Contact: (Media Only) Vince Morris (202) 727-5011
Leah Orfanos This Old House (617) 388-4485
(Washington, DC) Mayor Anthony A. Williams today appeared on the Emmy award-winning PBS series, This Old House with Master Carpenter Norm Abram and host Kevin O’Connor to talk about the renovation of an abandoned 1879 row house at 1134 6th Street, NW. The popular PBS series, This Old House, worked with Mi Casa Inc. to renovate the home. Mi Casa Inc. is a Washington, DC-based nonprofit organization that builds and renovates homes for sale to low and moderate income families and provides technical assistance to tenant purchase projects. Mi Casa Inc. was selected through a Request for Proposal process as the developer of this home by the Mayor’s Home Again Initiative, a program designed to help eliminate blight throughout the city.
“It’s great to receive national recognition for our incredibly successful Home Again Initiative,” said Mayor Williams. “Every day we are working hard to keep residents in the city and attract others to move in. I am convinced that when residents, developers and government officials work together, we can build a city that is affordable to residents of all income levels.”
Mayor Williams continued: “We need to ensure that people can go into any ward of this city and find a place that they can afford and a place they want to call home.”
Home Again is designed to stabilize neighborhoods by removing blight and creating more affordable housing opportunities. To address this challenge, Home Again has two goals:
1) Encourage property owners to rehabilitate and/or occupy their vacant and abandoned residential property; and
2) Acquire, dispose of, and rehabilitate properties when owners fail to maintain them. Since its start in January 2002, Home Again has identified and investigated 1,061 vacant properties. Select the link below for more details: