Bread for the City

As Bread for the City continues to increase the amount of fresh produce that we provide to our clients, people’s preferences for fresh food increase accordingly.  Clients often want to know where they can find affordable fresh food — and we do have some good answers for them.

Thanks to the Double Dollars program, our clients can enjoy more farm fresh produce all month long.

Thanks to grants from the Wholesome Wave Foundation, an increasing number of farmers markets in DC not only accept food stamps (including WIC, SNAP, or senior vouchers) but even double their value up to $10 for each visit.

So, for example, if someone wants to spend $10 of their SNAP money at a participating market, the market will give them another $10 for a total of $20 to spend on fresh fruits and vegetables. That goes a long way toward making locally grown, fresh produce affordable for our clients.

Even better: food stamp recipients can double their dollars at as many participating farmers markets as they want, in as many weeks of the month as they want. So if someone goes to two farmers markets a week, every week of the month, and that person spends $10 in food stamps each time, he or she receives an extra $80 that month to spend on fresh, healthy produce!

There are currently at least eight local markets that participate in the Double Dollars program (up from just two when Bread for the City first reported on this program back in 2009). Participating markets include:

• Ward 8: 1901 Mississippi Avenue SE. Saturdays 9 AM – 2 PM
• Columbia Heights: 14th St. & Park Road NW. Saturdays 9AM-2PM
• Dupont Circle: 1500 20th St NW. Sundays 8:30 AM – 1 PM
• H Street NE: 625 H Street NE. Saturdays 9 AM- Noon
• Health and Human Services: 200 Independence Avenue SW. Wednesday 11 AM – 2 PM.
• By the White House: 810 Vermont Avenue NW. Thursdays 3 – 7 PM.
• The Crossroads (MD): 7676 New Hampshire Avenue Takoma Park. Wednesdays 2:30-6:30 PM
• Silver Spring (MD): Ellsworth Drive between Fenton St & Georgia Ave. Saturdays 9AM -1PM

WIC, SNAP, or Senior Food Voucher recipients simply go up to the market information table each time they attend, swipe or present their food stamp card, and tell the staff member on-site how much food stamp allotment they would like to spend. The staff member will hand them their dollars, as well as an equal number of “Market Dollar” coupons that they can use at the market. It’s that easy to make food stamps go twice as far!

Last month, Bread for the City hosted a Free “Farmers Market” at our NW Center, where we provided over 150 people with a free bag of fresh produce. This Friday, from 10am to noon at our Southeast Center (1640 Good Hope Road), we’re doing it all over again! We hope that by promoting initiatives like the Double Dollars program at these markets, we can help our clients access fresh, healthy foods all month, every month.

We're ready to give away more fresh, free produce, this time at our SE center!

Sometimes, you just gotta take it outside. Here at Bread for the City, it’s about that time.

So next Friday, July 29, from 10AM-noon at our Southeast Center (1640 Good Hope Road) — weather permitting — we’ll open up the doors and set up the tables for this summer’s second Free Farmers Market!

Our Free Farmers Market last month was a great success, with nearly 1,000 pounds of fresh, locally sourced produce given away. (Additionally, approximately two metric tons of fun were had.)  This time, we’re rolling our Free Farmers Market together with another beloved Southeast Center tradition: the community clothing giveaway!

At this big Community Day event, each guest can take two full bags of fruits and vegetables, plus all the clothing you can carry on top of that.

We’ll also have cooking demonstrations, Southeast community garden groups, a seed table, farmers market representatives promoting their Double Value program for food stamp recipients, arts and crafts, and tours of our Southeast rooftop garden!

This is going to be one packed parking lot, you will not want to miss it.

You may be reading this and saying to yourself, ‘Self, doesn’t that sound great? How can I help Bread for the City prepare for this wonderful community event?” Well we’re glad you asked.

Normally we sit back and let people bring clothing donations to us — but with an event like this, we want to pull out all the stops. Now’s the time to clean out your closet, rustle up whatever clothes are ready to go. No amount of clothing is too much. Please bring us your donations of clothing, so we can get it all to good new homes! Bring it all down to either our Southeast or Northwest Center. You’ll be helping this summer event be a true bounty.

