Posts about DHCD

The Historic Preservation Review Board worried that allowing the raze would encourage other property owners to just let buildings deteriorate and then apply to tear them down rather than spend the money to fix the historic structures. HPRB allowed the process to continue once DHCD created a plan to preserve the other 3 adjacent properties on the "Big K site," 2234, 2238 and 2252 MLK.

DHCD's neighborhood holdings

DHCD currently owns more than a half dozen properties, not including the Big K site, within the Anacostia Historic District, incorporated in the 1970s. It is looking for developers for 4 properties (1201 and 1203 Good Hope Road SE, 1615 V Street SE, and 1326 Valley Place SE).

A 3-story red brick apartment complex at 1700 to 1720 W Street SE is in the process of being sold, and 1648 U Street SE is moving through the Residential Turnkey Initiative, where the District retains ownership of properties during development.

With pressure from residents and the Historic Preservation Review Board, DHCD has "develop[ed] a more strategic approach to acquiring properties in the historic district, which would include a pre-acquisition analysis to determine the scope of work to stabilize a building," according to materials the agency submitted to the HPRB.

In other words, DHCD agrees that it shouldn't buy a building if it can't care for it.

DHCD also announced plans to work with the Historic Preservation Office to create a "pattern book" that "would suggest basic architectural styles that are representative of Anacostia's Historic District." This pattern book would guide developers of vacant lots to "ensure that DHCD-owned property is compatible with the historic district, while still providing opportunities for affordable housing," said Denise Johnson, a former HPRB member hired by DHCD to work on historic preservation issues.

The Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development, which owns vacant properties in Anacostia, Deanwood, Trinidad/Ivy City, and other neighborhoods should also be guided by a similar preservation plan, HPRB members agreed.

Absent from both the community meeting earlier last week and Thursday's hearing was DHCD's Director John Hall. Catherine Buell, Chair of HPRB and a resident of the Anacostia Historic District, asked about Hall's whereabouts. The answer: Hall has to prepare for February budget hearings.

With Councilmembers Jim Graham and Michael Brown calling for an investigation into DHCD, Hall should make a conscientious effort to be as accessible and transparent as possible. However, his recent absence hints at problems for an organization that looks to be coming under newfound and needed scrutiny.

Memories

When Rosalind Wheeler Styles was growing up at 2228 Nichols Avenue SE in the 1960s she often sat on the front porch watching the activity of the street below.

"You could watch people going into the Safeway, going to the drug store to get an ice cream float, or going to the Curtis Brothers furniture store," said Styles, who remembers an Anacostia long since changed.

Hawkins, whose community center at 2263 Mount View Place SE is across the alley behind the wood frame home, has more immediate memories of the home and its deterioration. The Kushner family, notorious owners of the Big K Liquor store, woefully neglected the property, which was last occupied in the 1970s.

"There was trash everywhere. Homeless men were sleeping on the back porch," said Hawkins, who recalls repeatedly chasing off squatters until a fence was erected around the lot some years ago.

Although not required to notify the lot's conterminous neighbors, the city government has failed to make a good faith effort to contact Hawkins or Dale Richardson, the owner of Astro Motors at 2226 MLK Avenue, about the city's pending plans to demolish 2228.

Until a recent visit from Ward 8 Councilmember Marion Barry's staff, Hawkins had not heard from city officials and subsequently decried the city's handling of the property as "criminal" at a meeting at DHCD's headquarters, a short walk from the community center.

Hawkins chastised city officials as "interlopers" who antagonize residents by imposing their plans on communities not before the fact, but after. "And I don't plan to try to play catch up. If you're not going to knock on my door or call me on the telly then so be it," finished Hawkins.

"That house means a lot to me because it was a refuge for me," said Bill Jackson, who first crept into 2228 MLK in November of 2010 to seek shelter from the streets. Jackson, now in an apartment off Southern Avenue, says the home's demolition "will be a sad day for a lot of people in the neighborhood."

Jackson, an "O3-11 grunt," or rifleman in the United States Marine Corps in the 1970s, did not choose this house on a lark. "I be settin' lil' booby traps sometime. I'll break up some glass bottles and get some Plaster Paris and put it at the top of the steps. If I hear a crunchin' noise I know someone's outside on the landing," he said. Jackson, who grew up on the city's streets and has spent the past two decades scouting apartment basements, vacant buildings and even dump trucks to sleep in, said this was "definitely a good spot, one of the better ones."

Upstairs, Jackson gathered himself and his thoughts. He had a couple hours before he had to be at "801," the 350-bed shelter at St. Elizabeths East Campus. He wasn't sure when he'd be back.

