Tensions ran high between developers and community members last Wednesday night, June 25, during a meeting regarding the proposed redesign of the Southwest neighborhood held at the Capitol Skyline Hotel.
The Southwest Small Area Plan, still in its feedback and revision phases, plans for a “newly envisioned” Southwest neighborhood, including the M Street corridor, which is expected to see the most changes, according to Associate Director for Neighborhood Planning Tracy Gabriel.
The border boundaries of the area proposed are Maine Ave. SW, P St. SW, South Capitol and the Interstate 695, and the project has been in development for the last year.
The meeting, led by Gabriel as well as Ward 6 Community Planner Melissa Bird, noted the significant change already happening in and around Southwest, and depicted the proposed plans as the next step of an expansionary growth process.
“Southwest is incredibly unique, and we want to move forward in the best way and best tools to preserve that,” Ward 6 Community Planner Melissa Bird said. “People want to make sure there is a place for everybody to stay in Southwest.”
However, the plan’s potential changing of traditionally low-density areas of Southwest to areas of high-density is a cause of concern and conflict for many community members.
“I count 17 different building properties on this list, and unless I’m wrong, all but for two, the density goes up. Twenty years from now, SW will have double the population if all of these things happen,” 15-year Southwest resident and activist Rick Bardash said. “We want a neighborhood, and we can’t have a neighborhood when density is twice as much.”
Even more of a concern for community activists was whether or not the plans and expansion will displace residents of Greenleaf Gardens Apartments, a public housing complex just south of M Street.
Community activist and 38-year District resident Thelma D. Jones noted that there is deep distrust held by lower income residents for developers, lingering from a long citywide history of redevelopment and gentrification.
“What they do know and remember is that when urban renewal occurred before, more than 23,000 people were displaced,” Jones said. “That fuels even greater fear and anxiety. The people have lost faith.”
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The DC Office of Planning is accepting feedback regarding the plan until July 9 . The proposed plans are available here.
On the 30th of April, Empower DC brought well over 100 DC public housing residents and supporters to pack Muriel Bowser’s hearing on the DC housing authority budget, which contains zero money for repair or renovation of traditional public housing.
Instead, the city applied to HUD for money to DEMOLISH three properties and thankfully these funds were refused. Almost all the attendees at the hearing were either residents or supporters of public housing, and for once witnesses did not have to sit through hours of testimony from developers before being permitted to speak.
A witness reported that Muriel Bowser was the only Councilmember present at the hearing, and she sat “stone-faced” through all testimony except when she was directly singled out for criticism. Several witnesses said they would not vote for her for Mayor even if she was the only candidate running.
Reverend Hagler called out the City Council for committing a “moral sin” by budgeting only $50 million for all the DC Housing Authority out of a total city budget of $11 billion while surrounded by massive wealth.
The code violations in the video below are nothing in comparison to the violations that people find in most public housing complexes. Shout out to Adrienne Lynch for producing this video.
Public housing residents have rights. You should know what they are and how to make sure they’re honored.
· Do you have maintenance issues that never get fixed properly?
· Do you have questions about recertification?
· Are you worried about evictions?
All of these issues and many more will be addressed in the workshop we call:
Tenant, Know Your Rights! Wednesday, April 30 6:30 PM – 8:30 PM 700 12th Street, SE Recreation Room
Snacks will be provided. For more information contact Liane at liane@grassrootsdc.org or call 202-246-4597.
This event is sponsored by Grassroots DC, a resident-driven program under the support of the Potomac Gardens Resident Council.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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