On June 29, Bread for the City hosted a lunchtime discussion with Judge Melvin Wright and attorneys from both sides of the landlord/tenant divide. The topic of discussion was the one-year old D.C. Superior Court Housing Conditions Calendar – or “fix-it court,” as Judge Wright referred to it.

The “fix-it” court is the brainchild of a committee formed two years ago to address the fact that DC tenants lacked an expedient and effective forum to bring grievances against landlords for poor housing conditions. One year in to the Housing Conditions Calendar, this group met to look back at its successes and failures of the Calendar.

We can see some of both.

Before the “fix-it court” existed, tenants had few options when it came to disputes with landlords about housing conditions. They could pay a $120 filing fee to institute an action in the Civil Division (a time-consuming task), or they could withhold rent in demand of repairs. That course of action would often result in landlords bringing suit against them in Landlord and Tenant Court, where they could present housing code violations as a defense – but risk eviction in the process.

So while there was previously no way for tenants to sue landlords in in Landlord and Tenant Court, they are now enabled by the Housing Conditions Calendar to seek injunctive relief through claims of Housing Code Violations. The court has the authority to compel a landlord to correct violations so that the property complies with the housing code (though the court cannot compel the landlord to provide other relief, such as monetary damages).

The process for a case on the Housing Conditions Calendar was designed to be user-friendly and easily navigable for both tenants and landlords. On this point the Calendar has largely succeeded. Judge Wright estimated that parties have been able to proceed unrepresented in over 70% of cases. That was one of the primary goals of the committee.

One of the key elements of this success is the design of the Housing Conditions Calendar Complaint form (available here in PDF), which includes a checklist of housing code violations that make up the complaint. With this simple process, many tenants can successfully make claims without needing an attorney’s guidance.

Another critical element is the inclusion of a Housing Inspector in hearing proceedings. This Inspector can be dispatched almost immediately and report his findings back to the court. This unique feature helps “fix-it court” settle factual disputes about the state of the apartment without delay, typically without evidentiary hearings — and it facilitates consensus between the parties. Judge Wright stressed that such consensus (reached without the need for an official order) is another central goal of the Calendar.

Despite these evident successes, both tenant and landlord attorneys voiced some significant concerns about the Housing Conditions Calendar.

Bread for the City’s own Legal Clinic Director Vytas V. Vergeer noted that tenants often find it difficult to properly serve complaints to landlords, which is a necessary step in moving forward. Judge Wright acknowledged this issue, and noted that the court itself will soon issue notices by mail to landlords of claims against them, and will also employ a process server for instances when notice by mail fails.

Vergeer also expressed frustration with the lack of rules of civil procedure specific to the Housing Conditions Calendar, a concern that was voiced by multiple landlord attorneys as well. For instance, it is unclear what effect a housing conditions claim brought by a tenant against his landlord might have on a claim involving the same parties in Landlord and Tenant Court. There is an evident need for the development of a set of governing regulations to ensure that the Calendar functions effectively alongside Landlord/Tenant Court.

The Housing Conditions Calendar makes the District one of only three places in the nation with a special forum in which tenants can sue their landlords for poor housing conditions. Its creation was undoubtedly a big win for tenants. But while this long-overdue forum has significantly improved the ability of tenants to seek relief from poor housing conditions – making it cheaper, easier and faster to do so – it nonetheless still falls short of providing tenants legal tools equal to those available to landlords.

Judge Wright hinted at a possible reconvening of the committee to look into some of these issues — and that could pose an important opportunity to push for even greater gains in tenant rights in the District.

Editors’ note: The ‘fix-it court’ was originally conceived and implemented as a result, in large part, of the dedicated advocacy of a whole tenants’ rights community, including Bread for the City’s legal clinic, our fellow legal services partners and housing organizations, and many active District tenants. One of the primary venues for that advocacy has been the Tenant Town Hall, where solutions to the city’s housing problems are proactively demanded.

