Kwame, Kwame, Kwame. Your financial life is more of a mess than we first thought. But it is still normal, if you were like a normal citizen of the District who is underwater with his mortgage, leasing vehicles, buying crap you couldn’t afford with money you ain’t got, along with student loan debt, and credit card debit that is a crazy scary amount. But hey, you’re not Marion Barry, because if you were him you could fail to pay your taxes. Hold up, somebody check to see if he’s cool with the IRS.
However, Brown is still better than Orange, as poo is better than toxic waste. Face it the choices were crap and shyte before this, and I still think old Jack over in Georgetown is a far, far, far better choice than these two. Briefly V. Orange was my councilman over here in Ward 5 and he didn’t seem to know we were a part of his ward and were ignored. Brown has been to a few civic association meetings so he has a better awareness of the neighborhood than Orange. But still, Brown not necessarily my first choice.
So is being $700K in debit a deal breaker? Well the bulk of that is his mortgage. Like many normal Americans he used his house as an ATM, as it is worth about $350-$420K and has a mortgage of about $500K. Okay maybe he put in a bitchin kitchen and maybe one day it will be worth $500K. But the boat, that was just stupid. From the Post article it appears the Browns were trying to keep up with the Jones. As far as I can tell the Jones either have money or are in debt to their eyeballs, I’m guessing the latter. I also suspect there are a lot of Joneses in DC who will be voting in the Democratic primaries and picking the candidate who most represents them.
Orange does have a point about leadership and keeping one’s personal finances in order, and a broken clock is right twice a day. If DC Council members practice bad judgment, such as overvaluing an asset, ignoring the risk when income is loss (Brown’s wife left the workforce in all this) and more responsibilities (2 kids) added. Then there is taking on liabilities for well meaning reasons (the stupid boat), that come with extra costs (maintenance) that are ignored at the time of purchase due to newbie ignorance. Still Brown is better than Orange. Orange proved that he was out of touch with reality with his failed, failed, failed mayoral campaign. It wasn’t that he didn’t win, it’s just that he only got 2.9% of the vote and spent money trying to get elected as if he were a real front runner.
Category: Observations
Comment Spam
There aren’t a lot of comments here. Because I get a lot of comment spam that doesn’t make it to the blog. I just got this:
This is my first time I have visited {here|this site|your site}. I found a lot of interesting {stuff|information} in your blog. From the {tons|volume} of comments on your {articles|posts}, I guess I am not the only one! keep up the {good|great|impressive} work.
Gee, a comment form.
Noise
Apparently from the Shaw listserv and a conversation/discussion/ friendly debate I had with Truxton Circle Scott about the BBC liquor license, noise is a theme.
It seems that someone was having a party. A loud one somewhere around N and 6th Streets. It went a little late, late enough for someone to take the mike and tell their fellow party attendees to keep it down for the neighbors before blasting more music. Loud enough for people to call the cops. If the cops came or not, little matter. In my own experience the problem is cops come, the music may get turned down, cops leave, music/noise goes back up. Neighbors lash out in variety of ways, one is cultivating deep hatred that may manifest itself at the next community ‘we all need to work together’ thing.
Scott and I were talking about some of the concerns surrounding the Big Bear Café liquor license. Scott is completely for it, even though the hours on the application go way past their current to the witching hours. And we got to talking about volunteer agreements and how they are applied where he works and where his tenant/housemate works. He’s in a completely commercial area, they close fairly early 10-11PM though they can go to 2AM, housemate in a very mixed part of Dupont, where they shut down at 10-11PM and have to gently put glass bottles in receptacles because of noise. Both are restaurants.
Scotty (you know I love you) was being dismissive of my noise concerns, saying we live in a city, it’s noisy. I was trying to relate how with different noises, some bother me, others don’t. Sirens blaring on the next street, the now rare gunshots, sometimes the call to prayer from the mosque, cars passing, odd firecrackers a block off, and buses I can tolerate enough to sleep though. Of course the 5AM-ish call to prayer has a 25% chance of waking me up a good hour before my alarm goes off and pissing me off enough to write a terse letter to the imam. People carrying on a prolonged BS session in their yards (patios/ decks) along the alley will keep me up. Dumping your glass recyclables in the alley at 2AM will definitely wake me up. Base, I can feel through my bed and is simply intolerable. If it is a car, I let it pass. If it is a neighbor I debate whether I want to get dressed and ask them to turn it down or do I want to reach over to the phone and call the cops?
There was an illegal night club on P St. near North Cap. I passed by it once when someone with drums was practicing. My impression was that it was being used as band practice space and seemed buffered by the Slater and Langston schools to be no bother to the residents of the area. Imagine my surprise when a resident who lives way on the other end of P said he could hear the music inside his house. He made an effort to shut the place down.
Some parts of the city are louder than others and the type of noise is different depending where you go.
Dear Washington Post- Stop killing yourself
Last night I got a phone call from someone trying to get me to subscribe to your new “Capital Business” publication, most likely because I am a regular weekly & weekend subscriber. I told the woman on the other end no and explained why and mentioned that I have pondered canceling my regular subscription all together.
