A partnership between D.C. housing officials and private developers has won its bid for a $34.9 million federal grant to redevelop the Arthur Capper and Carrollsburg public housing complexes in Southeast Washington.

U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Mel Martinez announced the grant Oct. 19 with Mayor Anthony A. Williams. The city plans to replace the current 780 public housing units with a mixed-use development that will be adjacent to the Navy Yard.

The grant, made under HUD’s Hope VI program, is intended to improve the quality of public housing while also creating programs to provide social, educational and economic support to help current public housing tenants become self-sufficient.

The Capper/Carrollsburg re-development plan drew the largest of five Hope VI grants that the D.C. Housing Authority has been awarded since the program began in 1993.

DCHA is partnering with Silver Spring-based Mid-City Urban LLC and several of its affiliated companies to transform the site into 707 public housing units, 525 "affordable" rental units, 330 market-rate homes, 600,000 square feet of office space and 20,000-40,000 square feet of retail space.

In June a group of public housing residents and other activists, charging mismanagement by DCHA, asked HUD to allow the tenants to take control of the redevelopment project.

Copyright 2001, The Common Denominator