This year’s Tenant Town Hall is tomorrow! It’s one of the primary opportunities to engage in discussion and advocacy around these critical issues that are so essential to the livelihood of our community. Please join us, alongside the Latino Economic Development Corporation and concerned organizations and tenants from across the city, at the 2011 Tenant Town Hall (Saturday, July 16th), at 2:30 pm at First Trinity Church (309 E St NW – next to the Judiciary Square Metro).

Last month, we put out a call for help: in order to expand the amount of fresh, free produce that our pantry can receive and distribute to thousands of families in need, we have to get a major refrigeration upgrade.

At our scale, a new refrigerator is going to cost as much as $15,000. Well, I’m proud to announce that, thanks to our generous community of supporters like you, our Fridge Fund campaign has been a success!

A huge thank you to all those who rallied to this cause — especially the Harman Family Foundation, who read our front page story in the Washington Post and made a gift that brought us over the finish line. Thanks to your support, we’ll be able to provide more fresh produce to more people than ever before, and spend less money doing it! It’s so inspiring.

So I’m especially excited to announce that we now have a great opportunity to celebrate this accomplishment–alongside all of our other great progress this year–coming up later this month!

Next Thursday, July 21st at 6pm, you’re invited to our Annual Parking Lot Picnic at our Northwest Center (in the parking lot, naturally).

This free and fun event is open to our entire community, and will have great food, music, and conversation about all we’ve accomplished in the past year and our goals for this coming year. We will also be giving tours of our gorgeous rooftop garden!

If you haven’t already, please RSVP to rsvp@breadforthecity.org or call 202.480.8908. (If you would like to sponsor this event, please lend your support here .)

I hope to see you and lots of our friends, family, and neighbors there!

You may have heard it first in the Washington Post, but we’re pleased to officially announce here that our Glean for the City program is expanding — into the city.

That’s right: Glean for the City is now planning to forage from fruit trees growing right here in the DC area.

This is a logical next step in our Nutrition Initiative, which recently hit a new peak when we pledged to give all food pantry clients the choice to receive all-fresh produce (no canned fruits and veggies, if all you want is the fresh stuff). In order to meet this challenge, we’re looking for more sites from which to get fresh fruits and vegetables!

And fortunately, we’ve got plenty of fruit right here in our back yards.

Fruit: it's out there.

Hundreds (even thousands?) of trees in the DC metro area grow edible fruit, and many yield more than a family can possibly eat themselves. Some trees don’t get harvested at all! This results in a lot of unnecessary waste — a lot of rotting fruit on the ground — all of which could be rescued and provided, through our pantry, as a bounty for our clients in need.

For this initial pilot project, we’re specifically targeting apple and pear trees. We’ll identify clusters of trees, then help volunteers organize to harvest from them, ensuring that this fresh city fruit ends up in the kitchens of our city’s hungry families.

We can’t make this happen without your help.

If you own an apple or pear tree in DC or an inner suburb, and if it grows more fruit than you use, we want to hear from you. Please fill out this form to indicate your interest. Also indicate whether you know of anyone else in your neighborhood who might be interested in donating their apples and pears. Bread for the City will get in touch with you, and send our volunteers to your property to pick the fruit come harvest time. The more neighbors that get involved, the more fun it will be to be a part of a harvest party in the fall!

And if you’d like to volunteer, there are many opportunities to scout trees, conduct site visits, organize neighborhood harvest parties, and of course, pick the fruit and deliver it to Bread for the City.

If any of this sounds exciting  to you, please contact Tonya Hamilton, BFC’s gleaning coordinator at gleaning@breadforthecity.org.

Meanwhile: these gleaning programs are made possible by the generous support of our donors, so please contribute here to support our continued expansion of these innovative programs.

Thank you!

This post is co-authored by Bread for the City lawyers Stacy Braverman and Lindsy Miles-Hare.

Bad news travels fast. We learned late last month from Housing Counseling Services that DC’s Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERAP) is nearly exhausted, and that these critical funds will no longer be available for many low-income residents who are seeking help to stay housed.