The city buys Bill a house
On July 23, 2010 the Department of Community and Housing Development purchased the "Big K" lot—the three homes at 2228, 2234 and 2238 Martin Luther King Jr. Ave. SE, and the liquor store at 2252 Martin Luther King Jr. Ave. SE—for slightly less than 1 million dollars from the long-time owners, the Kushner family. The Office of Planning had previously denied Ann Kushner's request to demolish the properties after decades of neglect.

Newspaper accounts and city records indicate the house Jackson's occupied, 2228 MLK Ave., had been vacant since the late 1970s or early '80s. The Kushner family had let Bill's home and next-door 2234, vacant since the early 1980s, putrefy for thirty years.

Though the old homes were purchased under the auspices of preventing their further dilapidation, DHCD has yet to structurally stabilize the properties or even seal them off from Mother Nature's continued encroachment. In its neglect, the city effectively "bought" Jackson the house he was occupying unlawfully.

DHCD seals fence openings, still accessible
At an evening meeting on Aug. 3rd, held at DHCD to discuss potential uses for the "Big K" properties, I decided it was in the best interest of the city and Jackson to disclose the openness and subsequent dangers of the home at 2228 MLK Ave. I told DHCD officials, including the Director, what I knew about Jackson's and his use of the property.

During conversations with Jackson, I asked if revealing his use of the vacant home would jeopardize him. He said, adamantly, he wanted his story told. During Jackson's time at the house, since last November, he said it was occasionally frequented by other homeless men he knew. At night, he said, people would get high downstairs and he could occasionally hear "tricks doing their thing."

"After being alerted that there is a squatter on the property, the maintenance crew inspected the property on Thursday, Aug. 4. At this time, they cut back more brush, re-boarded 2228 Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue SE (although the front door was securely boarded), and examined the fence for holes," Najuma Thorpe, DHCD Special Affairs Specialist, wrote in a follow-up email.

The following day, it appeared the side door Jackson used to enter the house was securely boarded up. Jackson called a week or so later to tell me there were still other ways to get in the house. "It's still Bill's house," he said.

As late as this weekend DHCD had not sealed an opening between the chain link fence on MLK Avenue and an adjacent pole in front of the former Big K Liquor store, allowing people to squeeze in and out. Sometime early this week, a welder sealed the gap. However, through the alley and other openings in the fence the properties are still accessible.

Earlier this week, DHCD reached out to nearby ANCs to inform them 2228 MLK Ave. might have to be knocked down. A representative with HPO confirmed their belief that 2228 is "leaning" and structurally damaged beyond repair. In the nearly 14 months, DHCD has held the property, they have not structurally secured it. There is no record that the property has yet to come before DCRA's Board of Condemnation.

In neglecting the properties, DHCD engendered Jackson's squatting. In its neglect, the city effectively "bought" Jackson the house he was occupying unlawfully.

This story was first published in the September 2011 edition of East of the River Newspaper.

At the northwest corner of 13th and Good Hope Road, a former gas station was torn down years ago, leaving a vacant lot. At 1909-1913 MLK Jr. Avenue SE the external shells of three adjacent two story brick buildings covered with multicolor wheat paste flyers loom over the street. More than five years before, a fire gutted the interiors.

Across the street, a handmade sign in recently opened Second Chance Convenience Store proclaims, "!Sorry! no E.B.T" posted next to a sign that reads "NO Change Without A Purchase." This is the Southside. This is Old Anacostia. Pretentiousness doesn't stifle life here. "Watermellon [sic] Slices 1.75-2.25"

Anacostia's stock of vacant residential properties

According to a limited canvassing report provided by DCRA, Historic Anacostia has 40 vacant properties, 16 blighted properties, and 2 vacant lots. 3 of the properties in the report, the Big K homes, are cited as "government owned."

Vacant properties are "complaint generated" according to DCRA, meaning that as citizens report the properties, DCRA follows up. According to officials I spoke with, DCRA has a staff of no more than two responsible for visiting and inspecting vacant properties across the entire city.

Although Anacostians have been diligent in their canvassing and reporting, a recent walk of the residential neighborhood revealed vacant properties and lots that have, presumably, not yet been reported to DCRA. For example, the list of 40 vacant properties omitted several abandoned homes on W Street SE between 13th and 16th Street, some less than a half block from the Frederick Douglass National Historical Site.

Another house not included in DCRA's list is 1326 Valley Place SE, owned by Darwin Trust Properties, LLC, whose "CEO was incarcerated" during ongoing demolition by neglect litigation. Therefore, the city "successfully secured a court order allowing DCRA to abate the violations."

