Last week’s post A Place to Play: Potomac Gardens, Public Housing and Our Children made clear that the playground at the Potomac Gardens public housing complex had seen better days. The children who live in Potomac Gardens had stopped using it and their parents wanted it replaced. But the owners of the property, the District of Columbia Housing Authority, really couldn’t come up with the money to make that happen.
Despite the obvious need for affordable housing in the District of Columbia and indeed urban centers across the country, only a ridiculously small percentage of our taxes supports public housing. As a result, a new playground for Potomac Gardens wouldn’t be funded by the Public Housing Operating Fund or the Public Housing Capital Fund.
It’s very popular among the political right to rely on Ronald Reagan’s edict that “government is not the solution, government is the problem.” One may consider the former state of Potomac Gardens playground as supporting that statement but the reality is we rely on government for a lot of things—infrastructure, education, security, etc. If basic safety net issues were funded properly, government might do better by us all. Until that day arrives (and it might never happen), communities have to make demands of their elected representatives and government officials and then hold them to their mandate to serve the citizenry.
So here’s how Potomac Gardens got its new playground. Parents brought their concerns to the Potomac Gardens Resident Council. Resident Council President and D.C. Housing Authority Commissioner Aquarius Vann-Ghasri, worked with both Little Lights Urban Ministries and DCHA Director of Asset Management Laurie Putscher to try and solve the problem. Little Lights had a relationship with the Homeless Children’s Playtime Project, and despite the fact that the children who live in Potomac Gardens are not in fact homeless, they were willing to work with Little Lights and the Potomac Gardens community. Unfortunately, after months of negotiations and missed deadlines the new playground didn’t materialize.
Residents vote on playground design.
Residents vote on playground design.
Residents vote on playground design.
At this point, DCHA Director of Asset Management Laurie Putscher stepped up to the plate. Though she was unable to leverage DCHA funds for the playground, she was able to leverage resources from the District’s non-profit and corporate sectors. First of all, Putscher contacted Make Kids Smile, Inc., a non-profit dedicated to providing playground equipment for underserved children in the Washington D.C. metropolitan area. Make Kids Smile raises money for playground equipment and donates the materials to the recipient. They also pay a certified installer to be present on the day of the build to ensure the project is properly constructed and meets all applicable safety standards.
The president of Make Kids Smile, brought in a troop of volunteers from Foulger-Pratt, who had assembled and installed playground equipment before. They were joined by a slew of Potomac Gardens’ residents who were delighted to finally see their wishes brought to fruition. Little Lights Urban Ministries, happy to finally have a playground they can use during their summer programming, also sent volunteers.
In addition to volunteers, Foulger-Pratt also donated $5000 to fix the basketball rims, add additional landscaping beautification, and some painting. CT Management, the company DCHA has under contract to manage Potomac Gardens, also donated $5,000 and provided lunch for many of the volunteers. Finally, Laurie Putscher also contacted the Earth Conservation Corps who planted 20-30 trees, not just along the side of the playground itself, but throughout the property.
Providing a playground for kids who live in public housing shouldn’t be more complicated than building a dog park but in the District of Columbia, it might be. In 2007, the Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR) issued regulations which allowed for the creation of official, public dog parks on District-owned parkland. So far there are two dog parks in Ward Six and a third, which will be funded privately, has been approved. DPR has been around in one form or another since 1790 and yet only maintains eight playgrounds for children in Ward Six, the playground in Potomac Gardens is not one of them.
Public-private partnerships make sense for dog parks but do they make sense for playgrounds? Ward 6 Councilman Charles Allen was happy to ask DCHA Director Adrian Todman to get more involved and push for a new playground at Potomac Gardens, but the driving energy definitely came from the community. Without their willingness to hold elected representatives and public officials accountable to their constituents even this small victory could not have been achieved.
