The Purchase Of a Lifetime

I can't pay.

After a year of hard work, of carwashes and raffles, of meetings and late-night phone calls, the whole plan seemed to be disintegrating before her eyes.

"I don't want my kids to have to grow up and struggle. I want them to have a place."

Deborah Thomas, tenant association president

The saga of Capital Manor's rebirth as a tenant-owned cooperative played out over 4 1/2 years, starting in spring 2001. It finished successfully last month, with the last original tenants moving into their freshly renovated apartments. In a neighborhood that has become one of the most sought after in the city, this was a rare accomplishment: the $12 million purchase and rehabilitation of three buildings by tenants whose average income hovered just under $20,000 a year.

The undertaking, one of the largest tenant purchases in the city, was a struggle all the way. The residents had to convince the District government that their plan was worthy of funding and prove to a bank that they were committed enough to handle a loan. Even then, work progressed at an excruciatingly slow pace. They faced opposition from wealthier neighbors, who wanted them gone, and defections within their own ranks. Their renovation plan changed drastically. The Washington Post has followed the project since the tenants first organized.

Why they succeeded starts with their leaders -- longtime residents, led by Thomas, who passionately believed that they had earned the right to stay in their homes. They came to rely on two young men: their attorney, O'Toole, who worked at Georgetown University's nonprofit Harrison Institute, and their developer, Jair K. Lynch, who pulled the financing together and managed the project. They were lucky enough to find a sympathetic bank that took a chance on them and to make their move at a time when the city was under pressure to slow the hemorrhaging of affordable housing.

"The passion from the tenants was so obvious to us that we certainly had no option but to find a way to make it work," said Stanley Jackson, who was head of the city's housing development agency when the project was launched and now serves as a deputy mayor. "People who otherwise would not be here will be able to be a part of all of the great development of this neighborhood."

The three buildings of Capital Manor originally housed middle-class families but were converted to low-income apartments through a federal program in the 1970s. Thirty years later, the federal subsidy -- and the tax benefits that went with it -- were about to expire. Besieged by developers, the company that owned Capital Manor put it on the market in March 2001 and eventually signed a contract to sell it for $3.4 million.

Thomas knew that D.C. law allows tenants of an apartment house to match any purchase offer -- an unusual way to keep tenants from being displaced and to allow them to benefit when housing values climb. A decade earlier, the tenants of 1424 W St., just down the block, had converted their building into a cooperative. Now, Thomas thought, maybe she and her neighbors could do the same. She began to spread the word.

Meetings were held in the fluorescent-lit basement room, where men in work boots sat on mismatched chairs next to tired-looking women, some with squirming children on their laps. Everything was translated into Spanish, since many of the Latinos spoke little or no English.

They soon learned that buying the buildings would be only the starting point. The complex was badly in need of repair. Fixing it now would more than triple the price tag, their advisers told them, but would avert a crisis later.