To put pressure on owners of vacant and blighted properties, city legislators created a Class 3 property tax rate for vacant commercial and residential properties and a Class 4 tax rate for blighted properties. Class 3 properties are taxed at $5 per $100 of assessed value, Class 4 properties $10 per $100 of assessed value.

In contrast, Class 1, residential real property including multi-family, are assessed at $0.85 per $100, and Class 2, commercial and industrial, are taxed $1.65 per $100 up to the first $3 million of assessed value, and $1.85 for value exceeding $3 million.

"[W]ith regard to the high number of city-owned properties that remain vacant and in some cases blighted, I share your frustrations," writes Nicholas Majett, Director of the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs. "Hampered by recent economic downtown in the economy, a number of D.C. Government offices remain focused on this problem. At this time, DC owned properties are treated like privately owned properties with respect to vacancy and maintenance. The difference is that there is no tax reclassification."

Historic rehabilitation grants provide hope

Anacostia became recognized by the city as a Historic District in 1973. The Anacostia Historic District was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. The nomination form submitted to the National Register of Historic Places says,

The Anacostia Historic District is an area of approximately twenty squares in southeast Washington, generally encompassing Uniontown, the Griswold Subdivision, and immediately adjacent areas.

The architectural character of the Anacostia area is unique in Washington. Nowhere else in the District of Columbia does there exist such a collection of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century small-scale frame and brick working-class housing.

The Anacostia Historic District is dominated by three major architectural styles—the Cottage Style, the Italianate, and the Washington Row Style. A number of Queen Anne houses are scattered throughout the historic district.

During the past several decades, much of the housing in area of the Anacostia Historic District has fallen into a state of disrepair. In recent years community organizations, the Neighborhood Housing Service and the Department of Housing and Community Development have been encouraging people to rehabilitate their houses, many of which are in good condition, needing only routine maintenance work. A number of single-family houses have recently undergone dramatic changes as a result of rehabilitation work.

In 2007, Anacostia was selected by HPO for a pilot program that awarded competitive grants of up to $35,000 to repair and restore the exterior of the area's historic homes. More than fifty grants were awarded to homeowners totaling nearly $900,000. The average grant size was $16,856.

Despite strong community participation, the grant program was not renewed for the neighborhood.

What will happen to Anacostia's vacant properties?

Is Old Anacosia's historicity part of its livable future? Will forthcoming change whitewash its history, making the neighborhood unrecognizable? Change happens slow here.

The default inclination of many in our city is to frame and discuss development and revitalization in terms of identity instead of economics and investment. By steadfastly misdirecting the conversation away from policy, for years, and towards identity Anacostians, newcomers and generational residents, have suffered gravely.

Whereas city officials, academics, the media, and others have begun touting Anacostia as an emerging neighborhood célèbre there is a raw disconnect between the hype and the reality.

Residents want the vacant properties cleaned up and dealt with yesterday while seemingly everyone from bloggers to elected officials and bureaucrats are overlooking the problems of the here and now to speculate on the possibilities of tomorrow. To many, optimism in Anacostia is an oxymoron.

Plans have come and gone while the crumbling homes and buildings of Old Anacostia continue to sit, as they have for years, decades, and wait for life to return to this small bend of the capital city.

On Thursday, July 14, city officials assembled on the corner and inspected 1201 Good Hope Road, incrementally crumbling for years. "I don't think the condition appeared very different from how the building has looked for some time, but it certainly would ultimately fail, so it was anyone's guess when," wrote Tim Dennee, with the Office of Historic Preservation, in an email to community members. HPO did not object to the demolition of 1201, as it was a case of "imminent danger."

Although the building had been sagging for months, if not years, in Old Anacostia there was now a newfound desire to clean up the property.

On Monday, July 18, DHCD released renderings of what the future of the corner could look like.

"I believe the rendering ... passed around is an ideal that is floating around and the demolition of those properties could be the catalyst to make that rendering happen," warned Greta Fuller, ANC 8A03, in an email to the Office of Planning.

Was the impetus to demolish 1201 Good Hope Road the portending danger, real or imagined, it had posed for some time? Was it the machinations of a recharged administration? Or the steady flow of shockwaves from the nearby construction of the 11th Street Bridge? At a recent meeting at DHCD, a handful of staff, including Acting Director John Hall, said the neighboring construction regularly shakes their building.

Its aged citizenry already perpetually skeptical of city government, the newer generation of Anacostia community activists are now forming their own conspiracy theories. The formation and cataloguing of such theories is a generational method of marking time on the Southside.

