This map is of houses sold on these few blocks between 1999 and this year below $500K. There are still plenty of red stars representing sales. The blue are more than likely houses that sold prior to 1999, or the odd property selling at $500K and above. Since I did throw in the more than $500K on the map (not shown) it seems there were a few but not many. Comparing the map from Turnover part 1 to this one, a majority of the 1999-2009 sales were less than 1/2 a mil.
Yet the thing that I find really interesting is not so much the amount houses finally sell for, but the fact there are so many houses that change hands in a 10 year period. It seems to reflect the transient nature of DC or the investor fueled real estate boom of the 2000s.
Let’s say, for the most part, that the blue dots represents long timer residents and the red stars newer residents. It isn’t perfect, as the blue dots could be rentals that turn over every couple of years but never sold, and red stars rentals bought by new investors that remain rentals. On my own block one of the red stars was a rental home that the renters later bought from the owner. But anyway let’s say those red stars represent new blood on the block, in some spots, except that part of the 100 block of P, there is a fair amount of turnover.
If you get on the DC gov website and play with the DC Atlas for Real Property and compare and contrast with other parts of the city regarding final sale prices (which sometimes isn’t the listing price) and turn over, it’s interesting.
Month: November 2009
Turnover part 1
I had this sitting in my draft folder. It is from November 18, 2009. Instead of deleting it I’m going to publish it, fourteen years later (6/15/2023).
This was stolen off of the DC government’s DC Atlas website and what it shows are houses sold between Jan 1, 1999 and yesterday (11/18/2009). More accurately it shows houses sold for more than $1 and below a billion. I had to throw that in when it showed every house with a red star and I discovered the database had some quirky dates of homes being bought by their longtime owners for 0.00, and had to find a way to exclude that misinformation.
Each red star represents a property sale, that’s it. However, one can make guesses that a majority of those sales resulted in some turn over.
Turnover part 1
This was originally posted in 2009. I am revisiting some older posts and reposting them with commentary. This is just a test run.
Re-reading this I see that I did not understand some quirks of real estate, such as when you wind up transferring a property to yourself. This happened to me when I finally got my spouse on the deed. For some odd reason I had to transfer it to myself too.
Simply said, there is turn over. There was plenty of owner turnover, or it appeared so, in the wild years of early gentrification between 1999 and 2009.
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This was stolen off of the DC government’s DC Atlas website and what it shows are houses sold between Jan 1, 1999 and yesterday (Nov 17, 2009). More accurately it shows houses sold for more than $1 and below a billion. I had to throw that in when it showed every house with a red star and I discovered the database had some quirky dates of homes being bought by their longtime owners for 0.00, and had to find a way to exclude that misinformation.
Each red star represents a property sale, that’s it. However, one can make guesses that a majority of those sales resulted in some turn over.
Low Income
Though 2010 is around the corner I wanted to share. If you are a single person and in 2009 and you are making $44,800, you my friend, according to HUD are low income. Funny thing, I know a guy who makes a smidge, as in I rounded up, above low income. I’m sure he considers himself middle class. Middle class by $200. If you’re single making $35,950 you are “very low income,” and if you are single making $21,550 you are obviously working at a non-profit for chicken feed (USPRIG?).
A GS-5 step 1 position, which is what I started off as in DC, and the starting salary of a UDC staff asssitant is less than very low income.
“No one wants to live near poor people”
…isn’t exactly a correct comment, but I have seen it a couple of times on the web regarding mixed income housing and gentrification. I’m mean we’re living in Shaw not Woodly Park or Chevy Chase. I have a hard time imagining that people who bought housing, oh east of 9th Street, were caught completely off guard by the subsidized housing that dots the neighborhood. Than again, maybe some were.
I think of Shaw as economically diverse. You have neighbors in longtime poverty and short term (young, just starting out, etc) poverty, the elderly and disabled on fixed incomes, and others whose incomes wax and wane depending on clients, contracts, sales, rentals, or what have you. But I don’t think it is so much a neighbor’s poverty is as it is their dysfunction. Grad students are broke, but hardly anyone is up in arms about graduate family housing. Plain college students can be broke also (depending on their sources of support) but neighbors do tend to oppose their housing as that population can be a bit too rambunctious and loud, not because they may or may not have money (see Catholic U area for examples of such conflicts).
Shaw’s diversity, economic, racial, etc., is a strength and a challenge. Crime is a huge challenge, so are the blocks of concentrated poverty. In mixed income areas we learn from each other. The more middle class residents learn about the various programs for neighbors in need, the more they can train themselves to be supportive of programs that work and harshly critical of ones that fail and are nothing but fronts for poverty pimps. The more I learn about Bread for the City (CFC# 61733), and N Street Village (CFC# 90946) the more I am impressed by their work and efforts.
But let’s wander back to the question of mixed income housing and if it is possible, would non-poor people be willing to live next to poor people. Well in Shaw, we already do, in townhomes. I have a hard time telling, as it is from causal observation over the years, but the Washington Apartments, along 7th and 6th Avenues, appears to be slowly becoming more racially diverse. As far as I know they aren’t subsidized housing, but I do get the sense that those apartments are economically diverse. Feel free to correct me if I’m totally off base.
