Because Destructo (my 8 year old son) is who he is, we were heading to the Kaiser Urgent Care Center near Union Station. They had a 2 hour wait as opposed to the 5 hour wait at the Largo UCC. This had us driving from Rhode Island and up 1st, past what was the Sursum Corda Apartments.
In my previous post about churches and housing, I mentioned Immaculate Conception Apartments, now 1330. In the 1970s it seems all the cool churches were doing low income housing. Sursum Corda, based on my quick glance of a June 25, 1972 Washington Post article was the product of St. Aloysius, its school Gonzaga High School, and other Catholic groups who like Immaculate, created an organization to create the housing.
I had to giggle when reading, “Mrs. Brown said crime has gone down markedly since the early days of the project.” When I arrived in the Shaw neighborhood, Sursum Corda was famously crime ridden.
But it was also painful reading the hope in 1972 that the apartment complex would be a new start for residents, providing a better life than what was offered in city public housing. Good intentions do not produce the results desired. Fast forward fifty years and what do you have? Apartment buildings completely divorced from the faith based communities that created them, struggling with crime. Or complexes that are no longer 100% low-income housing, but more market rate with a few subsidized units.