Suspicious circumstances surround demolition

On the evening of Monday, July 18, officials from the Department of Housing and Community Development phoned ANC 8A04 commissioner Charles Wilson and told him that 1203 Good Hope Road SE, with approval of the Historic Preservation Office, was also coming down.

"Not so. When I was there with the DCRA and Housing Enterprises reps, we agreed only that 1201 could come down because of the concrete-parged MLK facade cracked and leaning forward," wrote Dennee in another email. "I asked if they could show me anything on 1203 that could be considered to pose an imminent danger to health or safety. They suggested nothing and pointed only to the unsafe condition at 1201. I asked then if there was any reason why 1203 would not require a raze permit application, and no reason was offered," he continued.

On Tuesday evening, July 19, a permit numbered R1100103, the building's epitaph, was posted on the door of 1203 Good Hope Road SE.

"Very much a surprise to me," wrote Dennee. "From the number, I just looked up the permit opened and issued yesterday—and its description states 'RAZE A BRICK BUILDING AT 1201 AND 1203 GOOD HOPE ROAD—PER SIGNATURE OF KEN WILSON AND HISTORIC PRESERVATION ARCHITECT MR. T.J.DENNEE—SEE APPLICATION.' Our office was not a signatory."

In response to the demolition of 1201 Good Hope Road SE and the pending demolition of 1203 Good Hope Road SE, a group of residents demanded a meeting with DHCD.

"It's not so much the outcome we were concerned with, it was the process," says Catherine Buell, a resident of Historic Anacostia and the chair of the Historic Preservation Review Board. She attended the meeting as a private citizen. "People in the community were asking questions about the demolition. It gave off the impression and appearance that the processes in place were not followed."

"A representative for DHCD from DCHA, who manages the maintenance of properties in DHCD's inventory, inspected the property on July 14th and was very concerned about the condition of the two properties, but more specifically the wall of 1201 that faces MLK Jr. Ave SE," said John Hall, DHCD's Director, in the meeting with residents. "DCRA and HP were alerted and came to inspect the properties. DCRA authorized the emergency demolition and approved the permit."

With the demolition permit for 1203 Good Hope Road SE rescinded, Buell and other attendees felt satisfied with DHCD's explanation. However, there is a palpable feeling that DHCD and the city makes and plays by a different set of rules that governs private citizens and commercial property owners.

"If I did what they did, I would be fined a couple hundred thousand dollars," said a commercial property owner in the area who requested anonymity.

"We all agree that we want to create a partnership between the community and the government, and in order to build that relationship there has to be a certain level of trust," said Wilson.

Demolition by neglect a widespread problem

These are not the only government-owned properties in Anacostia suffering from demolition by neglect. A year prior, DHCD purchased the "Big K Lot": the residential properties of 2228, 2234 and 2238 MLK and the former site of Big K Liquors, 2252 MLK.

The three homes have been in advanced stages of deterioration and rot for years. A review of city records revealed that 2228 MLK has been vacant since the late 1970's, and 2234 MLK has been vacant since the mid-1980s.

Fast forward a year from DHCD's purchase, with a change in mayoral administrations and leadership at DHCD, one thing hadn't changed. The Big K properties had yet to be stabilized, the city continuously complicit in their ex post facto demolition by neglect.

"It would be a severe embarrassment to the Gray Administration if these homes were allowed to deteriorate and fall down or be demolished under his watch," cautioned Wilson. "These properties need to be stabilized now. Only if and when the properties are stabilized, the government can work with the community on the restoration of the site."

Distrust is not confined to the Southside.

"The Big K site has appeared on the DC Preservation League's Most Endangered Places list several times," wrote DCPL's Executive Director, Rebecca Miller, in an email.

We recognize that DCHCD has only taken ownership of the properties recently, but they should do everything possible to stabilize the buildings to deter further deterioration. So often we hear about buildings that 'have plans' so the owner doesn't feel the need to maintain the property. It's proven however, that a little bit of maintenance can save big when it is time for rehabilitation. Preservation doesn't dictate use—however, these are important buildings to the Anacostia Historic District and their returning them to service should be a priority.

Enforcement efforts face hurdles

According to a May Letter from Nicholas A. Majett, Director of the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs, to Anthony Muhammad, Chairperson of ANC8A, DCRA is coordinating with "sister agencies to pursue and enforce the demolition by neglect statute" in all areas of the city.

