Two more candidates are running against longtime D.C. Council member Anita Bonds (D), the at-large member who chairs the committee charged with overseeing the city’s beleaguered housing authority.

       Dexter Williams, who formerly worked for at-large council member Robert C. White Jr. (D), and Chevy Chase advisory neighborhood commissioner Lisa R. Gore join an already crowded field running for the seat in next year’s Democratic primary, including another former council staffer, two former advisory neighborhood commissioners and a longtime nonprofit leader.

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       Two east-of-the-river candidates will challenge Anita Bonds

       Bonds, who has been on the council for nearly a decade, has filed to run for reelection. She chairs the council’s housing committee, which has been in the spotlight at a time when the city is accused of mismanaging its public housing agency and its funds meant for the construction of affordable housing.

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       “We need more aggressive oversight when it comes to housing,” Williams said in an interview after he announced his candidacy Wednesday. Like several of Bonds’ challengers, Williams brought up a recent inspector general report that found that the city’s Housing Production Trust Fund misspent money that was legally required to go toward creating new subsidized apartments for very low-income residents. “Eighty million dollars was mismanaged. This is not a new issue. It happens all the time. I think having aggressive oversight would prevent a lot,” he said.

       Since leaving White’s office last year, Williams has worked for RepresentUs, an organization that lobbies for electoral reforms like ranked-choice voting and voting by mail. He lives in the Hillcrest neighborhood in Ward 7.

       Gore said she decided to get involved in local politics after her retirement last year from a career in federal law enforcement, most recently in the inspector general’s office in the Department of Housing and Urban Development. She ran and won her advisory neighborhood commissioner seat last year and quickly got involved in efforts to create more affordable housing and increase racial diversity in her Chevy Chase neighborhood.

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       She is setting her sights higher this year, from hyperlocal elected office to a citywide position. “My campaign platform is based on a just D.C. for all,” she said. “We’ve made some progress in the city, but there are communities that have been left behind.”

       She joins two former advisory neighborhood commissioners, Sharece Crawford and Leniqua’dominique Jenkins, in running against Bonds. Nathan Fleming, who was formerly elected D.C.’s shadow representative to Congress and worked for Ward 8 council member Trayon White Sr., and Ambrose Lane Jr., an activist for health-care access east of the Anacostia, are also running.