Month: August 2004

Yeah, who am I to say as a single person. But that is the lesson I come away with after seeing the Madison condo across the street from Shaw in Eckington on the corner of Florida and Quincy, NW.

It was a 1 bedroom going for about $265K. Tiny bedroom, small apartment, almost no closet space. The hall closet was just enough for a couple of winter coats. The bedroom closet, small, suitable for one person. The agent told me a couple did live there but annulled their marriage soon after moving in.

Makes sense as this place was small. You gotta really LOVE, the person you’re with. However I see the closet thing as an argument waiting to happen. I just can’t see how married people do it. Share closet space. My parents had a lovely system, my mom’s clothes went into the closet, everything my dad wore, could be folded and put into a drawer. You couldn’t even do that in this place.

Oh, can we also talk condo fee? $365 a month. It includes everything but electricity. Did I mention that the whole condo is run on electricity, no gas. Now there is no parking lot. No pool. No grounds, except that little strip of dirt between the sidewalk and the building. It includes snow removal. $50 will get you 2 winos in the park kitty corner to the Madison to clean the sidewalk around the whole building. Also for those of you not familiar with DC weather, it snows so little that the city near bout closes when we get anything over 2 inches. A fact that stuns folks from hardier regions where 2 feet of snow wouldn’t close jack.

I’d like to compare that to the Mercury in Shaw on 5th Street. Condo fee of about $230. About 20 feet of sidewalk, 2 parking spaces (gone), and fewer bums. The only unit available going for $450K, seemed less of a realtor on crack deal. I could believe this 3 bedroom 2 bath condo was possibly worth $450K. So I’ll just say, “Realtors on Coke” or “Reefer Realtors”, ’cause we’re still talking Eastern Shaw. $350K, would be a good deal. The two back bedrooms were suburban sized. It was like wow, you could fit a king sized bed and some other furniture back here and still have room to walk around. The master bath was also big. If it weren’t for the stairs, I’d say the size of the condo almost made it wheelchair friendly. The front bedroom, slightly bigger than a walk in closet, with glass doors and set up to be an office. It was a really cool condo.

I was going to write about to condos up for sale in the Shaw and Eckington neighborhoods but no. I’m going to write up some poor behavior and address some thinking by some members of my ethinic group.

I went to view the Mercury Condos at 1413 5th St. Well 1 condo as the other 3 units had sold. It was a lovely looking condo, spacious, as compared to the one on Quincy. The agent was in the back with another person when I walked in. When I saw the crowd she was with I thought, “oh, no you didn’t”. The woman viewing the condo came with her two sons and she was wearing curlers in her hair. Curlers. I don’t like running outside my house to grab the paper in curlers. The only place outside your home you should be seen in curlers is the ER, the laundramat, and the Piggly Wiggly, maybe the Dollar Store, maybe. That is too ghetto. Oh by the by, all of us were black, the woman, the kids, the agent and me.

The kids wandered outside and after taking a look at the condo so did I. There was a streetperson. He asked the boys, “you live there?” Even though there was no contract on it the boys answered yes. The streetperson didn’t believe them, and said no black people lived there. The gentrification discussion sometimes gets into the relm of black and white. But people forget there is a black middle class, even Blacks.

Wondering about the Bill Cosby reference? Y’all haven’t been reading the Boondocks comic lately have you?

Sort of. Cleaned the fridge of the last bits of my roommate’s spill. My roommie did to attempt to clean it but failed to clean all of it. This along with a couple of other things remind me why I should never get a roommate under 25 again. Really. It’s the cleaning issue.

I need to look at the lease again.

I did not clean as much as I wanted today. Laziness got in the way.

In celebration of the DC Courts finally getting their own website, and not being a forgotten corner of the DC Bar’s website, it’s legal day at In Shaw.

The DC Court’s website is very informative, compared to what they previously had, which was nothing. There are forms and instructions on line. They also have operating status, which is useful should it snow, sleet, hail, become code tangerine or something like that. Forms of interest are small claims and the Real Estate foreclosures. It runs a little slow.

