Interview with Jim Knight

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Over the past few weeks you’ve seen videos from Jubilee Housing leaders discussing the ways our work has shifted since the coronavirus pandemic. We’re so thankful to be able to share their perspective and the important work of their departments.

Today, I’m pleased to share a new video featuring a conversation between Jim Knight, President & CEO and Greg Rockwell, Director of Development. In this interview, Jim opens up about the challenges COVID-19 is creating for Jubilee Housing staff and residents, Jubilee’s innovative response, and his hope for the future of the Jubilee community.

As President and CEO since 2002, Jim has led Jubilee Housing through many challenging times but none quite like this. With the support of this incredible community and staff along with an abiding faith, Jubilee is rising to the challenge.

Now, more than ever, we want to hear from you! If you have thoughts or resources to share, email us at info@jubileehousing.org. We hope you are safe and well!

Living Into Our Mission in Light of COVID-19

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A Note From Our President & CEO

Dear Friends,

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected us all in unprecedented ways, making our work more important than it’s ever been. This crisis reaffirms the importance of our mission, especially given the disproportionate impact COVID-19 has on lower income households and communities of color.

Want to support our COVID-19 response work? Scroll down for three ways to help.

However, following our mission right now requires new strategic thinking, flexibility and authentic communications. Like many organizations, Jubilee has had to recalibrate how we operate. The four points below reflect the values we have chosen to guide our organization through this moment:

  1. Mission and Staff: Jubilee Housing’s mission is critical, therefore so is our ability to deliver that mission. Employees must be safe, protected, healthy and supported. We must “put on our own oxygen mask first” so we can safely help others.
  2. Residents and Program Participants: The health and safety of residents is our most important service. Our first priority is the sanitization of our buildings and connecting residents to the resources they need to be safe and stable.
  3. Executing Justice Housing: Our current crisis is temporary. The need for justice housing remains. We will continue with the development of our four new justice housing properties, and plan for the expansion of our Reentry Initiative.
  4. Relationships and Support: Community is what sustains and nurtures us. We must strengthen the bonds with our current partners and supporters to weather this crisis and come out stronger on the other side.

Jubilee students participate in a Teen Center
college preparatory session via Zoom.

Guided by these values, we are increasing our housekeeping and sanitation efforts in 10 of our active buildings, activating new partnerships with Geppetto’s Catering and Martha’s Table to provide meal resources, and are doing regular check-ins with residents to ensure they have access to the resources they need during this time.

We’re also shifting our in-person work online, conducting out-of-school programming, financial empowerment counseling, and community conference calls through Zoom.

While we may be physically separated, we still have a chance to practice solidarity together! If you’d like to support Jubilee Housing during the critical time, you can make a direct donation below. And if you’re interested in how we’re keeping the community safe while following our mission, check out our interviews with key staff members.

Thank you for being in community with us during this crisis.

With Deep Gratitude,

Jim Knight
President & CEO
Jubilee Housing

Donate

Grocery Assistance

Donate to help Jubilee Housing purchase food, cleaning supplies and other essentials for residents from neighborhood retailers.

General Support

Donate to allow Jubilee Housing to direct resources where they’ll have the most impact.

Rent Assistance

Donate to help Jubilee Housing residents who have been recently laid off due to COVID-19 stay up to date on their rent.

How We’re Helping

Our staff is working harder than ever to maintain safety and stability for Jubilee Housing residents during this crisis.
Learn more about the steps we’re taking in the interviews below.

Jim’s Column

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Welcome to a new year, a new decade, and a new opportunity to work together to fashion a more just and inclusive city. In this newsletter, we celebrate the end of 2019 and the work ahead in 2020.

As the year closed, volunteers and supporters helped us offer some extra joy for the holiday season: more than 80 young Jubilee residents purchased holiday gifts for their families from the much-discounted Elf Store and 70 Jubilee families received gifts from their holiday Wish List. In addition, a team of dedicated and determined employees from WashREIT raised money and donated time to renovate Jubilee’s Youth Services centers, playground, and outdoor community space. Now, cohort after cohort of young people will experience this new beauty in their environment, spurring their appreciation of the beauty that is also in them.

One of the privileges for Jubilee is to be able to convene efforts such as these that offer support but, as importantly, foster relationship-building and community. A key draw for participants is to experience the giving together. We’re all better and more alive when we are using our energy to give.

The gift of giving extends far beyond the physical results. Giving is about the reciprocity of making connections with others and seeing ourselves in each other.  

