me —

ANITA BONDS: Yeah. I was just going to mention in the ’80s, neighbors and I got together, and we created a co-op. But it was for the purchasing of vegetables, fruits, and meats. And we literally went to what was the old farmer’s market off of Florida Avenue, and we bought half of a cow, a fourth of a cow, and then we had our little scale at the house, and we checked on how much everyone was to get, and we did that for about a year and a half. And we saved so much money, oh, my goodness. It was amazing.

VERNON OAKES: We did it at Shallow Baptist Church. We pooled everything and bought fruits and stuff, and so you buy a box of oranges. So yeah. They are purchasing co-op. All right. That is a way of saving money, working together, creating community, and all of that. So that’s the ownership and stuff that’s going on. So, let’s go back to housing. It’s a form of a consumer cooperative, and you saw these limited equity co-ops and you saw them working. What did you like about them? There was ownership but what were some of the things that you liked about them?

ANITA BONDS: I particularly liked the fact that there was a sharing, a sharing of concern, and it seemed to me that all of the members had voice and input, and I think that is tantamount to an effective living environment. One of the things I’d like to focus on in the housing committee is to make sure that the dwelling units that we have, the buildings that they are treated as a neighborhood because I think when you look at housing from that perspective, you get a better product and more stability. I think that maintenance is a little easier. Everyone shows that they care and therefore the upkeep is better.

VERNON OAKES: Yeah. There was a study done that the National Co-Op Bank sponsored but it looked at HUD-supported co-ops versus HUD-supported apartment buildings. And in every variable that you can think of, the co-ops outperformed the apartment buildings. And that’s because of what you just talked about. People care. They had ownership. They cared. They participate. So you had community. But there was also a financial side. They’d be able to create financial wealth that they could not in an apartment building. They had social wealth and community. They had lower crime because people, growing up in Bluefield, West Virginia, small — and probably in Southeast where you grew up, people in the community looked out for the children.

ANITA BONDS: Oh, yes.

VERNON OAKES: And that’s what happens in co-ops. You got a big smile on that one.

ANITA BONDS: Definitely. Definitely. There was a time when we were extremely neighborly in the District of Columbia. I think it still can exist and probably does in some communities, particularly those where you do not have extreme turnover or the gentrification where people do not initially know each other and sometimes don’t really reach out to each other. But once communities reach out across the street and start talking, then we begin to develop a strong sense of community. And that’s what, in my opinion, helps neighborhood survive.

VERNON OAKES: And when you talk about people making decisions to pick up paper or when they go down the street if they’re in that neighborhood, they know who is stealing cars or who’s bringing stolen cars, and they can tell the police, and they work with the police. They get very social. They also make better decisions I have found in term that the buildings, after 30, 40 years, are better than the apartment buildings because they have made these long-term investments of keeping the roof done and all of that. So all the way around, co-ops outperform.

ANITA BONDS: That’s very good to know.

VERNON OAKES: And what you have experienced though is that you get a lot of complaints. The other thing is you didn’t have as many foreclosures in co-ops as you did in apartment buildings, rents were lower over time, but when they do go bad, okay, for whatever reason, normally it’s around governance or management, then it’s hard to get a handle on them because they haven’t learned how to have — they’re a political animal at that point, and that’s why I like the task force.

ANITA BONDS: All right. Well, this taskforce was very important to us, and I think it’s done extremely great work. You’re not finished yet. It has probably — in December, we’ll receive a final report but I can give you some of the preliminary information. One, the organization, I think, what, 13 members, 9 members?

VERNON OAKES: On the taskforce? It’s 9.

ANITA BONDS: Nine members on the taskforce that fully participate. Some of the recommendations include minimizing funding as they really want to establish a minimum annual funding amount. Bucket of money or an amount that they can depend on. And, you know, currently, we have — when we talk about housing in the District of Columbia, it’s primarily through the housing production trust fund.

VERNON OAKES: Okay. I need you to stop because we’re going to go on our first break. We’ll come back and look at the other recommendations. We’ll be right back.

ANITA BONDS: All right. Thank you.

VERNON OAKES: Welcome back, everybody. This is Vernon Oakes. The program is Everything Cooperative. We have Anita Bonds, councilmember at large for the District of Columbia. She’s also the chairwoman of the committee on housing and neighborhood revitalization. So, she created a taskforce. As a matter of fact, she created a bill that created the taskforce on limited equity cooperatives, and we were talking before we took a break about some of the recommendations of this taskforce. And I want to get to that, Councilmember Bonds, but I just got a burning question. How did you end up going from Southeast to Berkeley to go to college?