Now armed with the tools to sue, be sued and take legal action at less than $200 an hour, I redirect you to NOLO. Particularly, the neighbors and pets section of the site. Click the Auntie Nolo section to see the questions and answers regarding fences, noise, what have you.

You can also see some of the DC Laws on line to find out if certain things are applicable to your situation. Westlaw hosts the DC Code and there is a section in the code about property laws. Your best bet, however, is with the search function, even that might be hit or miss.

A small Dunkin Donuts will open on the corner of NJ and Rhode Island. When? Unknown.

Okay maybe 1st in a series, or last.

How to gentrify your neighborhood, small suggestions on making the sketchy part of town a suitable environment for twitchy suburban types.

Pick Your Hood

You just can’t randomly pick any part of town. No you need to do research. Asking people on real estate and other on-line boards do not count much as research. Driving through at 30+ mph doesn’t count for much either. No this research must be hands on.

First you must hit the books. Wander over to the library of the city you plan to be in. If the city is big enough and old enough there may have been studies of previous attempts of urban development, or demographic changes, or other things that may hint of possible failure or success of new development.

Somewhere in the DC library system there is a book about gentrification of Capitol Hill and why it came to a sudden halt in certain sections. One of the reasons was natural barriers. I don’t know how natural a freeway is, but it is a barrier. Same thing with large public housing complexes, they can cut off gentrification to certain spots if there is a barrier that keeps gentrification from going around the complex. When looking at a neighborhood, look for barriers.

Another aspect of finding an up and coming neighborhood is it’s proximity to a desirable neighborhood. Shaw is next door to Dupont Circle. When Dupont just got too expensive people moved east into Shaw. Almost same thing for Capitol Hill, except that the definition of Capitol Hill just kept moving east. Adams Morgan hadn’t finished getting gentrified before the trend started going northeast into Columbia Heights. The good things of neighborhood A may migrate over to neighborhood B.

Then the neighborhood itself should have something to offer. Proximity to a “better” neighborhood is one, links to transportation is another. If there is a metro station, easy access to major transportation routes, that is a plus. A movie theater might be another plus, or a decent sized grocery store. There should be something there to make residents happy regardless of what happens or doesn’t happen in the future.

Next walk around the neighborhood. What signs are there that gentrification may occur? Better go to the edges for this. If there are no signs of any migration from neighborhood A to B, then don’t bother. Signs can be a house in B 1 block away from the border, that looks like it belongs in A. Some signs are subtle, too subtle to be seen from a car.

Now back to the realestate or other discussion boards. Keep in mind that many participants live in the boonies. For them the city is a wasteland of sin and crime and they would never let their daughters visit there, much less visit. Try to get the opinion of a city dweller, even if they live in the established parts of town. They may know people who moved to where you’re looking.

Gentrification does not spring on its own. There are several factors and you must be aware of them. The environment around the neighborhood in question is one. Maybe later I’ll write about the others. Also, keep in mind these are just my opinions and observations.

Urban Pioneer

Wandering over to the web wondering what on Earth was an “Urban Pioneer” I sought answers. Well generally, as far as I can tell the main thing about an urban pioneer is that he/she chose the city over the suburbs. The city, however, can be anything from Manhattan to Nutbush (channel Tina Turner, here) city limits, which can take some of the cool hip edge off. It also plays off on the urban jungle which our pioneers are to survive, tame and make their own.

Choice is the key thing though. Urban pioneers choose to live in the city. They choose the places they inhabit. Unlike the poor natives of the locale who are kind of stuck and have fewer options. Like the Wild West or the early American Plains, there are Indians. The areas are inhabited, unless the area is some industrial park that had been deserted, most likely there is already life where the urban pioneer sets up stakes to make a claim.

The other thing about the urban pioneer is the sense of adventure. Unlike their suburban counterparts who get the move in ready home in an established neighborhood there is usually some sort of renovation of the dwelling or neighborhood. Adventure can be found in renovation a 19th century brownstone, or being a part of the urban renewal programs taking place in the neighborhood. There is change. They are part of what is to be.