ERAP provides emergency assistance for low-income residents of the District who are elderly, have minor children, or are disabled. To prevent evictions, these funds go to pay up to five months of past due rent. The funds can also be used to provide security deposits or first month’s rent, when doing so would prevent a family from being homeless or help to keep a family together.

Many clients of our legal clinic rely on ERAP funds when they face an emergency and cannot keep up with their monthly rent. One telling example is the story of our client, Ms. S.

Ms. S came to Bread for the City to meet with one of our social workers. She had been forced to reduce the hours she worked because of a disabiling injury, and her decreased income led her to get behind on her rent. A judge had granted her landlord permission to evict her if she could not come up with the money. Tracy Knight, our Social Services Director, was prepared to counsel her through packing her belongings and finding a relative, friend, or shelter to stay with. Tracy also recognized that Ms. S could benefit from our legal services.

When Ms. S lost her eviction case, she applied for ERAP. She received a notice approving her; then, two days later, she received a denial notice. The nonprofit organization that administers ERAP funds had changed its mind about whether Ms. S was disabled, which is a criterion of eligibility for the program. Ms. S had supplied records from her doctor, including a notice stating she was “totally disabled”; however, the nonprofit disputed the doctor’s note, because Ms. S was still able to work, albeit part-time. Ms. S had requested a hearing to contest the denial of her ERAP application, and it was scheduled for a mere 19 hours after she walked through Bread for the City’s doors.

Bread for the City lawyer Stacy Braverman represented Ms. S at that hearing, and won. The Administrative Law Judge ordered the nonprofit to pay Ms. S’s landlord enough to keep her in her home. However, the U.S. Marshals were already scheduled to come to her house and oversee an eviction before the ERAP check was due to arrive. Luckily, housing lawyers from our Attorney of the Day program were planning to be in Landlord-Tenant Court that day. With the Marshals literally at Ms. S’s door, Lindsy Miles-Hare convinced a judge to stay Ms. S’ eviction until her landlord could receive the ERAP funds.

Without ERAP funds and the attorneys of Bread for the City, Ms. S would have become homeless. Now Ms. S is now in a position to consider her options and move forward with her life.

The ERAP program is specifically designed to reach some of the most vulnerable people in the District and keep them in their homes. Without these funds, entire families, the elderly, and the disabled will be at much greater risk of being evicted from their homes. There are a lot of people like Ms. S who are facing financial emergencies and need help with their rent right now. As the ERAP funding runs out, there will be fewer places to turn for the assistance that they desperately need. Fewer people will be able to successfully resolve such a crisis, as Ms. S did.

To learn more about tenant-led campaigns to save programs like ERAP, and make affordable housing a priority in DC, come to the Tenant Town Hall this Saturday, July 16th, at 2:30 pm at First Trinity Church (309 E St NW – next to the Judiciary Square Metro).

We’re pleased to feature this post from volunteer, client, and donor Leonard Edwards. Leonard was recently featured on WAMU’s Metro Connection report on our rooftop garden (transcript here), and these days he can be found up on our roof several times a week — one of our most active volunteers. Read his story below.

I was raised to be self sufficient. Pull yourself up by your boot laces, dust yourself off, and stand up on your own two feet. When you get into a tight situation, think; there is always a solution.

But in that hazy, humid summer evening of ‘06, I was at a real low point in my life. I found myself in a situation that was totally alien to me. I needed legal advice and I needed it fast.

I’d been fired abruptly — and to make matters worse, when I went to apply for unemployment compensation, my boss tried to claim that I’d quit. So I was facing unemployment without compensation. Now, I am not a young man any more, so it’s not like there was another job around the corner. I found myself asking these new questions: how am I gonna pay rent? How am I gonna eat?

I needed help. A friend told me to try Bread for the City. I was skeptical at first. I was scared and confused, even desperate, and wary that someone might try to take advantage of my emotional state. And I did not know whether a place called Bread for the City could help me with this predicament.

