Posts about Vacant Property

"Yeah, a former associate of mine has been set up in there pretty tight for a number of years," said community activist William Alston-El, who through community work and life experiences is affiliated with Anacostia's underworld. "His wife died and that's when he started. He's on crack, he's pretty gone in the head, you know. Yeah, you could say it's a crack house abandominium, a lot of people have been up in there, you know what I mean?"

By 2011 the taxes grew to more than $3,000. At this time Redemptor Litium, LLC, with holdings throughout all city neighborhoods, purchased the lien.

"This is a typical law school exam question," says James M. Loots, the lawyer representing Redemptor Litium, LLC. "The tax sale is supposed to fix the problem of getting the property under control and back to contributing property taxes."

Loots says his client has filed a motion for judgment and followed every necessary step to receive an order of foreclosure from posting the mandatory orange notice on the front door, to searching for heirs in the probate docket, to advertising in the paper for all known and unknown heirs to come forth.

The case is on a judge's desk and awaits another status hearing scheduled for next month.

Unfriendly neighbor

Dewey Sampson lives next door to the crack house abandominium. A federal employee, Sampson bought his home a little less than two years ago. On move-in day, two men sitting out front of the house next door offered their help, as good neighbors. Sampson soon learned from a long-time resident two down over that the men didn't live there. Nobody does. They are known undesirables, squatters.

"Early last summer I saw the orange sticker posted on the door," Sampson said. "I was really excited. I thought something was going to happen, but I didn't think it would take this long."

After the posting, last fall Sampson called the police on two squatters, who after an evening of drinking and drugging were cursing at each other loud enough for Sampson to hear through his walls.

"The police came right away. When they took one of the guys away he kept yelling, 'This is my house! This is my house! I was like what is he talking about?" said Sampson.

After telling him what I'd heard from Alston-El, Sampson said it now made sense. What's still illogical to Sampson and his fiance is how the house could sit vacant for so many years.

"This is a paradigm example of what the tax sale process is designed to address—getting vacant or neglected properties back on the tax rolls and into productive use. Unfortunately, that process takes a very long time," said Loots.

The sooner the better for Sampson, who last week saw a face he'd never seen before leaving the back of the house. "I don't want to judge people, but she looked like she was on drugs." Adding insult to injury, Sampson just paid an exterminator as a result of termites coming over from the abandominium.

"Those guys coming and going primarily are a safety concern for my fiancé, me, and the entire neighborhood. What if they set the house on fire and it spreads?" Sampson said. "What do we do then?"

Inside the house

This past Sunday morning with iPhone in hand, I went around to back of the home. Although the city boarded up the front door and the adjacent window last fall, I saw no evidence that anyone has made an effort to secure the rear.

I opened the mesh-screened back porch easily. There were bars on the back porch window to stop intruders from climbing in, but the back door is wide open.

Stepping inside the kitchen, the rancid smell of urine welcomed me. The counter was covered in stubs of used candles and empty cans of Goya beans. The floor was littered with all sorts of debris, including chunks of fallen plaster from the ceiling. Slices of light from the second floor peeked through through small gaps in the floorboards above.

In the living room, more clothes covered the floor, along with discarded syringes and a bent spoon used to fire up dope. Two windows fronted 14th Street, one boarded up, one deflecting the morning sun behind a thick curtain. Peeling back the curtain, I saw Engine Company Fifteen; down the street is Saint Phillip the Evangelist Episcopal Church; in the median sits the restored Old Market House Square, which had a ribbon cutting last fall.

In the tight hallway junk mail fertilizes the floor. Three framed pictures rest atop the radiator: a baby girl not yet pre-school aged, a young man flashing a smile in cap and gown, and repentant hands coming together in a moment of prayer. Lord knows the rebirth of Historic Anacostia's crumbling homes need communion through any and all lines of invocation. Underneath the three photos is an unread Washington Post from this past November.

