Month: December 2004

Not as good as the Tilex but I discovered that Baking Soda is a lovely mild abrasive and can clean off crap and marks from the wall without taking off too much paint.

We will have a colorful city council next year with Vincent Gray and Kwame Brown coming on board. They will add to the Orange and Schwartz (black) we already have. Maybe next election season we can get someone named White, Gold, Rosa, Gelb, or Azul to run. Anyway I joke.

TheWashington City Paper’s Loose Lips reported Ward 5 councilman Vincent Orange’s investigation into running for mayor. Not to be discouraging but you can run for mayor, I just don’t think you can win. Not that Tony Williams is a wonderful catch. So far William’s main good points is that he’s never been caught smoking crack on camera, the city is financially stable, and he has the personality of a dead cat. However, when I mention who my ward councilmember is, I get blank stares. Orange who?

I can’t tell you how annoyed I was when I discovered I had moved to the wrong side of New Jersey Avenue, out of Ward 2 and into Ward 5. In the one year I lived in Logan Circle I saw Jack Evans a dozen or so times. I knew who he was. I moved to Truxton Circle a year later and ….. Orange who? And it wasn’t a matter of knowing Evans because I had lived in his ward, but that helped. I knew who Jim Graham was and a little bit about how he served his ward and the city as a whole. Currently I’m slightly annoyed with Graham for being another non-metro taking Metro boardmember, but whatever….. Adrian Fenty, I know more about Adrian Fenty than I do my own councilman. Fenty is my hero right now for banning single sales of beer in his ward. He’s also a damned good looking man. Too sexy I say, too sex-ey. If anyone should have a snowball chance in Hell for running and winning the mayoral slot it would be Fenty (hubba-hubba).

As I said Tony Williams has the overall warmth and charm of a dead cat. Not that there is anything wrong with that. Heck I’ll even forgive him of the AADD he seems to have, with the zoning out and what not. So far the dead cat serves me well. The city is getting to be more of a place I want to live and shop. The city is becoming more of a center for the DC metro area, rather than some big rotted cavity between VA and MD. Housing prices are still high despite crappy schools. So anyone wanting to replace Tony will have to show me that he (or she) will keep the advancements the city has made in the last few years and not embarrass the city in such a way that it endangers the slow creep to Congressional representation.

I’ve finished listening to Kojo Nnamdi’s program on WAMU and I still have no clue of what the heck is affordable housing.

Someone gimmie some numbers.

Okay, I got some numbers I’m not really sure what to make of them. One definition was housing that an $25,000 income can afford. Okay, problem with this number, is that a single? A family of four? Single mom and a kid? What? Second problem, HA! $25,000 pa in DC. Another number thrown out uses our friend Mr. Percentages. Affordable is 30-80% of the area income. Problem with that is if you have no f*ing clue of what the median or medium income in the area is you don’t know where you fall. I think it may be regulated by HUD. The other problem is the income ranges around here are crazy from under $20K to in the six figure range. Oh, and then go back to the whole ‘income for what sized family unit’ thing too. I thought I heard a number that an affordable 2 bedroom apartment in DC is $1200. I also may have heard rightly or wrongly that a middle income number is four people making $45,000. Well that still won’t buy you jack in the city. Well not jack that can house four people in a way that child protective services won’t come by and take away 2 or three of the four for endangerment.

Looking at HUD’s site I can gather what they think affordable is by what they put out as the Freddie Mac load limits. For one person it is $290K, two $371K and four is half a million, assuming we are a high cost area. FHA limits are lower, so low you’d have to be a family of 3 to get something most consider “decent”.

Then I wandered over to Fannie Mae to discover that the median income for the Washington, DC metro area is $85,400. Getting a better link I found the actual pdf file saying what the income definitions are for different family groupings. So if you are single and making $18K, congrats, you’re poor. Poor family of four makes $26,100. Very low income, the next range above poor (HUD says 30% of Median, I say po’), a single is making $30,450 and a family of four $43,500. Plain old low income makes $40,250 as a single person and $57,500 as a foursome. For fun I threw these numbers in Realtor.com’s affordabilty calculator you can buy up to $136,331 of house as a low income single and $187,785 as a family of four. Almost squat in DC. A couple of condos in PG County.

I think I will revisit this whole affordable housing thing again because it is too much of a subject to wrap myself around in one posting. There are aspects relating to DC that draw out conflicting feelings in me from housing vs sprawl (evil, evil sprawl); housing vs the environment (see sprawl); new housing vs historic preservation; social responsibility to poor vs annoyance with poor (see public housing, see Sursum Corda, see Section 8); needs vs wants in housing; and the rights of builders & property owners vs govt red tape and regulations.

I was chatting with a coworker about painting, home repair and the like and he asked if I had to go through my HOA. Thank G-d I don’t. A good thing about the hood, no home owner associations (HOA). I can paint my house pink with yellow polka dots. I can put out the world’s ugliest garden gnomes. Or I could have any style fence or mailbox I darned well please.

I’m also happy I don’t live in a condo. There are some huge pluses that come with condo living, but Nora Bombay is paying almost $600 a month in condo fees. Of course her fees include maintenance, cable, electricity, indoor parking, AC, heat and water. But still $600 a month, that’s almost like a small mortgage.

I’ve heard enough horror stories about HOAs and condo boards that get power hungry and crazy, see Columbia, MD. Why would I want to expose myself to that? No I will take the hood, where people have the freedom to put up tacky Christmas lights, have crappy looking yards, and have to pay directly for their own utilities.

Ok 1st things first, before I forget, there may be a Christmas Tree lighting at the Florida and 1st Street park (where the local winos hang) at 3:30pm this Sunday. I left early so if any changes were made, I don’t know about them.

Well this Bates meeting was nice. It was less of a meeting and more of a party. There were grapes, and those Lindt chocolates. If it weren’t in the basement of a Baptist Church the Egg Nog might have had a bit more kick. It was good, it was laid back. Q Street, Bates Street and 1st Street were well represented. Jim talked about the history of the Bates Area Civic Association, Scott talked about the Truxton Circle site (note: need to mail restaurant review to Scott or Matt), and the rest of us talked about our houses. It was a positive discussion.

I got sleepy and had to call my mom so I left. As I was leaving I saw Councilmember Vincent Orange heading towards the Church with his assistant/body guard/ random guy, so I missed out on that. But I’m happy to see Mr. Orange in a post election period. I am happy that he has discovered the NW section of the Ward because I was getting the feeling last year that we were the redheaded stepchild of Ward 5.

Over dinner the Bethesdites, friends of mine, were wondering how on earth they were going to buy a home with the real estate prices going up. Then they turned to me to ask about Shaw. Now I know their temperment and there is a reason why they live in Bethesda. I really don’t think they would like Shaw. I like Shaw and I tolerate Shaw. The good stuff, like restaurants and such, is more than 4 blocks away west of 9th Street. The stuff closest to the house is okay. Then there is the witnessing two guys in a knife fight a block from the house, doesn’t make me think I need to move out of the hood. I’ve been informed that someone was shot a block from the house, I’m still unfazed. The Bethesdites, I’m afraid, would have seen that as a good reason to sell.

I’m going to have the Bethesdites over for dinner next week. As they have never set foot in Shaw, I figure this is a good opportunity to see Shaw in is glory and ugly. Well they won’t see too much of the hood as they are driving and will see as much as one can from 30-45 mph. Or from the parked car to the house, which depending if there are any church services when they come can be from 20 feet to 1 block.

Shaw is not Bethesda, and that’s okay. Of course, I really would like a Barnes and Noble.