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Keep Public Housing

By Guest Contributor, on April 9th, 2014

Cross-Posted from Sociology in My Neighborhood: DC Ward 6
Written by Johanna Bockman

I was struck by this comment in the Washington City Paper (Chatter, Shelter Skelter, 3/21/14) a week or two ago:

[DC] Public officials attributed the crisis to a confluence of little affordable housing and the vapor trails of the Great Recession. Reader spmoore offered a diagnosis: “The demolition and elimination of thousands of public housing units in the last 10 to 15 years has resulted in a definite spike in family homelessness. There are simply less units to house low income families in need…Society and the city seems perfectly fine with demolishing public housing, negatively stereotyping public housing, and then act so concerned about the homeless spike.”

An apartment in public housing is a whole lot better than being homeless. I happened to have dinner in Potomac Gardens on Tuesday evening. It was a great time eating, talking, and, yes, visioning with a small group of Potomac Gardens residents, local homeowners, and grassroots community organizers. This was part of Art in Praxis’ experiment, “The Future of [Your] Street” “to activate neighbors in collectively shaping the kind of community they want to live in and be a part of.” Potomac Gardens and Hopkins as public housing projects were an essential part of this vision.

three-shot

The dinner guests discussed ideas that so closely resembled those concepts used in urban sociology, such as Logan and Molotch’s Urban Fortunes. They spoke about the difficulties caused by a mindset focused on protecting or increasing housing values and/or on renovating houses as an investment, especially real estate agents and investment groups seeking to maximize their investments (exchange value), as opposed to the mindset of those focused on having a home and building a community to satisfy social and personal needs (use value)(see pp. 1-2 of Urban Fortunes). Many people have a mix of these, but renters have the most interest in use value, of course. As a result, more of the neighborhood was being mobilized for those with higher incomes and for investors than for renters, especially low-income renters, and those homeowners focused more on use value.

two-shot

One Potomac Gardens resident spoke so thoughtfully about how he wanted more interactions with the neighborhood like this dinner because he felt that those who were new to the neighborhood needed to know things (such as, I think, the norms and folkways of the neighborhood) to feel more comfortable in the neighborhood. This knowledge would allow people to move beyond their imaginations (or common assumptions) and fears about public housing and about the neighborhood (like assumptions about cities based on “The Wire“). This might allow for a more inclusive discussion about The Future of Our Street/Community.

Are you interested in joining in the visioning, in which public housing is fundamental to the vision?

Comments are closed   Communities, Gentrification, Potomac Gardens, Public Housing   , , ,  

Confronting Gentrification: Part One

By Liane Scott, on March 18th, 2014

On February 18, a panel discussion on the critical implications of “urban renewal” in DC communities  took place at American University.  The first speaker was Johanna Bockman.   An Associate Professor of Sociology and Global Affairs at George Mason University, Bockman also runs the blog Sociology in My Neighborhood:  DC Ward Six.  In the video below, she gives a brief history of gentrification, dissecting it along the way.  Worth taking a listen, even as you do other things.

Shout out to Sophia YoshiMi and Luis Enrique Salazar for putting together what was an amazing panel discussion and posting the video.  Watch this space for more video from the Confronting Gentrification Panel Discussion.

Comments are closed   Gentrification   , , , ,  

Free Training: DC Government 101 & the DC Budget Process

By Grassroots DC, on March 13th, 2014

It's Your Money

Comments are closed   Education, Gentrification,   , , , , ,  

Become an Advocate for Affordable Housing

By Grassroots DC, on February 9th, 2014

Housing Advocacy Training

Comments are closed   Affordable Housing, Gentrification   , , ,  

DC’s Poorest Residents Fight Displacement by Gentrification

By Grassroots DC, on February 4th, 2014

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)

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.

CLICK HERE to read the entire article.

Copyright Truthout.org.  Reprinted with permission.

3 comments - (Comments are closed)   Communities, Gentrification, Public Housing
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