Below are images of the playground on the Potomac Gardens public housing complex as it was when Grassroots DC was founded and moved onto the property back in 2013. Broken down and missing safety rails, is the playground at Potomac Gardens Public Housing Complex safe? How do public housing communities fix these issues?
playground
no safety rails
swingset but no swings
no safety rails here either
The state of the playground was a topic of discussion in our basic computer class and a cause for concern in resident council meetings. Little Lights Urban Ministries, another nonprofit located in Potomac Gardens, who offers tutoring and a summer program for kids from pre-k to the 8th grade, also had concerns. The basketball court was another issue. Potomac Gardens’ resident Carlton Moxley sometimes laid out his own cash to replace the backboards.
One might assume that the playground of a public housing complex would be paid for and maintained by the government, but public housing is a complicated business. Most of us don’t even know who owns public housing. Is it the city? Is it the federal government? Below are some answers.
While the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) oversees the public housing program, it is administered locally by about 3,100 public housing agencies across the United States. The local public housing agency that administers Potomac Gardens and indeed all of D.C.’s public housing complexes is the District of Columbia Housing Authority (DCHA). Most public housing agencies own and manage their public housing developments themselves, but some contract with private management companies. DCHA does not manage Potomac Gardens itself; management of the property has been contracted out to CT Management.
All of this information, still leaves unanswered the question, where do the funds for the replacement of playgrounds in public housing developments like Potomac Gardens come from? The federal government funds public housing through two main streams: (1) the Public Housing Operating Fund, which is intended to cover the gap between the rents that public housing tenants pay and the developments’ operating costs (such as maintenance and security); and (2) the Public Housing Capital Fund, which funds renovation of developments and replacement of items such as appliances and heating and cooling equipment.
The purchase and installation of a new playground can easily cost more than $100,000. According to the US Department of Housing Operating Fund Budget for 2016 the D.C. Housing Authority will receive about $6,164 per unit to cover the gap between the rents that public housing tenants pay and the development’s actual operating cost. HUD’s Annual Budget does not explicitly state that District gets $6,164 per unit from the Operating Fund. The total budget for the Public Housing Operating Fund in 2015 was $4.44 billion. The share that goes to the District of Columbia Housing Authority is 1.1 percent or $48.84 million. The District of Columbia Housing Authority manages 7,924 units. Divide the $48.84 million by 7,924 units and you get $6,164 per unit. Of course, DCHA doesn’t spend $6,164 on each unit. Most of the money goes to salaries and other overhead costs. But this figure gives us an idea what kind of money DCHA has to work with to meet the maintenance and operating needs of the District’s public housing. In any case, we can’t expect DCHA to allocate $100,000 from the Operating Fund to pay for a single playground in one housing complex.
It might be more logical for the money to come from the Public Housing Capital Fund. In fact, DCHA received $27 million from the Capital Fund in 2014 and an additional $34.4 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. However, the Captial Fund grants were probably used for renovations and replacements needed in a single, housing complex or for specific projects like lead abatement, renovations needed to bring DCHA properties up to accessibility standards or environmental sustainability initiatives. Most of the Recovery Act funding will go to enhance housing projects that have or will become mixed-income developments like the townhouses at Cappers Carrollsburg. Getting money from the Capital Fund or the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to replace a single playground in a 100 percent low-income housing development is highly unlikely.
So, what then? Clearly, the playground in the images above needs to be replaced or torn down all together. If the community within the Potomac Gardens Public Housing Complex can’t expect help for a project like this from the District of Columbia Housing Authority, what do they do? That question will be answered in the next post…
In January 2014, a randomly selected group of Potomac Gardens’ and Capitol Hill residents who live in the townhouses and market-rate apartments and condominiums surrounding Potomac Gardens found the following letter in their mailbox or attached to their door.
Hello Neighbor-
As a resident of Potomac Gardens and/or Capitol Hill, your opinions about the community are important. What are the neighborhood’s advantages? What are its shortcomings? What would make Capitol Hill a better place to live? With the support of the Humanities Council of Washington, Grassroots DC, a nonprofit that provides basic computer and media production training to low-income and working-class District residents, is producing a documentary about the changing demographics of Capitol Hill with a focus on Potomac Gardens and the area surrounding the public housing complex.
