Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act in Washington DC: A Brief History

This update looks into the history and the current contestation of Washington, D.C.’s Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA). TOPA provides tenants of rental housing with the right of first refusal when an owner seeks to sell a property. Enacted in the 1980s, TOPA has been a crucial tool in the fight of working-class people to win true housing justice in the U.S. capital, particularly for Black and Brown working-class residents who have long been systematically denied self-determination over where they live. Since its inception, working-class Black and Brown tenants in dozens of properties have used TOPA to win ownership, and especially during the first years, TOPA was widely successful, helping thousands of tenants. Yet, in recent years, TOPA has been systemically undermined as dedicated funding was cut. In this update, we thus review TOPA’s legal framework, history, and effectiveness, as well as current organizing efforts to hold on to the act as a tool for D.C. residents to win control over their housing.