Limited Equity Cooperatives (LECs) provide a critical source of affordable homeownership, stable community networks, and political power in neighborhoods across the District of Columbia. The District is home to 96 LECs, representing more than 4,300 units in all 8 wards (Figure 1). While a third are located in Ward 1, due to ongoing patterns of gentrification and displacement, Ward 4 has seen recent growth in the number of buildings opting to become LECs. The LECs in the District have been created steadily over the past four decades and represent a mix of building types, sizes, and resident-owner communities.
Increasingly, LECs are being created in newly gentrifying neighborhoods in Wards 4, 5, 7, and 8. These buildings are home to households native to the District, as well as those who have arrived in the past year; immigrant households from Ethiopia, Guatemala, Eritrea, Mexico, and El Salvador, among many other countries; and households with children, seniors, couples, and young, single-person households. What is consistent is that these households have been able to enjoy the benefits of homeownership—stability, community engagement, and consistent networks—in communities that have become unaffordable to others like them.
In 2004, the Coalition for Nonprofit Housing and Economic Development (CNHED) produced, A Study of Limited-equity Cooperatives in the District of Columbia, which sought to create: (1) a list of all 81 LECs established in the District of Columbia since 1977, and an inventory of those 57 still functioning; (2) an understanding of the financial and social benefits of living in LECs; (3) a picture of the relative financial health of existing LECs; (4) an understanding of the characteristics of successful and poorly performing LECs; and (5) recommendations to make future LECs stronger and existing LECs better equipped to succeed.
Read the full report at Coalition for Nonprofit Housing and Economic Development
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