Such connections catapulted our Justice Housing Partners Fund (the Fund) from vision to $5.3 million in a little more than a year, positioning Jubilee to take advantage of two additional opportunities for development in 2019. Those efforts will make possible 74 more justice housing units over the next few years.

When you’re given a vision of something that needs to be and that’s beyond your capacity, it sometimes resonates with others and evokes the energy and investment that makes possible achievements previously considered incomprehensible.

Jubilee’s vision wasn’t simply to create an investment fund and buy four properties. The vision was to meet more of the desperate need in our city for deeply affordable housing, especially for those facing the greatest challenges – including men and women returning from incarceration. Consequently, people were drawn to invest in the Fund, support the plan, and take us where we couldn’t have gone otherwise. Investors saw the need in others and wanted to be part of a solution.

We closed the fund at the end of 2019 with the purchase of the King Emmanuel Baptist Church. This newest property will provide additional space for programs and homes specifically for women and men returning from incarceration. So, we entered 2020 able to expand our successful, 11-year-old Reentry Program to more individuals like Louis Sawyer, whose lived experience and resulting wisdom we honor in this newsletter.  

We recognize the many individuals who make our work possible. We are thankful for your continued support.

We are readying ourselves for the next season, during which we will continue to challenge the pain, brokenness, and “not yet” experience felt in communities across D.C.

We hope you and others will join  us in this work – to understand the persistent inequities, to recognize ways to improve the circumstances, and to become part of the solution. As we saw with the Fund, the holiday giving, and the renovations created by the volunteers from WashREIT, the experience of responding to injustice  together is transformative.

Therefore, we are working not only to deliver much-needed services, but also to do so in community with one another.

Whether you participate with Jubilee as an investor, as a resident, as a volunteer, or in any role in between, you will find that we are about connecting lives together for the common good. When we succeed, we all receive much more than we give.

We value your support and hope you’ll find more ways to engage with Jubilee Housing in 2020!

2019 Annual Appeal

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Dear Friends,

At our Coming Home Breakfast last month, a resident shared his experience living in Jubilee Housing. Mr. Bazemore described how Jubilee felt like a safe zone – after spending years incarcerated, and years before that fighting into and out of his own home, it was strange to walk out his front door and see his neighbors with yoga mats and wearing flip-flops. He said he no longer had to carry a gun to feel safe.

That’s one kind of fear. Another kind is what Ms. Lemus felt, living in a two-bedroom apartment with six people. She and her baby could barely afford that overcrowded apartment, and were constantly afraid management would find out and evict them all. Now she’s at Jubilee and has privacy, security, and freedom.

A third kind of fear comes from the inside. Fear that a problem is too big, or that we’re not able to make a difference. Or that a solution should be anywhere else, just not our neighborhood.

As a society, we are in touch with many forms of fear. What we do in the face of fear says a lot about who we are as a people. My faith tradition reminds me, “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear.”

In the midst of such fears, Jubilee is going to build and renovate 125 new deeply affordable homes in four sites in our core neighborhood. Seventy-five will be home for families like Ms. Lemus, in sparkling new 2-, 3-, and even 4-bedroom units in the heart of Adams Morgan.

Fifty of these units will be dedicated for women and men returning home after incarceration like Mr. Bazemore. Some will be for people in the first few months after their release, and some will be long-term homes just like any other household.

Our city is in an affordable housing crisis. Instead of shrinking in fear, we are opening our hearts with love and letting our passion for justice meet the deep pain our community is facing. This justice housing modelis love in action: we partner with households facing the greatest barriers, in places of greatest opportunity, with the supports needed to thrive. Whoever they might be.

Everything begins with housing. The wounds of history are deep, and cannot begin to heal until we recognize that place matters, that justice and equality are lived out in bricks and mortar and access to good schools, good grocery stores, good jobs, and so much more.

A city built on justice housing creates justice through housing.

We invite your gifts of time, talent and treasure to join us in building this city together. The next few years will be challenging and our work will face substantial pressure to change direction.

There is a lot of fear to overcome.

Sincerely,

Jim Knight
President & CEO
Jubilee Housing

Support Justice Housing

Jim’s Column

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Jubilee Housing recently held its 2nd annual “Coming Home Breakfast” to raise critical funds to bring more justice housing™ and supportive programming to the vital neighborhoods of Adams Morgan, Mount Pleasant, and Columbia Heights.

In reflecting on the 125 new justice housing units Jubilee is developing, I couldn’t help but contrast that number to the thousands more affordable homes our city needs. A recent proposal by Mayor Bowser calls for 12,000 new affordable units by 2025. 