I ascended the staircase, keeping my ears open for any sounds of rustling. At the head of the stairs is a small room, the door ajar. A bare mattress sat snug in the far corner, amid fallen sheetrock and plaster. Behind the door I saw dress shirts and suits. I walk back into the hall and past the bathroom with the upturned bathtub and toilet laying on its side.

In the far room, Clothes strewn everywhere, a king size bed headboard sans bed, a plastic lawn chair, a DirecTV remote with no television to control. Running up in the home on the lonesome, without the better company of friend, I feel I should get going.

Passing a closed green door, I heard the static of a raspy cough. Time to get ghost. I slipped down the stairs, knowing the man behind the green door will not pursue what he likely thinks is a fellow squatter just looking for a small poor man's piece of the rock, an abandominium.

Over debris, clothes, beer cans, and drug paraphernalia I passed through the living room, crouched under a long board that's presumably been set up as a barrier between the kitchen and further entryway into the abandominium for a less able-bodied person. My first and last self-guided tour of an Anacostia abandominium.

I give Alston-El a call, telling him what I saw.

"What's the waiting list for housing in this city, 45,000? Me and you could find that many units and more in all these abandominiums," Alston-El says. A painter-by-trade, Alston-El repeats his lament, "They fix these places up and then there'd be jobs for everyone from the community who can work with their hands. It could create some small businesses. Yeah, but they don't want to do that, you see, because it would save the neighborhood. But, nope, too much like right."

Systemic forces like white flight, black flight, redlining, blockbusting, wage stagnation created this problem, and numerous challenges impede reinvestment in neighborhoods like this one.

There are 2,232 addresses on the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs' (DCRA) vacant and blighted properties list, the principal data source for the maps above. The list includes 4022 South Capitol Street as well as the two apartment buildings immediately adjacent to it.

These are not normal short term vacancies, simply between leases. They are the buildings that are unleasable in their current state of disrepair. Some are bank owned, some are city owned. Some have absentee owners, some have local owners who live in poverty and have no means with which to fix up their assets.

In some cases, the owner listed on the title is deceased and there are multiple heirs to the property. Many require a significant investment of time and money before they can again be occupied.

The purpose of DCRA's list is to identify targets for the District's first line of defense against dilapidated buildings: taxation. By threatening to raise property taxes to 5% for vacant properties and 10% for blighted properties, the city encourages the owner to either bring the property up to code or sell it to someone who will, probably at a price less than what the owner would otherwise be willing to accept.

Ultimately, if the owner neither takes action nor pays the elevated taxes, the property goes to tax sale and is awarded to the highest bidder. If no one bids, ownership rights go to the city, but that doesn't mean that a fresh title magically appears in the name of the District of Columbia. The District, like any other winning bidder, must first go through foreclosure proceedings, sorting through existing liens on the property and attempting to resolve any other title issues that exist.

In other words, no one, least of all the District government, wants it to get to that point. This approach is a relatively new, boutique initiative that seems to have promise, as Lydia DePillis has thoroughly described.

In the grander scheme of things, there are really three variables that affect the rehabilitation or redevelopment of nuisance properties:

1. Acquisition cost: the cost of purchasing the property, which may include substantial legal fees, and interest or investor payments on borrowed money.
   
2. Redevelopment cost: site preparation (potentially including demolition), design and construction costs, interim maintenance and taxes, debt payments.
   
3. Income from the redeveloped property: the income that the property generates once it is redeveloped and operational, whether in the form of net operating income if the owner chooses to lease it out, or income from the sale of the property minus any costs associated with the sale.

For redevelopment to make sense, the sum of the first two variables must be less than the third, and when it doesn't, the free market won't mitigate vacant properties and blight.

The first two solutions presented require a taxpayer subsidy. Is it justified?

It is easier to quantify the costs associated with rehabilitating blighted properties than it is to quantify the benefits. The broken windows theory suggests that blight can encourage and support illegal activities, but it is difficult to measure to what extent that is the case.