Over the last year, the DC Office of Planning, along with the Office of the Attorney General, has actively pursued several demolition by neglect cases in and around the Anacostia Historic District. Three of these cases (2228 MLK, Jr. Avenue, SE; 2234 MLK, Jr. Avenue, SE; and 2338 MLK, Jr. Avenue, SE) were owned by Ms. Ann Kushner who was in the process of selling the properties when her husband died.

On behalf of the District of Columbia, OAG filed a demolition by neglect suit against Ms. Kushner in D.C. Superior Court for all three of these properties. However, the DC Superior Court judge would not grant the District's request for an injunction because Ms. Kushner made representations to the court that she was financially unable to repair the properties.

Ms. Kushner did apply for a raze permit to totally demolish the properties, but OP denied her request. The case was finally resolved when the DC Department of Housing and Community Development purchased the properties from Ms. Kushner.

As Anacostia residents have discovered, however, even a sale to the government does not necessarily mean the property will be saved from demolition.

She gets to the real lamenting by the post's end:

"I have no idea how you could stop this process. To keep our neighborhoods the way [Jane] Jacobs and I liked them would involve massive coercion not just of real estate owners, but of merchants, food vendors...everyone in the network of service providers that supports a neighborhood. The more people like me who move into my current neighborhood, the more services the neighborhood will attract—and those, in turn, will bring further waves of gentrifiers who will use their higher incomes to drive up rents, home prices, and the assessed values upon which property taxes are based.

I want the services, but I don't want this to price out all the people who already live there. Unfortunately, it's a package deal."

I've complained before that McArdle takes a rather reductionist and simplistic view towards gentrification, and her latest piece is no exception. She boils gentrification down to middle-class (and likely white) buyers moving in, displacing poor (and likely African American) residents. Note that she does not specify whether she believes her neighbors do or do not own their homes. Neighborhood change, whether it's gentrification or not, extends far beyond this assumed black/white binary—especially in cities other than DC.

McArdle argues that stereotypical gentrifiers move into neighborhoods expecting goods and services to open in their wake, and consequently jack up the cost of living for those who can least afford it. This is a real problem, one that's been seen in, among other neighborhoods, Shaw, Petworth, and Columbia Heights. But she simply shrugs her shoulders. She seems completely comfortable with accepting the status quo: That because gentrification has almost always traditionally resulted in displacement, there's no way to stop the process now.

Gentrification doesn't always have to equal displacement, and there's no room for lament when the real problem of the latter needs some attention. True, one person alone can't enact a city-wide inclusionary zoning policy or demand that a developer include a substantial amount of mixed-income units in their next project, but one person can at least change their attitude.

McArdle includes in her post chunks of an essay by her colleague Benjamin Schwartz, which argues that the ideal Jane Jacobean neighborhood possesses the following qualities—and almost certainly does not exist:

"...An architecturally interesting enclave holds in ephemeral balance the emerging and the residual. Such neighborhoods still contain a sprinkling of light industry and raffish characters, for urban grit, and a dash of what [Sharon] Zukin calls 'people of color,' for exotic diversity. Added to the melange are lots and lots of experimental artists (for that boho frisson) and a generous but not overwhelming portion of right-thinking designers, publishing types, architects, and academics, and the one-of-a-kind boutiques and innovative restaurants that will give them places to shop and brunch."

All Schwartz's essay serves to do is reinforce stereotypical images of gentrification, which distract from the problem at the heart of the process: Displacement. Instead of taking the McArdle approach and throwing our hands in the air, exclaiming that "we have no idea how to stop this," we should be encouraging our local leaders in policy and government to be prescient and knowledgeable of neighborhoods that might see substantial economic and demographic change in the future.

Housing Complex reported yesterday that Anacostia recently received a $3 million dollar grant from the Department of Housing and Urban Development's Sustainable Communities Funding, via the District Department of Housing and Community Development. DHCD's intended use for the grant demonstrates precisely the kind of prescience needed from local authorities that can influence neighborhood change:

"This project's main goal is to anchor the existing residents of Historic Anacostia, which will not be affordable in another decade unless direct, explicit and significant actions and investments are made to ensure a continued supply of affordable housing. This will be accomplished by: 1) Bolstering homeownership, particularly historic properties, and maintaining affordable options; 2) Promoting commercial redevelopment and entrepreneurship and enhancing job readiness, with a particular focus on leveraging the area's current assets and the developments occurring nearby to create economic opportunities; 3) Expanding job opportunities to help current residents better afford housing; and 4) Enhancing resident participation."

DHCD is taking a step in the right direction with Anacostia. Time will tell whether or not the grant money shakes out fairly, but in the meantime, let's be sure to carefully delineate between gentrification and displacement—and quit lamenting.