I was reminded of the old story about rescuers pulling drowning people from a river. When more and more people kept needing help, one rescuer asked, “Why don’t we go upstream and see why so many people are falling into the river in the first place?”

As I told those gathered for breakfast, this journey upstream may be the most important journey facing our society right now. The issues we seek to address will keep coming back, over and over again, until we address the divides at their source.

The journey upstream will require a new stance by those of us who have benefited most from the dominant white culture. This culture has created the river, promoting wellbeing for some at the expense of many.  

The upstream journey will require that we be learners, rather than instructors or rescuers.

Few of us understand, for example, the feeling of safety that can come from living in a Jubilee community after years of living with overcrowding or in unsafe communities. One Jubilee resident has described how different it is to step out of his building and see his neighbors carrying yoga mats and wearing flip-flops. He said Jubilee Housing offers a different world, one where he feels safe to walk outside. 

Few of us are aware that D.C. residents with low incomes are being pushed out of their neighborhoods at some of the highest rates in the country. Or that D.C. has the highest per capita incarceration rate in the U.S., and that while African-American men make up 4 percent of the country’s population, they make up 40 percent of the people in prison. These gaps are structural, systemic, and fueled by the dominant culture.

Unexamined beliefs shape systems and perpetuate gaps in opportunities, resources, and outcomes. We won’t close these gaps until we confront our roles in upholding the current system.

I acknowledge my own need for growth in this area. I am not very far along. Yet, I realize that to continue I must allow for the discomfort that comes with new understanding.

The inner work that fleshes out biases and connects both our heads and hearts to a new vision of a fair, inclusive D.C. is hard and hopeful. We at Jubilee Housing are committed to traveling upstream as learners. We invite you to join us.

Breaking down the systems that created these divides requires justice-hungry people. Justice housing helps address society’s divides at their source, bringing greater opportunity for all.

Please enjoy the selection of articles in this edition of The Jubilee and know that your partnership is crucial as we move ahead together.

A Note From Jim

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Jubilee Housing’s continued push up the long, steep hill toward justice housingTM brought us to new heights over the past three months, as we successfully closed out the new Justice Housing Partners Fund and earned recognition, for several key efforts, from the DC Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD), the DC Department of Energy and Environment-Pepco-New Partners Community Solar partnership and NBC 4 Washington, and the Housing Association of Nonprofit Developers (HAND).

We raised $5.37 million for the Justice Housing Partners Fund, enabling Jubilee to purchase 1724 Kalorama Road NW and 1460 Euclid Street NW last year and to contract for two additional properties earlier this year. All told, these four properties will create 120 new deeply affordable homes.

In June, Jubilee received HAND’s Developer of the Year Award at the organization’s annual meeting and housing expo, where I had the chance to share on the luncheon panel about Jubilee’s innovative solutions to the crisis in housing affordability. We were humbled to be included among the accomplished individuals and organizations winning HAND Housing Achievement Awards.

And, after our May opening of the District’s first center to provide power to residents of an affordable housing community in the event of an emergency, we were featured in July in an NBC 4 Washington story about the Maycroft’s resiliency center and community solar program. Not only did the story mention Jubilee’s partnership with the city and Pepco to create environmental justice, it also cited our work to develop deeply affordable homes. Jubilee board member and resident Samuel Buggs shared insights on the invaluable personal benefits of the resiliency center and solar program energy savings.

We’re grateful to the city, Pepco, and New Partners Community Solar for their work with us to ensure that District residents with limited financial resources also benefit from solar energy initiatives.

To top it all off, we had the privilege to partner again with NBC 4 Washington and Pepco for a Backyard Barbecue Weather Report at the Maycroft last week, part of Pepco’s “Summer Weather Customer Education Campaign” to educate Pepco’s customers on ways to stay safe during summer weather.

These important milestones and accomplishments inspire us to keep up the fight for justice housing on behalf of families like former Jubilee resident Samrawit Delelegn and her family. While for some, Jubilee Housing is a high-quality home for a lifetime, for others, such as Delelegn, Jubilee Housing is a stepping stone along the way to a next accomplishment. Delelegn and her husband moved into to a Jubilee property in 2014. Five years later they saved enough money to purchase a three bedroom home in Maryland.

Our residents, our partners, and our community buoy us to forge ahead and reach ever higher. Join us on our journey to achieve a more equitable city!