The “Capital Business” publication lacks what I liked about your old business section, before you gutted it. I want to look at a list of stocks. I want to see what are their dividends if any, and their P/E ratios. I can’t get that in your daily minuscule section of business in the A section of the paper, and it doesn’t appear in “Capital Business” either. I don’t buy what I don’t want.
This call happened while ‘the Help’ was over for dinner. He’s got a few friends in the newspaper/ broadcasting paid-journalism field. He told me of a conversation he’s had with these friends, and how they mentioned your editorial staff is paying more attention to the online side than to the print side, which might explain the typos and other errors. And there was something about your copywriters, can’t remember what, but there is something wrong there. Those friends were frightened about the path your paper seems to be taking. “Frightened” was the word they used and they have been inside. The quality of the paper has gone downhill really fast in the 15 years I’ve been reading it. It may have started with the buy-outs.
As I’ve said, I pondered canceling my weekday subscription. Want to know what’s keeping me, so far? Comics, metro, and food. In that order. Sometimes the theater listings. If the Washington Times ever vamped up and expanded their comics you’d be in trouble. I also value the Post as fish wrap. It’s handing for wetness in the basement, wrapping packages, soaking up bacon grease or other fried foods, paint projects, washing windows, weed-block, and a variety of projects around the house. For that I could use any newspaper, except the City Paper for the food things, that paper seems unclean.
Maybe your business model or some consultant has told you that the Internets is where it’s at. Ok. I hope that’s bringing in money and justifying your $490 a share price. Maybe you don’t need paper subscribers, with our need for deliverymen who knock over our pots and break our plants.
Where’s Cato.org when you need them?
So they are closing the area around the Convention Center. Ok.
They are closing the streets to cars.
Fine.
They are restricting parking.
Ok.
They are fencing the streets surrounding the Center and restricting resident and pedestrian access.
Oh, no. That’s sounds like someone’s 4th Amemdment rights are going to get violated!
I do hope residents do get a lawyer because it just seems to me that their American right to move freely and access their homes, entertain guests will be violated for 48 (or more) hours. And though some of you would gladly give up your Constitutional rights for any length of time for the shiny beads of security, nobody should be forced to have to carry around ID just so they can go home. Seriously, if events like this require this level of security, they really should have it somewhere in West Virginia or Camp David or somewhere out in the middle of nowhere.
Today it’s the residents of Mt. Vernon Sq for 48 hours, the next day it may be a few weeks for the residents of Trinidad….. oh, never mind.
Addition- Looking around I came across Flex Your Rights when trying fond info on what citizens can do regarding police barricades around their homes.
Death, taxes and a building that’s gonna fall
This is the alley side of 1607 New Jersey Avenue, NW. I’ve been told by one citizen living on this block that he’s fearful when walking by this building because it looks like it is going to topple over at any moment. It’s got missing bricks at the base on the alley. It bows out. Its got some pretty wicked looking cracks and I think that upper window is broken.
Well I took a look on the property tax database and 1607 is owned by Arvid W Broadus who is receiving the Senior Citizen Homestead Deduction. Mr. Broadus is dead. According to the Social Security Death Index he died last year 16 Jan 2009 (born 30 Sep 1919) and unfortunately he didn’t make it to his 90 birthday. Unfortunately for us, and anyone walking by this structure, it hasn’t turned over to the living.
ADDITION- Apparently people still read this blog, even journalists. It appears Channel 7 did a story on this house.
Turnover part 2
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.
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.
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.
U.G.L.Y. you ain't got no alibi
This picture was taken some 3 years back of a house on the 1500 block of 3rd Street, NW. Since this picture was taken and I ranted about it’s ugliness in 2004, I have yet to see anybody living in it. Three years and nothing, all that ugly for naught. Of course the house might have other problems.
Another house that has seemingly sat vacant for years is at the corner of Marion and Q Sts NW. It is not so much ugly as it is confusing. There are two windows, one sitting on top of the other, allowing light into a space, well I’m not sure how that space is to be used. It would make a lovely spot for a spiral staircase, but I’m not sure where one would be going and the reasons for traffic flow in and out are not obvious. Now, it looks like there might have been a door there long time ago, and maybe the house was renovated to look like this but it just don’t make no sense.
Lastly, not a house but a business, is the Check ‘n’ Go or the rob people of their paycheck with usury fees. Note the top portions where windows have been busted in and out and the masonry (you may need to click on the photo to get to a bigger image). Yes, I know Historic Districts would prevent the remuddling, and make my whites whiter, my brights brighter and reduce crime by 98%. But some of you know how I hate history being prostituted out for reasons other than strong history. Besides, ugly remuddling would be true to the historic slum look because the ‘Shaw’ identity seems to be more 1960s urban renewal than 1890s Victorian. And what’s more true to the story than a check cashing place in a messed up building?
I believe in the invisible hand of the market coming down and smiting those who would make the ugly. They have been punished by their wickedness with properties that bear little fruit. May those who screwed up residential properties wail and nash their teeth and pay the vacant property tax. As for the ugly commercial property, maybe location, location, location may override the ugly when a business is looking for a place to be (and I don’t see a long life for the check cashing place), or maybe not.