ANITA BONDS: Well, in those days, let’s see, how do I put this? I always had an interest in the sciences. I also had a tremendous interest in the arts. And, so, during summer break from school when I was in from junior high on, instead of being out and jumping up and down, I was somewhere painting. Yes. I was doing that. That was my enjoyment. And I also made a different cookie every day.

VERNON OAKES: A different cookie?

ANITA BONDS: Yeah, a different cookie. My boyfriend had to eat cookies with pieces of fruit in it and all kinds of — test kitchen, yes. Test kitchen. So I did that kind of thing, and chemistry was always my love. In fact, in high school, in my junior year, senior year, I walked around with my lab coat almost all day.

VERNON OAKES: All day?

ANITA BONDS: Yeah. Because, yeah, I finished most of my curriculum, so I only had like two classes but I was there, and I was in the lab. I absolutely adored it. Organic chemistry, I loved. So, the situation is with family, my auntie, she had a relative in every state where I was thinking of going to school except California. And, you know, you’re going to stay with cousin Mary Ethel if you go to Philadelphia. If you go to Massachusetts, and then I said, college of chemistry. And so there were two colleges of chemistry then. One was in Michigan, and the other one was in California. Well, I’d not been to either. Michigan told me cold. California, warm. That was how the decision was made.

VERNON OAKES: Fantastic.

ANITA BONDS: I mean it’s the truth. What can I say?

VERNON OAKES: What’s so interesting is our similar background in that — I grew up in Bluefield, West Virginia, but my grandmother taught me how to cook. So I was cooking for the family at 13. And I double-majored in math and chemistry. And the reason I love chemistry was it like cooking in the lab. And I worked my way through college by working in the chemistry lab. And I love, love, love chemistry but I’ve never used it afterwards. Do you use it at all on the council?

ANITA BONDS: Of course not. Of course not, except in human relations. I have an appreciation for seeing the mixes of ideas because, you know, that’s, again, chemistry, mixing of — and to see what kind of product we get.

VERNON OAKES: Fantastic. So you’re still aspiring?

ANITA BONDS: Yes. Experiment goes forward.

VERNON OAKES: Putting these different molecules together and see what happens.

ANITA BONDS: Yes, of course.

VERNON OAKES: Of course. The city council. I love it. So let’s talk about the taskforce and the chemistry that was working there and some of the recommendations that happened.

ANITA BONDS: Well, the taskforce, as you know, you were one of the members, and we’re so very thankful for your service on that. It also included others that have a history of political involvement through their co-op or those who were in the professional arena, look at co-ops as a business. And so I thought having a combination of types on the committee would make a big difference. One of the things I try real hard to do is to look at issues holistically so that we hear from a breadth of so-called experts and practitioners so we really get a feel for what the community is saying as opposed to in one vein or the other.

And so the taskforce came up with about five major preliminary recommendations, as I was mentioning earlier. They want a minimum funding amount that is set aside. And with that, they hope they can increase the number of limited equity co-op units by 40% by 2025. Now, we’re in 2020, and we’re about to go into 2021. That’s a tall task because we already have 4,400 co-op units in 99 buildings. So, we’re talking about at least 30 or 40 additional buildings is what we estimate that will become cooperatives and the limited equity type.

VERNON OAKES: Before you move on, being on this committee, firstly, it was an [indistinct] committee. There was debate. There was lobby discussions, and everybody wanted to have very successful co-ops that are existing also to create more. But somebody like me, I wanted to double the number, okay? And so 4,400, I wanted another 4,400 in 5 years. So some people had to talk about what’s the likelihood that would happen and da-da-da. So, we went down to maybe 1,700 additional units, and I like that you put this group together such that you have a group of different people, different molecules, if you will, and then we were able to agitate each other and then come up with a product.

ANITA BONDS: Excellent. Excellent. That’s the way the universe really is as far as I’m concerned. I love it. Also, we talked about developing new sources of funding, and that, I’m very, very interested in how we might do it. I hope that the final report will give us more detail than, of course, the necessity for training and management, governance, and maintenance of the cooperative process and units. And then improve or increase the acquisition of finance tools and improve the timing of those units that need rehabilitation. So, those are all very important. I mean now we use the TOPA Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act in order to acquire the — the tenants can use it to acquire their building and turn it into a co-op. And I hope more will do that.

