Red Emma’s

Amid a national housing affordability crisis with political and social implications, Washington, DC, is notorious for its rapidly rising income inequality, high rates of displacement, and some of the most expensive rents in the country. Housing policy expert Rosemary Ndubuizu uncovers more than 100 years of affordable housing politics in the nation’s capital to illustrate local and national trends in how various social, economic, and political forces have worked together to ensure the persistent vulnerability of low-wage Black families to housing insecurity and displacement.

Since the 1960s, Black women have been at the forefront of combating efforts to force Black people out of DC. THE UNDESIRABLE MANY recounts the history of Black women’s tenant activism and organized opposition through a Black feminist materialism framework that exposes present-day housing inequities as deeply entangled in the politics and practices of gender and racial inequity. Drawing on extensive archival research and dozens of in-depth interviews with Black women tenant activists and affordable housing advocates, Ndubuizu uncovers how gendered stereotypes of Black tenant irresponsibility have shaped market behavior and informed political justification for different consumer treatment. Politicians, landlords, and even nonprofit housing providers often championed disciplinary housing governance such as mandatory housekeeping classes, welfare garnishment, paternal property management, and case management, contending that the problem was not housing but the Black family itself. By exposing these strategies alongside low-income Black women’s political perspectives and experiences, THE UNDESIRABLE MANY offers valuable lessons for contemporary challenges in affordable housing advocacy and welfare politics.

Rosemary Ndubuizu is an Assistant Professor of African American Studies at Georgetown University. Dr. Ndubuizu is an interdisciplinary scholar who studies how housing policies are shaped by race, gender, political economy, and ideology. Her work historically and ethnographically traces how low-income black women have been affected by post-1970s changes in public and affordable housing policies and advocacy. Her research project also examines the contemporary landscape of affordable housing policy and politics to better understand why low-income black women remain vulnerable to eviction, displacement, and housing insecurity in cities like the District of Columbia. Additionally, her work presents the organizing challenges low-income black women tenant activists in D.C. face as they organize to combat the city’s reduction and privatization of affordable housing. Dr. Ndubuizu’s teaching interests include social policy, post-civil rights black politics, the black radical tradition including black feminism, social movements, the political economy of non-profits, and women of color feminisms. Originally from Inglewood, CA, Dr. Ndubuizu relocated to the Bay Area to complete her undergraduate studies at Stanford University. In 2006, she relocated once again to D.C. and eventually became a community organizer with Organizing Neighborhood Equity DC, which is a D.C.-based community organization that organizes long-time Washingtonians of color to campaign for more local and federal investments in affordable housing and living-wage jobs.

Unique Robinson is a poet/MC, professor, community educator, host, and proud Baltimore native. She received her MFA in English/Creative Writing from Mills College, and a BA in Creative Writing/Black Studies from Hampshire College. Unique has a background in Community Organizing and national Reproductive Justice work, and is a lifelong artivist, with 20+ years of performance experience throughout the US and Havana, Cuba. Through writing and performance, she consistently works within communities to promote change and collective healing through creativity. Locally, Unique has worked as a Poetry Teaching Artist, and in administrative roles for various organizations, including DewMore Baltimore, LTYC, AFRO Charities, & The Lyric Baltimore. Unique received the Emerging Teaching Artist _award from Arts Every Day in 2017, The Grit Fund Grant in 2019, and various other grants. She was the cover feature for _Baltimore _Magazine’s GameChangers _in 2022, and a Baker Artist Awards Finalist in 2025. Unique is the Director of MICA’s MFA Community Arts Program, and the facilitator for The LightHouse, a FREE monthly writing workshop at Motor House for intergenerational communities. Unique has also facilitated arts education literary programming for Baltimore Museum of Art, American Visionary Art Museum, and has been the Curator for The Walters Art Museum’s Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day Celebration for three consecutive years (2024-2026).