At-Large Councilmember Robert White spent the past few weeks out front on public housing issues, taking an unusually vocal stand in support of Mayor Muriel Bowser’s plan to overhaul the D.C. Housing Authority. It’s starting to look like an audition for a much bigger job.
White is now set to head up a newly empowered committee overseeing housing and the Department of Human Services, per a plan unveiled by Council Chairman Phil Mendelson Wednesday. He takes over that post from At-Large Councilmember Anita Bonds, who now heads to the labor committee, after she faced years of criticism for her management of the housing panel. The full Council still gets to vote on the arrangement, though that’s generally been a formality (despite some suggestions to the contrary in recent months).
The move feels simultaneously surprising and overdue. On the one hand, Bonds’ position was probably untenable considering the intensity of the scrutiny of DCHA (not to mention her less-than-stellar track record there). On the other, White didn’t win many friends by taking on Bowser in the mayoral primary and Mendelson was sensitive about any perception that he’d be demoting a senior lawmaker such as Bonds.
“If anyone thinks it’s a negative comment about one of our members, it’s not,” Mendelson said during an organizational meeting to unveil the proposed changes, noting that Bonds will also gain oversight of the elections agencies and Board of Ethics and Government Accountability.
The past few months probably sealed the deal. Bonds’ initial response to the release of the damning HUD report on DCHA left many underwhelmed. White, by contrast, has served on the housing committee and eagerly took up the job of selling Bowser’s DCHA reforms as a needed corrective to stave off a federal takeover. While most of his fellow left-leaning lawmakers opposed the bill outright (or opted to quietly approve it), he was alone in pushing publicly for changes to the legislation and trumpeting its merits. In fact, White tells Loose Lips that he proposed the idea of a reform board for DCHA right after the HUD report’s release, but couldn’t gain much traction; he says he chose to seize on Bowser’s proposal and try to improve it as his next best option.
Removing Bonds as housing chair was far and away the top priority for D.C.’s progressive left, so in that sense, White’s takeover is an unequivocal win for advocates. Bonds was an impassable roadblock for a variety of their priorities (think rent control reform or the Green New Deal for housing) and a light touch on major oversight issues. Most are hopeful that White will change all that, and be the responsive figure that Bonds simply was not for the past seven years.
But White has earned his share of criticism on these issues, too. Not only were many unhappy with his decision to back Bowser’s DCHA reforms, but plenty of questions were raised about the wisdom of the development policies he advanced in his mayoral campaign. (Greater Greater Washington policy director Alex Baca once called White’s plans to expand affordability covenants “bizarrely neoliberal,” in fact, a turn of phrase that befits her status as a former City Paper staffer.)
The perception that White’s sudden interest in Bowser’s DCHA bill contributed directly to his new committee chairmanship has not helped matters either—those with longer memories recall similar accusations that he flipped his vote on the now-infamous sports betting contract in order to gain oversight of Metro back in 2018. White rejects these insinuations, of course, calling it a “harmful claim” and an “unfounded notion that I somehow voted a particular way” in order to secure a better committee. He believes he earned the job fairly based on some of his previous housing advocacy work, particularly around issues like office-to-residential conversions, and says he has “always cared really deeply about housing issues.”
White isn’t ready to discuss specific legislation to move out of the committee just yet, but he hopes to have some “innovative ideas” ready in the coming months. And he is pledging “ongoing oversight and ongoing public hearings” focused on DCHA specifically, arguing that prodding from the Council is a necessary ingredient in getting the agency back on track.
“It’s going to take a very aggressive approach from me,” White says. “You can expect me to be very hands on with all these agencies.”
Mendelson’s decision to move Bonds out of the housing chair role could blunt any momentum for a progressive rebellion on committees that some lawmakers contemplated in the wake of the June primary. The lone sticking point, perhaps, is the continued lack of a stand-alone education committee, long a complaint from councilmembers and advocates after Mendelson rolled up its duties into his own Committee of the Whole. At-Large Councilmember Christina Henderson was broadly seen as the only real contender to chair such a committee, given her history working on education policy for her predecessor (former committee chair David Grosso), but instead Mendelson wants to give her the health committee.
Therein lies the other bit of controversy brewing around the committee changes. Henderson takes over the health panel at the expense of Ward 7 Councilmember Vince Gray, who is set to head up a new hospital infrastructure and health equity committee instead where he will focus on the development of the new facility east of the river (Gray’s passion project). Mendelson explicitly billed this as a way to “accommodate [Gray’s] recovery” from a recent stroke and Achilles injury. The former mayor was not amused, blasting Mendelson’s proposal in a memo to his colleagues as a “power grab” and “a clear violation of the D.C. Human Rights Act.”
“Frankly, I am shocked that any of my peers would cite health as cause to reduce the responsibilities of a fellow member or employee,” Gray wrote. “What message are we sending? Your duties will be cut if you break a leg, have a difficult pregnancy, undergo chemotherapy or otherwise are challenged by a matter of health?”
It looks unlikely, though, that Gray’s entreaties will move anyone. Mendelson said Wednesday that he made the change after “every member has shared with me… they want him to get well,” so it seems clear he consulted others on this plan (though Gray’s outburst certainly puts Henderson in an awkward spot now).
Asked if Gray will take any sort of official action to try and reverse Mendelson’s proposal, his spokesperson Chuck Thies says they are reviewing their options. “Nothing is off the table,” he says.
If White’s new rise to prominence has implications for 2026, when he could be a leading contender for mayor, the drama over Gray’s committee is a harbinger for the maneuvering to come over 2024. Gray has already pledged to run again, but an 80-year-old coming off some major health challenges was bound to face some major questions in the primary no matter what. This latest fight over his fitness for the job could only escalate things.
The rest of the committee news was generally devoid of too much intrigue. Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen will head over to chair the transportation and environment committee in a move that’s been whispered about for months around the Wilson Building; Ward 2 Councilmember Brooke Pinto will take over the judiciary committee in his stead.
The other first-time chair, Ward 4 Councilmember Janeese Lewis George, will have the distinctly less glamorous “facilities and family services” committee, with oversight over the much-maligned Department of General Services and other human services agencies (except DHS). That also means a move for Ward 1 Councilmember Brianne Nadeau, who gets the decidedly less interesting job of overseeing the Department of Public Works and a hodgepodge of other agencies including the new Department of Licensing and Consumer Protection and Office of Contracting and Procurement.
To round things out, Kenyan McDuffie retains his old economic development committee as he moves to an at-large seat, while Ward 8 Councilmember Trayon White will stay put chairing his recreation and libraries panel.