WIN Annual Reports April 2019 Midyear Report | Page 17

2 0 1 9 M I D YE AR RE P O RT
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top leader profile:
SABRENA TURNER
Sabrena Turner
Former resident ofTemple
Courts apartments
From testifying at DC
Council hearings to
organizing former residents
ofTemple Courts, Sabrena
Turner has played a key role
in the fight to rebuild Temple
Courts and bring former
residents back home.
When Sabrena Turner was three years old, she and her mother
moved into the Temple Courts apartments in the neighborhood
now called NoMa. “It was an amazing place to live,” she says.
“We were all one big family—everyone knew each other.” She
pulls up a photograph of the Temple Courts building where she
grew up and points out her old bedroom window on the tenth
floor. The building in that photograph no longer exists. A
decade ago, the city tore down Temple Courts, scattering its
residents throughout the DMV. In its place is a nine-dollar-a-
day parking lot. Sabrena has been a key leader in WIN’s effort
to rebuild Temple Courts and to give the residents who were
pushed out all those years ago the chance to come back.
The most challenging part of the Temple Courts campaign for
Sabrena was getting former residents involved in the
community again. “It’s been a task,” she says. “People were in
disbelief. It’s been ten years of unfulfilled promises, and people
didn’t believe it would get rebuilt, or if it did, they didn’t believe
they would be the ones to actually benefit from it.” But Sabrena
gave them hope. “This is for you,” she told them. Although she
couldn’t do it by herself, she said, “I can fight with you.”
One of Sabrena’s most memorable moments of this campaign
was when she and other WIN leaders held a meeting with DC’s
mayor to talk about rebuilding Temple Courts. “What I’ve
learned from WIN,” she says, “is how to be an agitator. I used to
think that in order to convince the government to do what the
community needs, you had to befriend them.” Instead, she
learned that there is power in being outside the system and in
bringing people together to hold the government accountable.
“With the people, for the people, by the people—that’s what
WIN means to me.”
The DC Council unanimously approved rebuilding 518
affordable housing units at the Temple Courts site, including
211 replacement units for former residents to come back home.
As we celebrate this exciting victory, Sabrena is already
thinking to what’s ahead. “Working with WIN has opened my
eyes across the city in a bigger way. It’s not just about Temple
Courts but all the people who have been displaced from this
city,” she says. She also cares deeply about homelessness in DC,
shuddering when she mentions “that appalling shelter” that was
DC General. “That’s what keeps me up at night,” she says.
“That’s the next big fight.”