VERNON OAKES: So, I’m going to go all the way back to this training because one of the reasons I first loved co-ops, and I’m the property manager representative on this committee, so I’ve been managing co-ops for now 25 years, and that’s how I learned about them. In all of my formal education, I did not understand or know anything about co-ops. But the fifth principle, there’s seven principles of co-ops and the values of co-ops. The values of co-ops that I like are the ethical values of honesty, openness, social responsibility, and caring for one another, okay? Those values, they hit me. They touch me. But the fifth principle of training information.

So it’s that the cooperative is constantly learning how to be trained so they can do the governance, and what the responsibility of co-op members are. So in this committee, we wanted to have money for continued training for the cooperators, and we wanted to make it a requirement if you manage a co-op, then you have to have good training. And they’re ongoing training of management. So that’s critical to co-ops. And then just modern co-op, start in 1844 in England with these seven principles. And I may talk about them more as we go but I taught for 12 years in my career, and my mother was a teacher, so this training piece is extremely important. I know what can happen with people.

I have a 16-unit senior co-op at 9th and Peace Street Northwest, okay, and they’ve owned this for 20 years. So it’s right inshore, right up the convention center, and when they started this 20 years ago, you can get a unit in that neighborhood for 5 or $600. Now, they’re up to this $7,200 you were talking about. Okay, so there’s pressure and the gentrification for people always trying to buy it or get it or whatever. But these seniors, they pay on time, and they hold each other accountable, and that’s the second reason I like co-ops.

ANITA BONDS: That is a perfect example. I’d love to meet them. So let me know one day when they might want to have a visit tour.

VERNON OAKES: All right. We’re going to take our second break. Welcome back, everybody. This is Vernon Oakes, and the program is Everything Cooperative. I would like to just let you know that the National Cooperative Bank is sponsoring this program. They’ve been sponsoring it now for six years. We’ve been on the air for six years, and NCB’s mission is to support and be an advocate for America’s cooperatives and their members, especially in low-income communities by providing innovative financial and related services. So, Councilmember Bonds, National Co-Op Bank is a different kind of bank in that they were created in the ’80s for co-ops and to work with low-income communities. And they’ve done an excellent job in doing that over the years.

And what I also like about them is the president there, Chuck Snyder, and the members, the people that work there, they’re always looking for solutions of how to solve community type problems. And they have between capital impact partners which is a CDFI which sprung out of NCB and NCB, they’ve also made the District of Columbia their focus area for this year and limited equity co-ops is right in what they were wanting to do.

ANITA BONDS: I love it.

VERNON OAKES: Chuck Snyder, I sent a copy, the recognition that we just had, that resolution. I sent a copy to him, and his response back was this is great. This is fantastic. This fits his goals of creating more limited equity co-ops.

ANITA BONDS: Fantastic.

VERNON OAKES: We’ve got a partner there.

ANITA BONDS: I’m looking forward to not just this partner but any other partners that want to help us make ownership a reality in the District of Columbia, and particularly for persons who have been here, as I mentioned, usually long-term but they really don’t have the economic income of that modern jobs afford them because many of them have — the District of Columbia’s sort of like — its economic base sort of shot up in the last five, seven, eight years, and that has created extreme pressure on the living environment. We have approximately 80,000 rent control units and buildings that were in existence prior to the 1977.

And we’re able to help and keep the rent low, somewhat low in those buildings because the amount of rent increase is restricted but then you have those buildings after the built after 1976 that — up until well, now, really, but certainly, those, I would say from 1977 probably to 1997 which would be buildings that may need some repair. They’re older stock, and the rents have been sort of what we call naturally affordable.

Not at $7,200 a month, okay, but more in the range of anywhere from 800 to maybe 1,800 a month. And so we want to find a way to keep those units affordable. So that’s a piece of what I’m working on, and it just seems to me using TOPA, we might be able to encourage the tenants associations to become an ownership in engagement. Coupled with the training that you’re speaking of which would certainly be necessary because people do need that training as to how they’re going to manage and govern this and what are the maintenance requirements? In most instances, you’re going to have an old boiler system. You’ve got to take care of that, and all of the HVAC probably needs to be replaced.

VERNON OAKES: If they have HVAC.

