Most of the houses are boarded up, and many are just shells of houses whose roofs and walls have collapsed completely. But the process took so long that it wasn't until the election last year of Mayor Anthony Williams, after Marion S. Barry declined to run for a fifth term, that the city got HUD's permission to sell off the properties without having to create one new housing unit for every one lost. The Williams administration had pushed for the sale as part of its promise to stabilize blighted neighborhoods. The hope is that people like Morrison will invest in their communities as homeowners, in more ways than one. When Morrison went through the application process to enter the lottery for a house, she joined a record 12,000 others who had similar dreams of homeownership.
Buyers are then responsible for finding their own financing for the rehabilitation.
In late August, Morrison went down to the beautifully restored Lincoln Theater in the city's historic and hip U Street neighborhood, and lined up with thousands of others hoping to secure the right to one of the 68 homes. Her son won't even have to change schools, and he'll be able to hone his budding gardening skills in the house's little yard. Winning the housing lottery, though, was only the first step in what is a fairly involved process for the homesteaders. Morrison is nearly finished with a 12-week class that is mandatory for folks buying houses from the city. There, at the nonprofit Housing Counseling Services office, she's learning to navigate the harrowing process of securing a mortgage to pay for renovating the house.