Affordable rental housing
What: (Housing Search Clinic) ARE YOU LOOKING FOR AFFORDABLE RENTAL HOUSING?
When: Every Thursday 4:00 pm – 6:00 pm No appointment needed
Where: HCS Training Center 2410 17th street, N.W. Adams Alley, Suite 100 Washington, D.C. 20009
Additional Info: please bring documents that pertain to your personal situation and might help in your housing search. These include all documents related to your income (such as recent pay stubs, TANF, unemployment, disability, child support, pension benefits, alimony, or social security statements) and expenses (such as recent phone, credit card , or utility bills, student and car loan statements) . Please bring information about your current housing (such as a copy or your current lease.)
Learn about recourses to assist you in your housing search
Learn how to best present yourself to a landlord
Learn about other housing options to consider
Learn about affordable housing waiting lists
Get help determining how much you can afford in rent
Meet with a counselor for a housing assessment
HSC is located in Adams Alley. Walk down the alley on 17th street between Euclid and Kalorama Streets. Using the intercom, press # and 100 to be admitted
Anyone wanna take bets on the WD/Shaw Library Windows?
If you walk or ride by the corner of Rhode Island and 7th you’ll see the skeleton of the Waltha Daniels Library going up. When it is all done it will be all modern looking with glass sides. But here’s the thing, we’ve had an unfortunate spate of shootings near the Shaw/ Howard University metro entrance, including one incident yesterday. Worse yet those last few shootings occurred around rush hour. What is this? Are the shooters getting off work or school thinking, “3:30 leave. 4:00 shoot at Quay-Quay. 4:05 run over to the 7-11 and pick up a Coke and some Ding Dongs.” So you mix people with questionable aim, guns and a glass library. I’m sure the library designers are putting in bullet-proof/ shatter-proof glass, but even still.
Guess the problems that used to be at Kelsey Gardens have mosied on down to Lincoln-Westmoreland. Lincoln-Westmoreland had problems on its own before, but was just one of several problem spots up and down 7th Street.
Lincoln-Westmoreland was one of those church sponsored housing buildings that went up in the early 70s. It is named for the two churches involved, the Westmoreland Congregational Church (white) and the Lincoln Memorial Congregational Temple (black), both could be described as being predominately middle class. Apparently these were built to fight poverty. Though it concentrates poverty (a popular thing to do back then) it does provide housing. I should say the Feds chipped in money into the building and was completed in 1971.
Still canning
Though it has been getting colder, I still have tomatoes on the vine. I cut away a bunch of vines, gave away a bunch of green tomatoes, and took in the ones that turned red or yellow. The ripe ones I roasted and canned.
But this time I didn’t use the big canner. I used my regular big pot, that I normally cook huge batches of rice or soup in, and some 1/2 pint Ball jars. Because of the size of them I can ‘can’ these small batches.
I have been enjoying the things I’d canned earlier in the summer and early fall. Yesterday I took out some canned cherries (also in a 1/2 pint jar) heated them up in the microwave, put them in the middle of some smooth yogurt and sprinkled on some maple granola. Good eatin’.
Play Loud for $25 an hour
(Stolen from the BACA blog) One World Studios over in the Bladgen Alley/Naylor Court area is available for music artists to practice their craft.
Economic identity
A comment I got here annoyed me, in the same way that being called white annoys me. I’m an African American, but a pale one, so the attack on my identity, as I see it, irks me. Same thing with the discussions of gentrification and neighborhood change, there is a string of thought that fails to see a neighborhood’s residents in terms of grades of economic diversity. Instead it is the rich, that being anyone not in subsidized housing or elderly on a fixed income, and poor, and very little in between.
Sometime back I got an inquiry from a journalism student, who asked about neighbors couching it it terms of poor neighbors vs rich ones. The more I learn about my neighbors the more I know what I don’t know about them. I can guess whose house is a Section 8, whose retired and on a fixed income, but knowing if someone is on food stamps or other forms of state assistance, I don’t know and really it isn’t any of my business. Same thing for other neighbors who have jobs and careers, So-in-So works for the government, Theotherguy works as IT, She is a freelance graphics artist, Blahblah is an Asst. Director at a non-profit, and Whatshername does something (I’m not sure what) at Pepco. Are these people rich? Wealthy? Not likely. But they are more apt to be ‘wealthier’ or ‘richer’ than neighbors who are unskilled workers or persons starting out in their careers or others for whom employment is problematic. Anywhere else in America So-in-So, Theotherguy and the rest are just middle class people living on a cul-de-sac, here, we become fabulously wealthy.
The money to buy our homes comes from savings, sometimes family members, recently deceased grandparents, and raiding the old 401K for the deposit. The renovation money from 2nd mortgages, building loans, family, savings and once again raiding that 401K. We turn to same resources the rest of middle class America does. Because we’re next door or down the street from people whose economic state is more dire or more obviously distressed, the side by side comparison makes it look like two extremes. Rich and poor.