ANITA BONDS: Yes, exactly. If they have air conditioning, correct. So, those are the considerations that we’re looking at, and I’m also asking now what is the government’s responsibility? It is our people. The people of the District of Columbia but how do we use all of our tax dollars to assist those that are most in need? And what is the opinion? Does everyone have a right to live here? We have to ask those questions and get feedback from the public because it’s public dollars that we would be spending. So, those are very touchy subjects when we try to go further with ownership and particular ownership and affordability housing in the district.

VERNON OAKES: You know, I really like the district’s TOPA laws, Tenant Occupancy Purchasing Act such that when somebody decides they want to sell their property, then the tenants have the right to form a tenant association. They have the right to buy it. And people like Mikasa and Mana and other organizations, and Mikasa had a representative on the taskforce who’s very, very knowledgeable about all of this. So, when Mikasa, when they go out and they help people form and then help them figure out what they need and then also help them figure out how they can get the funding. So that whole process meets the recommendations that were there when we’re talking about minimum funding. It’s to help that TOPA process along.

ANITA BONDS: Yes. I know that the taskforce will sunset and that’s in accordance with the law. I am considering expanding the taskforce to have a few financial types added to the mix and asking the taskforce to look at what can be some funding ideas and structures that we can put in place because it’s an issue — it’s a problem we’ve got to solve if we’re really going to go forth and, so, having talked with the taskforce chair, which you’re the vice chair, so.

VERNON OAKES: Okay. Paul Haven, who is the chair, has been an excellent leader. He’s really, really been good, particularly when we had these contentious kind of disagreements and directions we want to go. He’s been really, really good at that. And he’s also told us that you have wanted us to continue, and most people had said yes to that. In our next meeting, we’re going to take that up in a formal kind of way to see who wants to stay in and so forth and how we move forward. Yeah.

ANITA BONDS: Well, that’s good news because I think only when we get some new ideas and possibilities and likelihoods of funding will we be able to continue these models in the city. And it’s so needed.

VERNON OAKES: So, when you have Luiz Howell from the district, from UDC, Amanda Heron from UDC, and Luiz Howell is an attorney that was on, and she’s been working with co-ops, and we’ve been talking about Ellen [SOUNDS LIKE: Zer-bick] from Mikasa, the housing counselling services, the young lady there, Jade Hall, and then the government representative for the Department of Housing and Community Development, Anna Van Belin. We had a couple representatives, the people that lived in [indistinct].

ANITA BONDS: Correct. Those are what I call our political people because they’re concerned with what’s going to happen because it affects them directly, yes.

VERNON OAKES: Well, Lolita really, really was into the conversations and very, very active. And the co-op members, if they’re very member, they become social and political within the group because co-ops are democratically controlled entities. So, there’s one member, one vote, and it’s not based on how many shares you have or how much money you have and how much power. If you’re one member, it’s one vote which is the other thing I like about it.

ANITA BONDS: Yeah. And that’s a very beautiful model for those of us who try to practice democracy in this republic of the United States.

VERNON OAKES: Absolutely. So, some people have said that the big D is the US democracy, and the small D is the cooperative democracy but I think it’s turned around. The reason is in co-ops, you may have, when there’s an election, 70, 80% of the people out to vote in a co-op. Where in the regular election, you get 42%?

ANITA BONDS: That’s true. That’s true.

VERNON OAKES: So, also, we found that people that’s in a co-op, housing co-op or food co-op, they end up taking on political positions because they understand the value of co-ops.

ANITA BONDS: And working together.

VERNON OAKES: Yes. And how to solve problems when there’s conflict. And what I know, and you may have learned this too, when you got two or more together, the bible says God is there but I think we need him because there’s going to be conflict.

ANITA BONDS: Definitely.

VERNON OAKES: There’s going to be conflict. So, taskforce is one of the things that you’ve done. What else are you doing to increase this number of housing for this economic group, below 50% and sometimes below 80% of median family income? What are some of the other kinds of things you’re doing?

ANITA BONDS: Well, we pay a lot of attention particularly of late to our public housing stock, as you well know. That’s 8,300 units on I think 53 properties across the city. It also is the largest gathering I’ll say of public land in the city which makes it enticing to the development world because they know that the properties are old, and we need to make repairs. And, so, how we make
Those repairs and how we take care of the approximately 18,000 district residents that live on those properties today is very important. And there are number strategies in place but there are a couple of principles that we subscribe to.