A Note from Jim

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We are brimming with excitement and gratitude as we watch the newly renovated Maycroft Apartments open its doors to residents and families! After a long battle against forces that would have priced original residents out of the restored building, the Maycroft is open, and original residents are moving in along with other families and individuals for whom market rents are otherwise out of reach in the thriving Columbia Heights neighborhood.

As I’ve walked Jubilee’s Adams Morgan, Mount Pleasant, and Columbia Heights neighborhoods for the better part of two decades, the question of who lives here—who is able to live here—has never been more pressing. It is harder and harder to live here, and, without significant financial resources, it’s nearly impossible. I doubt there’s ever been a time in my tenure at Jubilee Housing when it has been more important to think about who lives here—in Jubilee properties, in these neighborhoods, and in this city.

Does the neighborhood have the right to retain its identity? Who gets to decide?

Let’s consider the stakeholders. Some of the Maycroft residents had lived there for decades. Do they have the right to return to the Maycroft? Some of the new Maycroft residents are long-time residents of D.C., who have lived elsewhere up until now. Do they have the right to join this resource rich neighborhood? Some Maycroft residents are much newer to D.C. and looking for a community where they can thrive. Is there room for them?

Justice housing says “yes.” If you’ve lived here for a long time, you deserve the right to stay. If you’ve never lived in a neighborhood with resources and services nearby, you deserve that opportunity. By choosing justice housing, we say, “all are welcome.”

We welcome to the Maycroft a single father with three teenagers, who is looking forward to living in a building with a vibrant teen center, so his children have a safe place to study and spend time with peers. We welcome back the vice president of the Maycroft’s tenants’ association as well as a 90-year-old resident who lived in the Maycroft for 43 years and will return to her original unit. The neighborhood will benefit from the lived experience, patience, resolve, wisdom, and understanding of those individuals and more like them. We also welcome Martha’s table to the ground-level of the Maycroft, which will provide early childhood education, a no-cost healthy market, and McKenna’s Wagon, a food delivery service. This partnership creates an ecosystem of care that reaches community members in ways that matter the most.

However, without extraordinary effort, the market would answer the question of who gets to live here differently. And maybe—unlike what the Maycroft offers—the answer would not be good for the community’s identity, for our identity.

Whose destiny counts, and what does it look like when we say all count equally?

We at Jubilee Housing feel a great sense of joy that the residents of the Maycroft have the opportunity to fulfill their destiny in such an opportunity-rich place. We feel relieved that we were able to withstand the market pressure and move forward with our plan to renovate the building while maintaining its affordability. We feel grateful to all those who contributed to reaching that goal—in ways big and small—and continue to work with us each day. We feel more determined than ever to extend to others with limited incomes the opportunity to live in places like the Maycroft and Columbia Heights.  Join us on May 22nd and 23rd for Do More 24 (see article in this newsletter), as we raise funds to support our Maycroft residents coming home!

A Note From Jim

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2018 was a year of building and growth. We worked hard to acquire two new properties, strengthen our existing partnerships with organizations such as Martha’s Table, bring in new leadership, and work towards the goals of our five year plan. And while all those things are important, this precious work we do is about more than what you can see. It’s also about the work to change hearts, minds, and current policies around the access that Washington, D.C., residents have to affordable housing and other vital resources.

One of the goals of our five year plan is to be more resident-centric. To this end we have incorporated resident feedback through a resident survey and listening sessions to better understand their concerns and wishes. One of the exciting evolutions that came out of these listening sessions was the transition of our traditional Teen Renaissance program to a Drop in Center which will be housed in the Maycroft apartments beginning in early April. Another exciting development is the creation of a Jubilee Housing Senior club. Jubilee’s Senior residents expressed a desire for a Senior Club and have been integral in this creation.

This and all the other work Jubilee accomplishes would not be possible without out our hardworking staff, volunteers and board members. After 30 years of volunteer leadership in service to Jubilee Housing, Myra Peabody Gossens, President of MPG Advisors, is stepping down as board chair. Myra will always be a close friend of Jubilee and will continue to be of service to Jubilee in other ways. As she departs our Board, we recognize her commitment to community and spiritual grounding. Alex Orfinger, Executive Vice President for American City Business Journals, who has been a board member for 2 years is now stepping into the chair’s role. Alex is also serving as the Chair of our Justice Housing Partners Fund Leadership team, which has raised $5M in investments for the Justice Housing Partners Fund in order to create more deeply affordable housing.