Blight may lower surrounding property values and deter new investment. It can also contribute to the stigmatization of a neighborhood if dilapidated properties are seen as representative of the entire community. Across the country, the consensus seems to be that investing public funds in individual nuisance properties in order to battle the negative effects of disinvestment is a worthy cause.

The Gray administration, like previous administrations, uses a combination of the three strategies discussed in the previous graphic to combat long-term vacancy and blight, though there seems to be an intentional focus on Solution #3. Dedicating a greater share of energy and resources to large-scale economic development projects, which in Ward 8 tend to revolve around St. Elizabeths, is certainly a more glamorous approach and it probably will have a greater impact on the District's bottom line in the long run.

However, it is interesting that there has not been a more coordinated, ambitious, or heavily-funded government proposal for dealing directly with vacant and blighted properties where they are most concentrated. After all, this is the topic that Ward 8 residents ranked as their top development-related priority at the Ward 8 Community Summit, and unfortunately it is an issue that will forever be intertwined with the tragic events that occurred two years ago at 4022 South Capitol St SE.

Within minutes a friend and I were on the roof of this Colonial Revival-style apartment building on the 2600 block of 13th Street NW. We looked over a neighborhood that, in less than 10 years, has been transformed from one of the deepest gang and crew-affiliated areas of the nation's capital to a landing pad for DC's newest arrivals.

Formerly known as the Alden, Babcock, and Calvert Apartments, completed in the 1920s, the Warner Apartments at 2618-2622 13th Street NW were added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1990.

In late 1987, the Warner was the first of a dozen renovated apartment buildings to be completed as part of the city's "$15 million plan to reclaim vacant, privately owned, disintegrating apartment buildings and turn them into housing for low-income District residents," according to the Washington Post in November of that year. "By the time the last group of tenants left four years ago, a succession of landlords, tenants and city authorities had managed to reduce the once-graceful red-brick structure in Columbia Heights to an uninhabitable mess," said the article.

In February 1987 developer Joseph G. Kisha, in partnership with the Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD), acquired a "Rental Rehabilitation Loan Program Leasehold Deed of Trust, wherein the parties acknowledged" Kisha's "indebtedness to the District of Columbia government for a $220,000 interest free loan to finance the purchase and rehabilitation of the housing accommodation as rental units for low to moderate income," according to records of the Office of the Tenant Advocate.

On October 28, 1987, Kisha closed on the property for $413,872. Of that total, $176,220 came from the Rental Rehabilitation Loan Program, $159,000 from the Land Acquisition for Development Opportunities Program, and a guarantee of a forthcoming $78,652 from DHCD.

Wasting no time, the next day Kisha filed a Claim of Exemption Form with the Rental Accommodation and Conversion Division within the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs, asserting that the apartments were "exempt from the rent control provision of the Rental Housing Act because the rental units were owned or subsidized by the District government."

Along with the city subsidized mortgage, Kisha argued that the property was additionally exempt from rent control because in 1984, when his company first expressed interest in its purchase, it was vacant and had been vacant up until the time he requested the exemption from rent control. The city agreed and approved his exemption. All 44 of the Warner's renovated units would go to low-income residents receiving federal rental assistance.

According to the November 1987 Post article, Kisha had concerns that "not enough attention ha[d] been directed at the time when the initial rent subsidies expire." He told the Post he and his business partner planned to own the Warner for fifteen years, but when the rent subsidies ran out, he was quoted as saying, "I don't know what happens then."

Fast forward to August 2006, less than twenty years after the Warner Apartments reopened, Kisha and his 2620 Limited Partnership was petitioned by the 2620 13th Street NW Tenants Association, who alleged that the Rental Housing Act of 1985 had been violated. Rents increased even though the units did not comply with housing regulations, tenants received "substantially" reduced services, and, the association argued, the property was not registered with the Rental Accommodation and Conversion Division.