On (date here) between noon and 6pm, representatives of Grassroots DC, will conduct a survey on your block/in your building. The survey will be used to help us decide what issues to include in the documentary. We want to represent the viewpoint of Capitol Hill and Potomac Gardens residents as honestly as possible. Therefore, it is crucial that we get as many survey participants as we can.
We hope that you or someone else in your household will be available to take the survey on the afternoon of (date here). If you would like to participate but are not available at that time, please contact me, Grassroots DC’s coordinator Liane Scott at (202) 608-1376 or liane@grassrootsdc.org.
Thank you for your time.
Liane Scott
Coordinator, Grassroots DC
1227 G Street SE, Ground Floor
Washington, DC 20003
(202) 608-1376
As the letter indicates, teams of Grassroots DC members went door-to-door for about three months, in preparation for the documentary Potomac Gardens Inside and Out, which is a community-driven documentary project that explores the changing demographics of the Capitol Hill neighborhood surrounding the Potomac Gardens Public Housing Complex and the divide between those who live within Potomac Gardens and those who live outside of Potomac Gardens. What are the barriers to communication between the two groups and how can they be overcome? Here’s our trailer.
It took us about four months to complete the surveys. We began interviewing folks on video in the spring and summer. By the fall we were transcribing and editing the footage. This week, our website PotomacGardensInsideAndOut.com went live. There’s still much more to be done–more interviews, more editing, more surveys, etc. We’ll post updates about the project here, but for the most complete picture of the project, visit the site.
The heart says, “I will take care of you; if you will take care of me!”
According to The New People’s Physician the human heart is a hollow muscular organ located in the breast that pumps blood received from the veins into the arteries. The heart beat is regulated in two different ways: the heart muscle itself possesses what is called a rhythmic quality of its own and if removed from the body and placed in proper environment it will go on contracting at about forty beats a minute, and may maintain its natural rhythm indefinitely. The heart in its normal function, however, beats seventy to eighty times a minute, and is responsive to all the calls which the body makes on it. The blood in the course of its circulation traverses three varieties of blood vessels when it leaves the heart.
Blood enters the arteries which from there move through capillaries to feed our tissue (i.e., muscles and skin). Capillaries are arteries that divide again and again, until they finally become so small that they are invisible except through a microscope. They are arranged in the form of a network, the size of the mesh depending on the needs of the particular tissue. The blood flows through the capillaries at the speed of about an inch per minute to join the veins. The capillary bed is the great controlling factor of subcutaneous and muscular circulation. The blood flowing through the capillary vessel holds oxygen, and carries away carbon dioxide and other metabolic end products. Life can continue only if the composition of the blood is kept constant by circulation through the organs that replenish its expendable constituents and rid it of its wastes. So small is the reserve of oxygen contained in the blood and tissues that when the heart stops life goes out, in higher animals in a matter of minutes. The rate of circulation varies at different hours of the day; in the afternoon it is at the maximum; in the early morning hours, when we are asleep it is at its minimum.
The arteries are strong, thick and elastic tubes, whose walls are made up of three distinct layers. The innermost is thin and smooth and allows the blood to flow over it without friction or obstacle; next comes a layer of muscle, which by its contraction can lessen the size of the artery and thus diminish the amount of blood flowing through it; the outermost layer is gifted with great elasticity by which it retains an even pressure on the blood in the vessel, and by its recoil gradually drives it on wards. The artery is surrounded with a bed of loose tissue, which allows it a certain amount of freedom of movement. The muscular middle coat of an artery is an exceedingly important provision of nature. The blood supply to an organ must vary with its demand for blood, and this is not constant. The stomach, for instance, during digestion, when it is manufacturing gastric juice, obviously requires a much larger supply of blood than when it is in the resting state. This variation of the supply depends on the state of contraction of the muscle fibers in the walls of the arteries. If the vessels are narrowed the supply of blood is lessened, and vice versa.