Well as it turned out, the staff was professional, courteous, and sincere. I was not looked down on or judged. I knew immediately that this place was not out to get my money; that I was safe here. (In fact I thought that I had died and gone to heaven!) They referred me to the Employment Justice Center in their facility, where I got advice on how to request a hearing — and how to fight for my rights in court.

Though I got my unemployment assistance, I now didn’t have health insurance. So I came back to Bread for the City — this time to be a patient of the medical clinic. And I have to be honest, I was doubtful again. I had this stereotype of what to expect in a community health clinic, to be rushed through without any real care given to you as a person. But I found their medical staff here to be way better than the primary care physician that I had before!

Bread for the City’s staff all go above and beyond the call of duty. As a former Marine, you know that I mean a lot to say that about a group of civilians.

Indeed, because of this experience with Bread for the City, I am proud to have stayed in the family of this special organization. Today, I’m not just a client, but a donor, a volunteer, and more.

So far, I’ve helped build and tend the new rooftop garden. I had some previous experience with gardening – my grandfather had a farm, and my parents had a garden in their backyard. But today I don’t have access to green space, so this was a great opportunity. And I now I’m starting my own garden at home, using the techniques we’re learning about potting and tending the plants.

For instance, this last weekend we learned about all kinds of pest controls. This garden is new and in great shape, but it has bugs just like any other. We made insect repellent with garlic, basil, peppers — that’s all it took! Here we are conditioned to think that we have to go buy chemicals from the store and blast them all over the place, and it turns out we can do it easy, cheap, and chemical-free. We also took aluminum pie pans, painted them with faces, and hung them above our berry bushes to ward off birds.

I had no idea there was so much to learn and do — but now I’m coming to feel like I’m an expert in these things. Next year, I want to go beyond potted plants and build a garden right in my home. I look forward to keep giving back to Bread’s community right here – especially with educating children about how vegetables are grown, and what different foods look like in their natural states (not just the rotting ones on store shelves).

I don’t know where I might be if I had not found Bread for the City. I might be a statistic in a jail cell, like so many others who don’t get the right advice at the crucial time. I can truly say that I love being a client and a volunteer with Bread, and am grateful to have the opportunity to join them in serving our community with dignity and respect.

Our expanded Northwest Center facility continues to attract accolades and attention! Last month, we were pleased to host a tour for our new friends at the National Building Museum. These folks understand how our built environment plays such an important role in our social relationships.

See this excerpt from their blog about our planned transition from original facility into  newly-expanded space, with results that we enjoy now:

The cramped quarters did not create the ideal environment for people in crisis, but it was all they had. As the Bread for the City administration and Kendall Dorman, the architect, planned and designed the new building, they took these considerations into account. The new addition is spacious and open, and allows for free movement in a centralized waiting area. Large windows and sky lights let in plenty of light, and create an airy space that is bright and inviting.

One of the most powerful comments Ms. Sanford made was that she notices people physically relax as they enter the space. Their shoulders drop or maybe they start to smile. The subconscious tension that we may not even notice in a poorly designed space can disappear in a well-designed one.

The Building Museum folks also admit to being jealous of our rooftop garden. We’re happy to advise y’all on how to get it done!

See their full account of the visit here.

Have you not seen our new center yet? Or maybe you haven’t had a chance to see the rooftop garden in full bloom? You have a great opportunity coming up soon! Join us on Thursday, July 21st, at 6pm, for our annual Parking Lot Picnic. Food, folks, fun, and tours of our fantastic facility. RSVP today!

Earlier this summer, Louise Thundercloud, Angie Stackhouse and I represented Bread for the City at the Community Food Security Coalition’s (CFSC) “From Neighborhood To Nation” Conference in Portland, OR. This event convened people from across the country who are working to promote local and state-level policies for healthier and more just food systems.

Set in a city whose mayor owns chickens and dedicates city hall land to the production of food for local homeless shelters, the conference had no shortage of government-driven food-policy role models. We learned about progressive and impressive urban agriculture policies and programs in Baltimore, healthy food systems resolutions in Cleveland, coordination across Michigan’s cities to identify shared infrastructure needs, and Seattle’s efforts to link local legislation to national Farm Bill policies.

