Cross-posted from Truth Out
Written by Rania Khalek
Barry Farm, a public housing complex in southeast Washington, “is the line in the sand,” says Schyla Pondexter-Moore, a community organizer. “If you take away Barry Farm, you’re basically just giving away the whole Ward 8.”
A row of public housing units in Barry Farm. (Photo by Rania Khalek)
Barry Farm is the latest battleground for grass-roots housing advocates in the nation’s capital, where intense gentrification has altered the city’s demographic landscape dramatically. Because Washington was America’s first city to have a black majority, it came as a shock to many in 2011 when DC’s black population dropped below 50 percent for the first time in more than 50 years. In the past decade, the district lost nearly 40,000 black residents, many driven out by skyrocketing rents fueled by an influx of mostly white professionals flocking to increasingly gentrified neighborhoods.
Until recently, Wards 7 and 8 – the district’s poorest, most segregated and longest-neglected wards – largely were untouched. But as developers become desperate for new real estate to flip, residents living east of the Anacostia River (the unofficial dividing line between the city’s haves and have-nots) are seeing the beginning stages of gentrification take shape, starting with plans to demolish public housing, like Barry Farm. And if the past decade has taught them anything, it is that gentrification usually leaves longtime low-income residents out in the cold – literally.
Demolitions and Broken Promises
If the DC Housing Authority and developers have their way, all 434 public housing units at the Barry Farm complex will be razed to make room for “mixed income” housing, part of a four-phase $400 million redevelopment plan under DC’s New Communities Initiative, a public-private urban revitalization partnership modeled after the federal Hope VI program.
But if the past is any indication, New Communities is far more likely to displace Barry Farm residents indefinitely, as the former residents of DC’s Temple Courts public housing complex can attest.
Prior to its demolition in December 2008, the Temple Courts property, in Ward 6 at North Capitol Street and K Street Northwest, was plagued with drug-related crime, which the city used as justification to tear it down. Then-Mayor Adrian Fenty promised that the squeaky-clean $700 million mixed-income community that developers planned to build over the ashes of Temple Courts would include at least 570 affordable units that would allow all families displaced by the demolition an opportunity to return by the 2009-10 school year. Five years later, what used to be Temple Courts is now a parking lot that charges $8 an hour. Consequently, only 22 of the more than 200 families that were forced out have moved back in.
As noted in a joint WAMU and NPR investigative series, similar promises were made to residents living in more than 700 public housing units at the Arthur Capper and Carollsburg complex in southeast Washington a decade ago. “What is there now, among other things, are million-dollar homes and parking lots for the baseball stadium nearby,” the investigation revealed.
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Copyright Truthout.org. Reprinted with permission.
it is sad that we as blacks do not like to see change. Barry Farms as well as Highland Dwellings, and any other Public Housing Projects in Ward 7 and 8 need to be torn down. I am a Ward 8 resident, Washington DC tax payer, as well as a home owner and Public Housing is bringing our community (Ward) down. Most people in public housing project is living off grandma and great grandma. It is 2014 People. This in not the 60’s and 70’s any more, public housing need to go. The residents of Public Housing Projects need to take charge of their own lives and stop depending on the City to do so for them. I understand people need help, but it first start within. As for the seniors who live in Public Housing, the city should put them in senior living facilities. Most of the crime, people hanging out, selling drugs, and other illegal activities that occur in Public Housing Projects are from people living and hanging out over senior family members homes. Its sad, but their are 3-4 generations living in public housing. Barry Farm residents as well as any other Public Housing dwelling that will be torn down, the residents will receive housing vouchers so they can move somewhere affordable. I guarantee a Barry Farms residents will not move out Virginia and hang out and do the things they did in Washington, DC. It is becoming a disrespect to the City now. Why should DC continue to have Housing Projects? I am tired of walking out of my door and seeing boarded dwellings, drug addicts, and drug dealers. I live in Ward 8 and I want better. I am tired of people saying this is one of the 2 poorest Wards in DC when I work and pay taxes. Its not fair to us.
Congratulations on owning your own home Tory. If you do not fear losing your home because your mortgage is stable that’s really great for you. You can label all of those who are less fortunate than you and living in public housing as living off grandma and great grandma, but you don’t really know anything for certain about public housing residents except that they can’t afford market-rate housing. If you propose that all of those families should just be turned out into the street, except for the seniors, then Ward 8 would soon be an even poorer Ward than it is now.
I am a single black female with no kids, no family and no public assistance. I am just trying to live and this gentrification is making it hard! Please keep in mind I am SINGLE black female which means I need to live in a decent neighborhood to ward off jealous hoodrats and nasty dirty old thugs. I survive off of temp jobs with promises of being hired permanently which never happens. Meanwhile I apply to as many good paying jobs as I can so I can afford a basic 1 bedroom apartment. I cannot afford to pay higher than $1000. I NEED affordable housing. Don’t group us all low incomers into one group. Many blessings to you.