Launching The Center for Social Housing and Public Investment

I am excited to officially launch the Center for Social Housing and Public Investment (CSHPI). The primary purpose of CSHPI is to promote social housing as an alternative economic model that helps to solve the affordable housing crisis currently gripping the United States. In the near term, The Center for Social Housing and Public Investment will have a heavy focus on local housing policy in Washington, DC and will prioritize developing and disseminating resources to educate District residents around the concept and the need for social housing to be implemented locally. Looking forward, CSHPI will expand its resources to include research and analysis on municipalities across the country and will advocate for social housing on a national level.

Anyone who knows me understands that I am extremely passionate about the concept of social housing. I have been a housing attorney since I began practicing law in 2006. My first job was at Legal Aid of Western Ohio where I defended people against foreclosure and eviction after the 2008 financial crisis. Doing that work, I saw first-hand the devastation caused by Wall Street speculation and outright fraud in the mortgage market. This fraud shook the global financial system to the core and culminated in worldwide recession.

I moved to Washington, DC in 2011 to continue my legal career. In DC, I represented tenant associations whose affordable rental housing was being threatened by large scale redevelopment projects. My job was to keep people in their housing through these “community revitalization” schemes. In DC, I witnessed entire communities being demolished and huge swaths of affordable housing lost. In place of those demolished affordable units, new expensive housing was built. These redevelopment projects were designed with one purpose in mind; to maximize profit for developers and their investors. Furthermore, the money fueling this displacement was from the same Wall Street actors that were behind the financial crisis in 2008.

It is my belief that we cannot continue to allow our housing policy to be dictated by large institutional investors, their Wall Street partners and multinational developers. Housing policy should be fashioned with the goal of achieving housing as human right and then designing policies that are aimed at accomplishing that goal. Social housing as an economic model does this by removing the profit motive and using public resources for the public good. The model has been highly successful in other parts of the world and it is time to introduce the concept here.

I am really proud of the Board we have put together and look forward to the battle of ideas that lies ahead.

Will Merrifield