It was also more than just wonks. Something that’s been central to conversations in DC , and at Bread for the City, is that it takes a lot more than policymakers, non-profits, and so-called “professionals” to realize true, lasting change. For that reason, I was glad to see participation by everyone from community organizers to health care workers to rural farmers to homeless advocates. I was also glad that the conference featured presentations from several different groups organizing communities not traditionally thought of as “foodies” or even part of the “food movement.” Here are a few examples:

The SW Organizing Project (SWOP), in Albuquerque, NM, is a people-of-color-led group that sees food-related organizing as one of a number of vehicles for empowering disenfranchised members of their community. One project, Feed the Hood, is a “food literacy and community gardening initiative.” It uses community gardens to create “centers of gravity around which people can gather” to build skills, share knowledge, and organize around efforts to ensure healthy food access in their neighborhoods.

POWER San Francisco is

a community-based organization working to ensure that low-income residents of Bayview benefit from the wealth and amenities generated by economic development in the City. They consider themselves “new” to the “food movement,” organizer Jaron Brown explained. A “Right to Thrive” principle that was central to their welfare worker campaign led to organizing and advocating around these workers’ right to fresh, healthy, and affordable food. So far, they have successfully mobilized around a policy mandating better food in schools, while also holding conversations about access to healthy food in the neighborhoods in which they work.

Finally, Saru Jayaraman from the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United (ROC-U) reminded us that less than one tenth of one percent of restaurant workers are unionized, and that overwhelmingly, those who serve us our food can’t afford to eat that same food themselves. She said she’s tired of having to explain to people why restaurant workers are central to the food movement. According to her, “when the largest workforce in the country is the poorest workforce in the country, and can’t afford to eat in the same restaurants in which they work – that’s a food security issue!” (Check out ROC’s DC affiliate and a report recently released about restaurant workers in DC)

The message from these and many others present was clear: to effectively craft, pass, and implement policies to genuinely move us toward a healthier and more just food system, the food movement must be built in a way that gives priority to the people most impacted by an unjust food system, who have traditionally been excluded from policy-making decisions.

Our collective efforts to build something like a food policy council in DC can benefit from these insights and experiences in other cities. Here are some tips and ideas that I heard about how building the food movement can be done creatively and mindfully:

• Food policy councils should cultivate a “democratization of expertise.” Coalitions built around specific kinds of professional expertise can reinforce exclusion from policy-making. Instead, groups need to create space for sharing and valuing different kinds of expertise.
• For most communities, “food access” does not equal “food justice.” Healthy food advocates like myself need to take the time to acknowledge and address race and power dynamics embedded in the food system to truly be able to fix it.
• Groups can employ members of an impacted community to themselves conduct outreach or research on the problems and how to fix them – such as Participatory Action Research, or the community health promoters model. (The Market Ambassador program in Massachusetts is one example

Finally, a number of cities emphasized the importance of food pantries, food banks, and community gardens serving as “community food centers” – hubs for organizing, sharing about food issues, and getting people involved for change. I’m excited to see that Bread for the City’s rooftop gardens, free farmers market, community brainstorms, and other food justice gatherings are laying the groundwork for such a vision. I’m also excited to see our clients continuing to drive some of our food justice work.

If you would like to help continue these conversations — at Bread, or around the city — please contact Joni Podschun at jpodschun@breadforthecity.org.

Food trucks are quickly becoming a staple in cities around the country. But here’s a new twist to this trend: do-good food trucks.

For the month of July, Bread for the City will receive 10% of the proceeds from That Cheesecake Truck, the newest addition to the mobile food scene in DC. Brought to DC by Sweetz Cheesecakes, a 20 year Gaithersburg-based business, That Cheesecake Truck will shuttle through your favorite neighborhoods, offering individually sized cheesecakes of seasonally specific flavors.

The more you eat, the more we get.

A big thanks to Andrea and her team at Sweetz Cheesecake for bringing attention to our cause! Follow them on twitter, like them on facebook, and keep track of their whereabouts so you can enjoy the selection of yums when they roll to town.