Kisha sought to have the case dismissed with prejudice on the grounds that the Association's complaints were based on the rent stabilization provision of the Rental Housing Act, from which the Warner was exempted.

In late July 2009 Wanda R. Tucker, an Administrative Law Judge, issued a Final Order in the nearly three year old dispute. The Tenant Association's petition was "dismissed with prejudice," meaning the Tenant Association would be barred from bringing a future action on the same claim.

By December 2010 only four units remained occupied. Following the protocol of the 1980 Rental Housing Conversion and Sale Act, the remaining tenants were given the opportunity to purchase all three buildings. The asking price was $5,050,000. The tenants were prohibited from waiving their right to receive the Offer of Sale while their failure to purchase the buildings ensured their eventual eviction.

Last December the 2620 Limited Partnership sold the three buildings and got their money. New York-based Aria Partners, LLC, purchased the property for $5,018,000, a price representing more than $114,000 per unit. In press releases Aria pledged to "substantially renovate the building[s] to [their] historic standard while preserving 20% of the units as affordable."

Inside building "A"

Upon entering building "A," (2618 13th Street NW) a friend and I were greeted by two fire extinguishers coated in a thick layer of dust. Some loose construction materials lay in the corner of the vestibule. I step up the stairs into the hallway, a door to units on my right and left.

I shout out, "Uptown reporter in here!" The sound ricochets through the stairwell, down to the basement and up to the fourth floor.

I don't hear anything or anyone, neither does my friend. A solitary light bulb, in a no frills hallway chandelier overhead, gleams through the desolate dwelling.

The door on the left is unlocked, opening into a unit with three windows that overlook 13th Street NW. To the right is the intersection with Euclid Street NW. "There goes MPD," says my friend, "Rickey," as the police cruise south on 13th Street NW.

"Rickey," in his early 50's, grew up on nearby Sherman Avenue NW. He has fond neighborhood memories of "just trying to stay alive despite my best efforts not to." Although he now lives "on that southside" his "heart is always with the uptown."

He says, "I might be too street to tweet but I'm up on the only news that really matters; that corner news of what's happening now."

Rickey claims "everyone knows you've always been able to get high here whether it's vacant or when they got people. This place has never really been run right; it's always been a problem."

As we walk through the hallways and creep into deserted units, we're careful to watch our steps on the wood floors going to pieces. The non-bearing walls have all been knocked down, and drywall accumulates in piles in many of the units.

With scant evidence of squatters on the first and second floor, we discover verification on a third floor unit overlooking 13th Street that someone has been here within the past week. "Yep. If I was still getting high this is right where I'd do it. That's what they were doing," says Rickey.

There are a couple different newspapers scattered about from the same day last week, some cigar guts, and discarded wrappers for Black & Milds and cigarillos, used to roll up weed.

"To a lot of folks this place is too hot," Rickey says as we look down to the street below. "All these new people walking around, acting like ain't nothing wrong in the world. You better watch your back if you dip in here, these people will call the police on you quick, fast, and in a hurry."

Rickey pulls out a cigarette, lights it, and laments, "You know when I was coming up, yeah, there was a lot of guns and knives, and all those drugs around but it was different. The way it feels now, it doesn't feel real anymore."

A metal grate blocks the stairwell to the roof, but it's not locked. We pass boxes full of binders chronicling years' worth of work orders as we walk up the staircase.

We're now on the roof. I snap a quick picture. We head back downstairs but not before Rickey, with a fresh cigarette dangling from his mouth, says, "I know some folks in the market for an abandominium, I'll make sure to spread the word if they don't know already."

"This is one of the best abandominiums around," Alston-El said, peering through an opening into one of the building's basements, spotting scattered drug paraphernalia. "This is where they come to shoot the dope at. They jump in and jump out."

Walking the streets of Anacostia, at the turn of every corner, Alston-El is greeted with shout-outs and recognition. Speaking authoritatively about his community and its problems, Alston-El says, "When people talk about the good things happening in Anacostia, I wonder who they are talking about. They're not talking for me or people I know."