One is that we’ll have a 1:1 replacement. In other words, if a property has 100 units, we plan on having 100+ units that will come back on the property if it has to be total rehab. We also are hoping that the square footage for the property will be enough that we can add maybe even a few market rate units. And some moderate income units. The idea is to figure out how we, the community of Washington D.C., the District of Columbia can begin to hold onto our affordable units at the lowest price point, and at the same time, we want to be able to help pay for it. The federal government is getting out of the business of public housing, and that means no dollars coming into the Jewish diction. So local communities have to figure out how to do it themselves.

VERNON OAKES: That is wonderful. I don’t know if you know this but 25 years ago, Capital View, I think that was the name of it —

ANITA BONDS: Yes, that’s correct.

VERNON OAKES: Was turned from a public housing into a co-op. Like, 12th and S Street or something. I don’t quite remember but I happened to run into Larry Dwyer who used to work for D.C. Housing Authority. I was in a group called something called a scatter site. We took 78 units, made it into 100 units. 78 properties in about 7 different nonprofits. So I was in charge of one of those nonprofits. But he was telling me that capital view turned out to be extremely well — it’s doing well. People own it, and they’re really taking care of their property.

ANITA BONDS: And it’s 12th and —

VERNON OAKES: I think it’s 12th and S. I’ll find out. I’ll get that because I’ve been wanting to know and I just happened to run into him at lunch. He’s moved to Boston but he was very much involved in both the scatter site and process. We’re going to take our break here, and then I want to come back and see what other kind of things you’re doing. We’ll be right back.

ANITA BONDS: All right.

VERNON OAKES: Information is power. This is the reason WOL is a great, great partner for this program. We’re giving you information about cooperatives. Either you can go out and start your co-op. If there’s a community problem that you want to help resolve or you can go look for a co-op, either housing co-op or a credit union or any particular kind of co-op in your neighborhood or food co-op. So you can look for a co-op and then become a member and have a say in how that co-op runs and maybe even run for the board. So that’s the kinds of things you can do with a co-op.

But we’re here now with Councilmember Anita Bonds, and I just want to quickly, Councilmember Bonds, talk about the principles. I talked about seven principles. The first one is volunteer and open membership. So, it’s open to anybody regardless of gender or race or political or religious. You don’t discriminate. The second one is democratic member control. We’ve already talked about that. One member, one vote. The third one is member economic participation. So, there’s a buy-in. For housing, it’s normally called a membership fee. It could be the same thing as a one-month security deposit. For a larger co-op, it could be $20,000, 100,000, some buy-in. And then the second part of that member economic participation is if there is a profit or surplus. Then that gets to be shared by the members if the members decide that.

They could decide to keep that money into the business for growth. They could decide to spend some of that money to help solve other community problems, donate some of that money, and they could give dividends to the members. That’s the third principle. The fourth one is autonomy and independence. And this is where government has to be really concerned and not want to try to get in and tell the co-op what to do. In some of the loan docs, they do say things like you can only rent to people or sell to people that are 50% or lower than median family income. That’s not what we’re talking when we’re talking about autonomy is that they can get a chance to put their policies and procedures in place.

And that’s the fourth principle. The fifth one we’ve already talked about, education, training, and information. And then the sixth one is really nice, and that’s called cooperation among cooperatives. So we want the food co-ops working with the housing co-ops working with the credit unions to build a bigger group of an economy, economic. And then the seventh principle is concern for community. So that’s sort of built in the DNA that we really look for ways of working with communities in different kinds of ways to solve particular problems. So, with that, I love co-ops. I just wanted to tell you these seven principles.

ANITA BONDS: I love it. And I’m so happy you shared with me the seven principles because when you spoke of them earlier, I was trying to write them down rather quickly so thank you. I guess I come at this a little differently. I’m trying to help solve the housing affordability issue that we’re faced with. And, so, have been focused almost exclusively on what can we do and what can government do? And I think in the training arena, we can put in place some regulations that stipulate the training is necessary. And that may be touching a little bit on this independence, your fourth principle, but I think it’s necessary because, ultimately, the city is responsible for all of its residents, not a few.