The contraction of the arterial walls has another important effect. If it occurs simultaneously in many arteries throughout the body, by offering resistance to the flow of blood, it must increase the blood pressure. An efficient water supply to a town or to a house can be maintained only if the water pressure is sufficiently high, and the same is true of the supply of blood to all parts of the body. In most arteries the branches communicate freely with those of other arteries, a condition known as anastomosis. In this way, if the blood supply of one trunk artery is cut off the supply can be maintained through another. The largest and thickest artery is the aorta. It is the main trunk artery leading out of the heart and conveying the whole stream of blood from that organ to the various parts of the body. In an adult man it is a tube large enough to accommodate two or even three fingers. It runs upwards out of the heart and then sweeps to the left in a wide curve. At the top of this curve it gives off its first large branches, the vessels going to the head and arms; thereafter it runs downwards, behind the heart, passes through the diaphragm and branches to the stomach and bowels. Lower down it divides into two branches, one going to each leg. In health this huge artery is exceedingly elastic like a very large rubber tube. This is of great importance, since the elasticity acts as a reservoir of power between the heartbeats.
Each beat fills the aorta with blood and expands it. The white blood corpuscles can make their way out of the blood vessels by passing between the cells. This migration is enormously increased in inflammation. Ordinarily the red blood corpuscles do not pass out of the capillaries, but this may occur in inflammation. The presence of capillaries is the cause of the rosy tint of healthy skin and mucous membrane; in blushing more capillaries are flooded with blood. If the capillary network is well-filled with blood, then in contact with cold air the temperature of the blood, and therefore the body, will be lowered. In order to prevent undue heat loss, therefore, nature closes up many of the capillaries by contracting the smaller arteries, and this is the reason of the pallor induced by cold weather. On the other hand, if the weather is warm the skin becomes flushed and the loss of heat greater. This important mechanism for controlling the body temperature can be easily impaired by the common habit of wearing too much clothing. It can also be made more active by training the skin to exposure.
I am writing this article about the heart because I suffered a heart attack. I stopped taking my daily dose of Simvastatin (40mg) for my high cholesterol because the side effect was memory loss. This side effect impacted my memory so badly that I could no longer retain anything I read from books, newspapers, or any other literature. So, I decided to try herbs and oatmeal. Though I tried to replace the synthetic heart medicine with these natural remedies, I did not maintain a truly nutritious diet. For instance, I continued to eat things like cookies, ice cream and the wrong type of butter, which I now know are the foods that caused clotting in my proximal lad and mid lad heart arteries.
I was helping a friend move on March 5, 2014 to a new apartment. On my second trip to his apartment to bring his clothes I became short of breath and decided to take a break to get my breath back. There was no improvement so I went out side. I told the other movers to take the remaining clothes. I said my Moorish American prayer and drove to the V.A. Hospital where I went to the emergency room. My breathing was light like using only half of my lungs and my chest was hurting like a toothache. The nurse gave me an aspirin and later a nitrogen tablet, but the pain was too great for the aspirin and tablet to have an effect. The doctors had to put a stent implant in my proximal lad and the mid lad artery of my heart.
I have faith in God and on Thursday the six of March a nurse told me that a patient with a similar problem like mine died. I know that the doctors can do all they can to save you, but it’s up to God if you live or die. I spent two days in the ICU where normally patients stay five to seven days. I drove myself back home; there I began to hear surreal stories surfacing about my alleged demise.
I work in Potomac Gardens as a greeter. When someone first comes into the building, I am there to give directions and a friendly smile to anyone who needs it. After I didn’t show up for work at the usual time at 11 AM, my coworker asked a neighbor about me who informed her that my van was parked outside. Another neighbor has a similar colored van, so to clear up who the van belonged to, the coworker asked a maintenance person to check inside my apartment. The Washington Post newspaper was outside my door. He told me later that he thought that I had passed away inside the apartment.
To read more of the MOORMAN’s story check back next week.
Last week’s post A Place to Play: Potomac Gardens, Public Housing and Our Children made clear that the playground at the Potomac Gardens public housing complex had seen better days. The children who live in Potomac Gardens had stopped using it and their parents wanted it replaced. But the owners of the property, the District of Columbia Housing Authority, really couldn’t come up with the money to make that happen.
Residents vote on playground design.