The people he speaks for are those who occupy Anacostia's vacant homes and apartment buildings and convert them to their own safe houses.

"On a scale of 1 to 10, Anacostia's abandominiums are a 2," says Bill Jackson, the last occupant of 2228 Martin Luther King, Jr. Avenue SE. "But the reason folks run up in abandominiums is because they get tired of the shelters with their rules and regulations. If you find an abandominium uptown people notice, but in Anacostia nobody seems to notice or care."

Sadly, "they're safer than shelters," Alston-El says. "You don't have to worry about fighting with somebody. You don't have to worry about rats, because there's no food."

The misfortune is not in the people who squat in abandominiums, but those who own them and let them scar the neighborhood, say Alston-El.

1401 Bangor Street SE

Behind the three vacant High Street properties, across the alley, is another vacant building on Bangor Street SE.

While looking in the open rear basement door a neighbor calls out at me, "Hey, what are you doing? I'm calling the police! Get on!" I quickly identify and introduce myself.

The neighbor, speaking on the condition of anonymity, opens up about the ongoing problems with the property, a nearly 4500 square foot red brick building built in 1945.

"This building used to be for seniors, but they moved everybody out and tried to flip it," the neighbor said. "But that didn't work and it's been vacant since."

According to tax records the multi-family property was sold in November 2002 for $75,000 and was last sold in April 2005 for $288,000. The building and the 1/8 acre lot it sits on are assessed at $385,700 according to city records.

"It's a problem with the drug boys, the homeless, the prostitutes, you name it," said the neighbor. "I called DCRA after calls to 311 went nowhere. They did come out and board up all the openings. But you can see that didn't last long."

In the small room leading from the open door beer cans are strewn on the floor alongside cigarette butts and empty packages of Backwoods cigars, used for rolling up weed. A hot water heater remains intact adjacent to the door.

Back outside on Bangor Street, two neighborhood men pass by. I ask them about the building and its impact on the community.

"If you're living in the streets, a vacant house is a roof over your head," said Jerry. His friend Maurice added, "Gray and all them, they could fix these places up. But see the thing of it is, is that you got money they sending across the water instead of taking care of your folks at home."

Walking past the Bangor Street building on a recent evening, I notice a light on on the second floor. On its east side three separate power lines run into the domicile. With a second floor rear window open, a bucket propped upside down on the ground below providing a step to ease entry to and fro, this abandominium is apparently occupied.

"When you find one with power and water you stay put," Alston-El says, "because you're living like a king. You turn that place into the 'hood version of a five star hotel. The only thing missing is room service."

1700 - 1720 W Street SE

While taking pictures of a boarded-up apartment complex on the 1700 block of W Street SE, two blocks from the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site, someone calls out, "You guys finally going to get started?"

After explaining ourselves, Kirk Clark, a contractor who lives across the street, shared his memories of the collection of derelict three story buildings. Ivy is slowly encroaching on the banner pledging "Spacious 2BR/2 Bath Homes Coming Soon" at the Buxton Condos.

"When I got locked up in '87 it was open," says Clark. "I came home in '91 and it was closed. It's been closed ever since." The only other activity he's seen in and around the property, other than neighborhood children, has been the coming and going of Anacostia's displaced souls.

"They got a lot of homeless people out here who don't have nowhere to go. And when you leave a lot of abandoned buildings around that's where people are going to go so they can go sleep," Clark said.

Walking around to the back of the property, Alston-El and I ascend the stairs to the second level of one of the units and enter a former one bedroom apartment, stepping over a door that's been kicked in. A few wayward t-shirts and Gatorade bottles show someone has recently been here.

"Look," Alston-El says reaching up, "you can see they've cut all the copper out. I know how it's done because I used to do the same thing."

The properties, owned by the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development, have an assessed value at just over $2.2 million.