But all of its residents. And so we want to make sure that the properties are safe, sanitary, that they have them provide the services that are needed. I’ve ran into a situation the other day where seniors and the building where they live are now restricted from paying their rent at the front desk. Don’t ask me why they were paying it at the front desk, but they were paying it there. So, now, they have to mail it in. And if it’s late, they get a late fee. Of course, I’m the author of the late fee law that makes sure it’s only 5% of the actual amount that’s due as opposed to the total amount of the rent. And that’s very helpful to many across the city.

But one of the things that we really want to do when we think about how do we make the city affordable is we really want to zero in on how we are able to assist as government in helping. So, as I mentioned earlier, training is a big part of it but also utilizing the tenant opportunity to purchase act is I think our biggest piece now. And then, at some point very soon, I hope we’ll have some new financial opportunities because, for instance, the district government’s pension fund is fully-funded. The fund that our emergency respondents use and teachers, so that’s police, fire, and teachers is funded even great.

It just seems to me since labor across the country has become the owner of some buildings, some commercial establishments, isn’t it time to put your money where your mouth is? That is for the workers and the people that need it. So I’m hoping that we can encourage that kind of investment. Also, we have —

VERNON OAKES: I just want to add something here real quickly. In New York, several of the co-ops in the 50s and 60s, even larger ones, they were funded by pension money. And union pension money was what funded a lot of these co-ops. So the unions really get the value of co-ops when people have a say in how they operate and create their policies and create their communities and make it very vital.

ANITA BONDS: They certainly do, and I would like for them to look at being the backdrop for the investments in some of these potentially new co-ops that we can develop.

VERNON OAKES: Right on. I think that would be great, and that’s what this taskforce could be looking at or different ways of funding and financing both new co-ops and how do you renovate this new one?

ANITA BONDS: Also, we have the [SOUNDS LIKE: lie-tech] process, and you have the opportunity zones, and both give a benefit to the investor. And maybe they need to look at how they can invest in a co-op. Maybe a co-op is one where you have 100 units, 100 families have their share but maybe the share is priced at $25,000 or something like that and maybe they provide 15,000 and 10,000 is provided by an outside source. So the outside source gets to show the depreciation and really gets to show that they have this investment and therefore, they get to take the tax deductions, the personal tax deductions. And so they benefit but meanwhile those who are in those units also benefit because they will have a stable place to live, a decent place to live, so I just think we can come together more as a community and solve some of these issues.

VERNON OAKES: Well, when you started talking about this stable place to stay, I heard congressman Ellis say that a house to a family is like a bowl to baking a cake. So, when we start talking about cookies — my grandmother taught me how to bake cakes early on and rolls and biscuits and all of that. I got it. Have you ever thought about baking a cake without a bowl? You crack the eggs, they just fall all over the place. And then you add the sugar or the flour, and you’ve got a mess, okay, without a bowl. He said that’s the same way with a house for a family. I mean where do they come together and feel safe at night? Where do they study? Where do they eat together? Where do they pray together? I mean without a house, the fundamental of not a house, it’s so much needed. Basic needs.

ANITA BONDS: It is. It is. And, you know, there’s a movement now that’s saying housing is tantamount to the existence of community. It’s a right, and I agree.

VERNON OAKES: I agree. I like that. I like that a lot. So you’re in charge of housing for the district. Get this a handy load.

ANITA BONDS: Well, it’s affordable housing. The market rate housing, it pretty much does what it can and we’re trying to impact that so that all developments understand they have to have a portion of affordable units, and so that’s where we want to go, and it’s got to be close to 20, 25% maybe 30%. I know I’m advocating big and bold here but you’re giving me that license for this morning but I appreciate it.

VERNON OAKES: Do you like what you do? Do you like your job?

ANITA BONDS: I do like it very, very much, and my background is more service-oriented than anything else, and so I feel like as long as I can be of service to my community, I am very happy.

VERNON OAKES: I get it, man. I really appreciate the work that you’re doing. I’m grateful for it. What would you like to leave people with?

ANITA BONDS: Well, we have two things that are going on now. We have the Nationals baseball team. They’re ready for the pennant. We just got to keep pushing, pushing, pushing. We also have the Mystics tonight that will become world champion again. Push for them. Push for them. And at some point, we’ll wish the Wizards to have a good season, our soccer team did pretty well, and now we got the Caps. Maybe they’ll do a good job. We hope so. We are sports pride city, Washington D.C., and we love our residents immensely.

VERNON OAKES: Thank you so very much for taking the time today to be with us. We really appreciate what you’re doing. We thank you for it. And for everybody out there, please have a great week and live cooperatively.