TOPA for all! Town Hall

DC Jobs With Justice is hosting a TOPA For All Town Hall in collaboration with At-Large Councilmember Robert White on May 27th at 6 PM at Foundry United Methodist Church on 16th Street NW. This will be an event not to miss! We will be diving into the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA) and the  process of tenant engagement that this law triggers when a landlord wants to sell a residential property or discontinue the use of their property for rental housing. Join community members who have experience with TOPA — or have lost the opportunity to engage with TOPA — along with Councilmembers to discuss how to protect this crucial law that creates and preserves affordable housing across DC!

Why TOPA, and why now? Mayor Muriel Bowser introduced an anti-renter bill called the RENTAL Act. This 35-page document rolls back tenant protections and makes it more significantly more difficult for tenants to improve their housing conditions. Notably, it eliminates TOPA rights for a significant portion of all rental buildings in DC. The Mayor just announced she wants to quietly push these harmful changes through our budget process. This is bad for DC and, put simply, bad governance. The RENTAL Act is much to complicated and large to push along with our Budget Support Act, which is what the Council must pass for DC to function on a daily basis. At this Town Hall, we are coming together to say: TOPA for all! The DC Council must reject the mayor’s RENTAL Act!