"The most important matter," says Alston-El, "is that these places don't do anyone or the city any good. They don't generate any taxes and they don't generate any jobs."

"We got all these people, working people who need some place to live and can't find anything, yet this stuff is allowed by the city. They want to build something new, why not fix what's been here?"

All the while, across the river, a new tower crane pops up every few weeks. Is it any surprise some people in Anacostia feel resentment?

In recent decades, small business have all but disappeared from the area, and in recent years, even larger establishments, such as the National Wholesale Liquidators and the Safeway at the Rhode Island Avenue Center strip mall have closed their doors.

With only a few tenants left, the mall's sprawling parking lots never exceed 50% capacity, even on weekends. Indeed, the lot's landlord even offers "commuter parking" for the nearby Rhode Island Avenue Metro station.

The former Safeway, closed in 2010, has stood vacant, with little sign of activity, for over a year. When it closed, the grocery chain noted that the location had been unprofitable for over 10 years. Grocery stores serve as important community anchors and allow other forms of retail to flourish nearby. This is especially true for this strip mall, which is detached from the surrounding streets and neighborhoods.

Rhode Island Avenue north of Brentwood fares no better. Despite stretches that see over 30,000 vehicles per day, businesses along the avenue are anything but diverse. Sit-down restaurants tend to avoid this part of town, despite plenty of potential customers. The only new food establishments to open recently are a Rita's Custard Shop and a breakfast/brunch-only diner.

Nearby residents lament the lack of retail, but although the area has no shortage of space for new businesses to move in, the high upfront costs of opening shop coupled with the neighborhood's reputation pose an enormous to traditional establishments that might even consider the area as their base. In "up and coming" neighborhoods, entrepreneurs may be hesitant to open businesses despite low rents and high traffic volumes. Many business owners don't want to be roped into a long-term lease if the future of the neighborhood remains uncertain.

With lower operating costs and a greater dependence on readily available, affordable property, pop-up stores might prove to be a great option for Rhode Island Avenue. And, the so-called pop-up businesses might already have some examples to follow in Northeast.

In the Rhode Island Avenue Center, a car-wash and Mr. P's BBQ truck have set-up shop and attract a loyal following of both locals and visitors. On weekends, impromptu flea markets appear and attract residents from Edgewood and other close-by neighborhoods.

Within the vacant former Safeway space, an indoor flea or farmers' market might fit in nicely, especially in cooler weather. Since Safeway's departure last year, residents of nearby Edgewood and Eckington have had to travel to the Brentwood Giant to get groceries; adding an indoor, semi-permanent farmers' market might make their lives a little easier (and tastier).

On the other side of town, in Mt. Pleasant, an ingenious concept called the "Temporium" made use of underutilized retail space on Mt. Pleasant Street NW. Despite being a temporary facility, the space attracted 6,800 visitors and made over $31,000 in sales the last month it was open.

However, before significant development can occur on Rhode Island Avenue, the corridor needs to see some substantial improvements to the area's transportation infrastructure. Currently, the Rhode Island Avenue-Brentwood metro station serves the area, but it lacks adequate neighborhood access.

There are plans to build a ramp across the CSX/MARC/Amtrak line, which would eliminate the circuitous walk or perilous rail crossing to the shopping center and could begin construction in 2012. DDOT has also included Rhode Island Avenue in its Phase II streetcar plan, but this addition should be preceded with a Circulator route or other frequent bus service.

Eventually, the entire corridor will need to adopt a comprehensive plan (such as the one produced during the Fenty administration by the DC Planning Office), but, in the meantime, short-term solutions, such as pop-up stores, exist to improve the livability of the area and make the neighborhoods that surround it more appealing.

One theme became clear: our regulatory structure and business practices are very good at accommodating permanent enterprises, but when it comes to temporary uses, we apply the same licensing burdens, lease agreements, and review processes that are unsuitable for projects that may only last 4 weeks.