The hipster set of the urban pioneer group, are young, some college educated, folks maybe with some artistic hipster talent or wicked IT skilz. They typically are lower middle class due to their age/point in their career/ choice of career. In other words, not rolling in dough. So they choose the big Victorian or Craftsman bungalow in the seedy part of town over the Jr. bedroom in the inner ring suburbs. Years of neglect and poverty must be repaired, scraped off, tossed out and replaced, and because of the lack of dough, it’s all DIY. So each pioneer’s talent and creativity is thrown in, making each project unique, sometimes a polar opposite of the cookie-cutter version in the ‘burbs. They ( I would say “I” but I think I’ve aged out of this group) will happily document all of it for the web or indy media. In my case it is just to remember what I did, and how cool it was, and the uncool moments, with the pioneer edge can be viewed with some coolness.

In time, young hipsters move out, sell off or just get older. The houses and neighborhood have been renovated. The native peoples, the original inhabitants, their number reduced or eliminated all together. What was to be, now, is. Non-pioneer types move in. Often with very little tolerance for anything out of order. These non-pioneers have a love/hate with the funky mindset that made the neighborhood attractive in the first place, and seek comfort in the uniform cookie cutter life, bringing it to the urban world.

a la Bruce Willis

Wal-Mart that beacon of low wages might be coming to the Nation’s Capitol putting itself at the old Brentwood lot, where a Giant and the Home Depot now sit. Now I am a fan of low prices, but not so much of domestic/foreign slave labor. According to today’s Washington Post Business section, right now they are at the ‘talking’ stage of filling in the space that was supposed to be taken up by K-Mart, Wal-Mart’s struggling rival. However, K-Mart fell on hard times before anything was built and so nothing was built on the site. Right now it is just an empty mud lot. Well there are worse things that could go there, the Kit Kat Klub Stripper Emporium.

Okay you may have seen the example of the not ugly house where the 3rd floor addition does not take away from the street view. Well when you add another floor with no regard of how it is going to look in regard to the other houses…. it’s ugly. Trust me.

The problem with a transitioning area where the prices are on crack sometimes are the renovations for sale. Most of the time the damage is limited to the original footprint of the house. But when the square footage can be increased by a coupla hundred feet, sellers/developers ‘throw’ something up and it ain’t always pretty. However it looks good on the MLS when instead of a 2 bedroom 1 bath, one can advertise a 3 or 4 bedroom with 2 bathrooms. Note that one of the bedrooms usually is the size of a walk in closet, with a window.

So if you own a home in Shaw or any other ‘transitional’ area please for the love of all that is good, think of your additions in a hostilic fashion. Think about how it will look with the other houses surrounding it. Don’t be the one with the ugly house.

Although In Shaw should really stick to Ward 1, 2, & 5 issues, one cannot help but notice that which is over the river in Ward 8. Besides, it is a COUNCIL seat, which would have an impact on all wards.

Dear Former Mayor Marion Barry,

Dude, you’re like 68. For heaven’s sake retire. No, really this time. Didn’t Walter Washington retire from politics after you defeated him for the mayorial bid?

Don’t think that you can’t serve the people of Washington, DC by retiring. There are other things besides politics. There are non-profits out there that would love your leadership and be a bit less taxing, face it you’re not in the best of health. Volunteer your time to a few causes that are near and dear to your heart. If that doesn’t appeal to you, then how about just being an ANC. It will tax you. It doesn’t really pay. But you get to serve people at the most local level ever.

No, please retire. Todays politics are for the young guns like Adrian Fenty (hubba, hubba). With all due respect you are just too old school. It ain’t 1960, or 1970, or 1980. We’ve entered a new century. The old struggles of your time are still here but they aren’t the same, they’ve changed too. Housing and jobs are still a problem, but the old solutions aren’t the answer.

So once again. Move to Florida or Georgia. Find a 5th wife. Ponder the joys of fishing. Retire.

Sincerely,

InShaw Webmistress