Bipeds of Brookland: Ed Lazere

Posted by Abbott Klar Real Estate on Friday, August 12th, 2016 at 6:38am

Bipeds of Brookland: Ed Lazere 

Bipeds of Brookland: Ed Lazere is the founding director of the DC Fiscal Policy Institute whose mission is to reduce poverty and expand economic opportunity. “We focus on the fact the city is increasingly unafordable.  Everyone needs a place to live and you can’t afford to live in DC on minimum wage now, even with the minimum wage going to $15 an hour. So we work on issues like job training to help adults get the education and skills they need to stay in the city.”

“I've lived in Brookland 24 years. I’m proud to have built a life and raised my family in Brookland. The reason I do the work that I do is, in part, from my time starting a family, getting married, buying a house and starting to raise a family and send my kids to public school.  I had been doing public policy work focusing on poverty at the national level.  When I saw that there was a public school across the street that I wasn’t excited about sending my kids to, with a playground that was not ideal, it made me realize that I wanted to use my public policy and research skills to make DC a better place, not just for families like mine, but for everybody.”

Ed’s boys joined Cub Scouts Pack 98 in Brookland so they would meet other kids in the neighborhood. He became a den leader and stayed involved long after they grew up.  “One of the nice things that you notice has changed in the neighborhood is that you can tell families are staying in the neighborhood because when my son was in elementary school we had maybe 15 cub scouts and today the cub scout pack has probably 80 children or more.”


Bipeds of Brookland: A weekly series introducing the people who make Brookland their home, one step at a time. Interview and photo by Tom Sabella.

 

 

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