If you want to try opening a Christmas market in an unconventional space for just one month, it may be New Year's Eve before you get the necessary approvals to make it happen. All this assumes you were able to find a landlord who knew you existed and had an interest in a one-month lease in the first place.

Landlords prefer long-term tenants, even if it means they have to keep a property vacant for a year to find one. Real estate brokerages are set up to find long-term tenants and are often unaware of a neighbor who has a dream project that is only meant to last for a month. Often our regulatory structure makes short-term leases not worth the administrative and legal hassle.

Tregoning noted the irony that our regulatory and business structures are geared toward permanent uses even though many aspects of our society are increasingly ephemeral. The Office of Planning, she said, while currently in the process of overhauling the District's zoning code, is looking to for ways to make the revised code flexible enough to accommodate temporary uses.

Let's say several artists who live in your neighborhood want to exhibit their art work just for two weeks and they found a vacant home they could lease for two weeks. To turn it into a temporary gallery where they could sell their work, they would need to hire a land-use attorney, appeal to the Board of Zoning Adjustments, and seek ANC support.

That's a daunting and expensive task if you want to open an art gallery just for two weeks. Even if all the neighbors and the ANC commissioner supported the idea, the regulatory framework makes little distinction between this two-week project and the next Corcoran Gallery.

We need a new regulatory and commercial infrastructure to bring temporary projects to fruition:

• "Ephemera" brokerages that connect potential short-term tenants with landlords who have space that's vacant temporarily.
• Lease templates and leasing regulations that treat temporary leases strictly as term-limited and allow landlords to terminate the leases quickly the moment they find a permanent tenant.
• Zoning and regulatory flexibility for short-term uses. Most commercial activity is not permitted in residential zones and DPR prohibits the sale of food in its parks. We should consider permitting exceptions for modest, short-term projects.

One of the great things about living in a city, Washington especially, is the level of delightful surprise. Seeing a new restaurant open, seeing a neighbor paint their house a new color, or spotting a new work of public art can enhance the quality of life.

Whenever I walk around my neighborhood or over to U Street, I always see something new or something existing that was refashioned in an interesting way. These changes are often small, but the frequency of change tells a consistent story: our city is alive.

We have the creative talent to bring short-term projects to fruition, but we need the business and regulatory infrastructure to catch up to make these plans feasible.

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.

Seegars is the only challenger who has filed thus far. In 2008, Seegars received 498 votes against Barry, or 8.85% of all ballots cast in the Ward 8 Democratic primary.

She proposes a moratorium on new housing construction in Ward 8 until all of the ward's vacant properties are first taken care of. At the weekend's Ward 8 Community Summit, many residents identified vacant properties as a key concern.

Seegars argues that vacant properties are just one of the many issues Barry has failed to address. "People are really just punishing themselves voting for Barry, because the ward never does improve," she said.

In the citywide primary next April, voters in Ward 8 will presumably have a choice. Some have openly questioned the wherewithal and electability of past challengers, and whether this trend will continue.

If Barry is worried, he is not letting on. His inconsequential rhetoric might use different clichés, turns of phrase, and doubletalk, adroitly changing as the day-to-day or week-to-week wind blows, but the crux of his message has not deviated: You know me, I know you. We know each other, so let's keep this party going. What do you say?

Ward 8 Community Summit reviews problems with the ward

At this weekend's Ward 8 Community Summit, Barry repeatedly implored the audience to forget about the past while concurrently emphasizing his nearly four decades of public service to the city.

In his closing remarks Saturday, Barry shamelessly said, with the tacit reinforcement of Mayor Gray, "We can't do anything about the past but learn from it, right? We can't do anything about yesterday. We can't do anything about half-a-hour ago. But we can do something about the future. And we're going to have a brighter future in Ward 8 than we've ever had in recent years."

Smothered by high rates of unemployment, illiteracy, substance abuse and crime, Ward 8's dependent population is unlikely to offer their vote to anyone other than Barry, admitted participants at table 8 of the summit.

