Category: History

Affordable Housing of the Past is Illegal

I was listening to an audiobook and was annoyed with one of the prescriptions that authors are forced to tack on to their books. Housing was a background issue. It would have made more sense if the prescription was unionizing, not touting zoning for more multifamily housing, a topic explored at the 11 hour.

What annoyed me was, after working on the history of this neighborhood, that a historical solution that worked was ignored. Boarding houses and taking in boarders. Many people in Truxton Circle, homeowners and renters, had boarders.

Men and women in boarding house room
1943 DC Boarding House

However, this very low rung in the housing is almost illegal. Like mobile homes (another affordable housing product illegal in many municipalities), the laws on the books make such a thing impossible to run legally. There are illegal boarding houses in DC. We find out about them when someone dies in a fire.

We’d prefer someone to live in a tent in a park, then have a house with all sorts of people coming in and out, where people live for cheap.  I’m not going to romanticize boarding houses either. Poorly run ones were a nuisance. But, they were a roof over a person’s head. Four solid walls (maybe thin walls) where they could call home.

Back when I was in elementary school and at an age where we made friends easily, I had a ‘friend’ who lived in a boarding house near the school. Her family, mother, father and maybe a sibling, all lived in a room in the back of this 2 story frame house that no longer exists. I remember the room being poorly lit & junky. This was a working class Black neighborhood, and if you couldn’t afford to rent a whole house or get into the public housing, well you were pretty bad off.

The author, like Jane Jacobs, assumed a type of housing would make it affordable. Jacobs believed older housing was affordable. I’m in my youngest house, built in 1940, cheap is the last word I’d use to describe it. And likewise, there are multi-unit houses, houses carved up into condos, that are out of the price range for most. Even if DC allowed people to live in converted Home Depot sheds on land they rented or owned, the prices will find a way to jack up.

Okay. Rant over.

DC Law & Order: Cops and Robbers

I’m going to highlight something of interest to me. The National Archives will host a virtual Genealogy Fair with a variety of videos with a live Q&A. Something that may be of interest is M Marie Maxwell’s DC Law & Order: Cops and Robbers or how to look up your DC criminal relatives from the past. That last part is not official. This should be scheduled sometime in early June.

I’ve used some things from what is planned for the geni fair on this blog. The post for Thomas Lawler and James Boswell use a National Archives series, Personnel Case Files, ca. 1861–1950.

James T. Allen of Blagden Alley 1889

Old photo of a sullen man
James T. Allen, 1889. Painter Blagden Alley

This man was arrested for larceny. According to the info on the other side of this card he was a painter. Looking in the city directory, a James T. Allen who was a painter who lived in Blagden Alley. The card also said he had brown hair and light blue eyes, and that he was a very light mulatto. Sure. Genes are funny things.

It also says he was born in Massachusetts. I can’t find other James T. Allens born in MA around the 1890s in DC. Plenty of James and James T Allens in DC, just not any from Massachusetts.

WSIC-1950s sell off- 45 Bates Street NW-Revised

I need to clean up the data on this old post from 2022. This was before I started noticing a pattern with the WSIC houses. I’m just going to focus on the property history and not the individuals.

From my last post, I mentioned I would look at a property that was transfer from the Washington Sanitary Improvement Company (WSIC) to three men, who then sold it to a person marking the exit of WSIC from Truxton Circle in the 1950s.

https://tile.loc.gov/image-services/iiif/service:gmd:gmd385m:g3851m:g3851bm:gct00135a:ca000042/5943,1454,793,955/397,/0/default.jpg45 Bates St NW is on square 615 in Truxton Circle. During the time of WSIC’s ownership it sat on lot 134. Currently it is now lot 292.

I don’t have the exact date when WSIC came to posses 45 Bates and other homes on the block. In 1903 parties (George Sternberg and George Kober) involved with the Washington Sanitary Improvement Company (WSIC) owned many lots on Sq. 615. So fast forward to June 1950 and the property is transferred from WSIC to the Washington Loan & Trust Company, then from the Washington Loan and Trust Co. to business partners Nathaniel J. Taube, Nathan Levin and James B. Evans. The business partners borrowed $3 million dollars for Investors Diversified Services Inc. of Minnesota.

photo of property

So let’s get onto the property history:

  • December 1950 Colonial Investment Co. (represented by James B. Evans, Nathan Levin, and Nathaniel J. Taube) sold half of 45 Bates St NW to Kathleen S. and William W. Johnson.
  • December 1950 the Johnsons got a mortgage from (not named) Colonial Mortgage Co.’s trustees, Abraham H. Levin (Nathan‘s brother) and Robert G. Weightman for $2,400.
  • December 1950 Evans, Levin and Taube sold the other half of 45 Bates to George M. and Olivia V. Davis.
  • December 1950 Mr. and Mrs. Davis borrowed $2,400 from Levin and Weightman.
  • October 1961 the Davis household was released from their mortgage.
  • December 1961 the Johnsons were released from their mortgage.
  • July 1970 Kathleen transferred the property to William W. who in the next document transferred it to Florence Ann Johnson.
  • 1970-2013 lots of stuff happened that I don’t care about.
  • December, Friday the 13th, 2013 Olivia V. Davis Estate, apparently represented by heir Sterling A. Richardson, who transferred it from the estate to himself.
  • January 2014 Richardson sold his 1/2 of 45 Bates to Cameron Properties of DC, Inc.
  • 2014-2017 lien drama.
  • August 2017, Eric M. Rome, who was representing the estate of Florence A. Johnson-Morrison (who might have died in 2014) and Cameron Properties of DC, Inc, sold the whole property to 45 Bates Street NW LLC.