Our work is not only about developing affordable housing in thriving neighborhoods with services and programs that support our residents, it is also about reminding  people that each person, regardless of age, race, or ability deserves a safe place to call home. The most underestimated gap is the one between people who feel disconnected one from another. When we are disconnected, we make decisions that are in our self-interest but not necessarily in the interest of the greater good. This widens the divide between people from different socioeconomic backgrounds. That is the fundamental pillar of injustice. Through all this we hope to build greater inclusion and equity in our city.

Jim’s Corner

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At this time of year, we often reflect on the blessings and challenges of the year that has passed. 2018 was full of both! But I’d like to reflect on our blessings.

This year Jubilee Housing moved two steps closer to its goal of creating 30% more justice housing in the next five years by purchasing properties at 1724 Kalorama Road and 1460 Euclid Street. We could only have done this with the help of the Justice Housing Partners, LP, our new innovative investment fund that lets us compete with for-profit developers for available properties. Thank you to all of our friends who helped us dream it, create it, fund it, and use it(!) for the good of our community.

We also received many grants this year to help us to carry out our important work, but most recently a $125,000 grant from the TD Bank Charitable Foundation to support development of the next two new buildings. Our application was #1 out of a national competition – an important validation of how transformative justice housingTM can be.

Earlier this month, the Washington Business Journal recognized the impact of the Jubilee mission through a “C-Suite Award” naming me as one of its Nonprofit Leaders of the Year. I am deeply humbled by this recognition because it represents the power and impact of Jubilee’s vision for Justice Housing. We receive this recognition standing together as a community! Without a doubt, all that has been accomplished could only have been done through the blood, sweat, and tears of our amazing staff, supporters, and resident community. Thank you for being the force and inspiration behind this incredible mission.

In the midst of all of these blessings, there is still much to do to make our city a place where everyone has access to prosperity. Left uncorrected, the market creates conditions under which some people get to have what they want and need, and others don’t.

It’s not right. It’s not fair. It’s not what’s intended. We must act to disrupt that pattern and reset the deck.

It’s been a big year, but 2019 could be even bigger. If your heart is moved to help us make D.C. everything it can be, please invest in our work. Become an investor in our Fund, become a monthly donor, or follow this link to make a one-time donation to support our transformative work.

Thank you for all of your support this year!

Jim’s Corner – July

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This month, Jubilee Housing is excited to roll out our new five-year plan for justice housing℠, “Justice Housing in Action.”

Justice housing is the foundation on which strong, equitable communities are built. Justice housing offers people of all income levels access to deeply affordable homes, with nearby services, in resource-rich areas—such as Jubilee’s core neighborhoods of Adams Morgan, Columbia Heights, and Mount Pleasant. In areas like these, residents can benefit from a thriving, inclusive community.

As we developed this plan over the past several months, we started implementing it as well.

We created the Justice Housing Partners Fund, a tool to provide quick-strike investment capital for bridge financing on future justice housing properties. Goal 2 of our five-year plan calls for Jubilee to increase the number of justice housing properties in our portfolio by 30 percent. The fund will enable us to better compete for such properties against market forces buying up buildings for condo conversions in our neighborhoods, which have become some of the most competitive areas in the city.

Goal 1 of “Justice Housing in Action” reminds us to put residents first in all we do. We reignited our emphasis on residents with our first-ever resident survey, in which we captured the perspectives of 80 percent of Jubilee households. We learned new insights about our residents’ needs and aspirations. Those insights are informing adjustments we’re making to strengthen and refocus our supportive programming. We’re also digging deeper into our residents’ experience with follow-up, one-on-one conversations.

One way we’re providing improved opportunities for Jubilee Housing residents is through the Platform of Hope, which we featured in our last newsletter. This collective of six organizations, including Jubilee Housing, provides holistic and self-directed support to cohorts of individuals, living in Adams Morgan, who are experiencing economic vulnerability. Recently, the Meyer Foundation, United Bank, and the Share Fund—a donor-advised fund of the Community Foundation for the National Capital Region, made initial grants to support the Platform of Hope.

Meanwhile, Jubilee Housing joined the Coalition for Non-Profit Housing and Economic Development and other non-profit developers in calling for an FY 2019 D.C. budget that included non-designated dollars for the Local Rent Support Program (LRSP). Jubilee relies on LRSP funds, in conjunction with investments from the D.C. Housing Production Trust Fund, to help achieve deep affordability at its buildings. The City Council approved $3.5 million for non-designated LRSP purposes.

So, it’s been a busy first half of the year. We thank you for your continued support of our efforts on behalf of current and future Jubilee residents. We look forward to sharing more news of our progress along our five-year plan as the year goes on.

We hope you will join us as we create future justice housing. Visit our website for ways to give and get involved.