"I don't think people know what changes they're really looking at," said Ray Watson, a contractor with a small business in the ward. "If the police are going to monitor people on the corner drinking their beers then they won't like that." He later said, "People aren't going to give away their money to move and live over here. The new people won't be your everyday public assistance clientele."

Statistics shared at the summit indicated 40% of the ward's population lives in some form of public housing.

"Most residents don't want new development. They are comfortable with the gun shots, people sitting on their porch drinking liquor and being loud as they do, things of that nature," said John, a rising sophomore at a charter school east of the river, an employee within the Executive Office of the Mayor for the Summer Youth Employment Program and a resident of Highland Addition off Atlantic Street SE.

"People will do what they can to resist changes," said John, who expressed frustration with a stigma that can pervasively label residents of public housing "low class."

Potential challengers remain on the sidelines

One potential challenger is Jacque Patterson, president of the Ward 8 Democrats. Patterson said, "It's time for Ward 8 to have new ideas and innovative public policies. To substitute Barry with someone who doesn't have any new approach to addressing the concerns of Ward 8 residents shouldn't be the goal."

Patterson ran against Barry in 2004 "because I was tired of the ward languishing undeveloped and underserved during the years that Ms. Sandy Allen served as our councilmember." He recently ran in this past April's at-large race but was disqualified after failing to collect the required signatures for inclusion on the ballot.

Patterson argues Barry "has not articulated the reasons why he should receive my vote" and, unlike "council members in other parts of the city," has not engaged with the Ward 8 Democrats. With a council that "seems at this point to be self-serving," Barry's credibility has been strengthened by his longevity in city politics and "provides a sense of stability" while the public's trust increasingly wanes, says Patterson.

"Residents want more than just the show or the party," says Charles Wilson, an ANC, attorney and five-year resident of the ward. In 2008 the Washington Post endorsed Wilson's novice campaign for the Ward 8 council seat. Wilson finished second in the Democratic primary with 622 votes, 11% of all that were cast.

"Ever since the 2008 campaign, every week somebody is asking me if I am going to run or they tell me I should run again," says Wilson. "It's nice people are mentioning my name, but I'm going do this on my time."

In the 2008 Democratic primary, Barry received more than three-quarters of the total ballots cast and claimed more than 90 percent of the total vote in the general election. Barry was first elected as Ward 8 councilmember in 1992 following his release from federal prison on drug charges. He would subsequently defeat incumbent Sharon Pratt (Dixon) Kelly in the Democratic primary en route to his fourth-term as "Mayor 4 Life" defeating Carol Schwartz (R) in 1994.

At Saturday's summit, Barry was referred to as mayor repeatedly by different speakers throughout the day. The septuagenarian thrives off these displays of fawning romanticism and admiration knowing Ward 8 is his perpetual meal ticket while asking for very little in return.

It is detrimental to the District for Ward 8 to continue to be Barry's fiefdom of "the least, the last, and the lost." Evidenced by citizens' recent reactions to Barry's request for Ward 8 to absorb parts of Ward 6 in redistricting, there is a collective malaise outside Ward 8 about Barry.

As long as his influence is confined to Ward 8 people seem content to disregard him. When he makes unwanted excursions into other parts of the city, voters promptly and viscerally reply in full. But the livelihood of the city and Ward 8 are not mutually exclusive. Barry is not just Ward 8's problem; he's a citywide problem requiring a united citywide solution.

A challenger must develop a citywide organization that can outwork Barry at the retail level from door knocks, to steady surrogate presence at community meetings and well-formed and committed coalitions that can raise the money necessary to pay full-time staff, purchase collateral (t-shirts, yard signs, and bumper stickers) and fund an aggressive 72 hour get-out-the-vote effort.

Unless this happens, after once being set-up himself Barry will continue to strut, knowing he has Ward 8 sewn up.