Category: Uncategorized

Clean Up

Dear Friends and Neighbors,

Did you seen the Green Team cleaning up 14th & U Streets this past weekend?

This past Friday marked the beginning of a 45 day, seven day a week, demonstration project to clean, maintain and enhance the 14th & U Commercial

District. The program is a partnership between:

> 14th & U Main Street Initiative (14th & U MSI)

> Coalition For the Homeless (CFH)

> University of the District of Columbia-Extension Program (UDC-EP)

The demonstration project will provide 5 full time and 5 part time positions through the end of October. The demonstration project will be managed by the Coalition for the Homeless, located and 13th & Massachusetts, and is

being financed by UDC-EP and by PN Hoffman, which has pledged a five-year annual $10,000 contribution as part of a PUD application before the city for their project on 14th Street between V Street and W Street.

The demonstration project will spend this week focused upon trash and weeds.

Many sidewalks, gutters, alleys and tree boxes along the corridor have not seen any maintenance this year. We are in need of a volunteer or

volunteers to provide support for the team as it works upon clearing the overgrown tree boxes. Many of the tree boxes have been landscaped with

flowers and other plants that should be retained and we could use help in identifying the desired plants and in identifying the removable weeds,

particularly for the lower 14th Street areas. Please contact Scott Pomeroy at 202.550.0769 if you are available. The following week they will begin to focus on removing graffiti and posters from the corridor, working in conjunction with the city to make a visible impact all along the corridor.

The program is designed to supplement existing efforts by DPW, merchants, property owners and residents not to replace those efforts. Merchants and commercial property owners are still legally responsible for the maintenance of the area in front of their businesses from the store front to 18² into the curb. The goal of the demonstration project is to raise awareness for the need of the services being provided and to raise funds to enable the program to expand to a year round program that would hire 24 full-time

workers and would be able to expand services into other neighborhood commercial districts. The expanded program will also include a two-day

hospitality, heritage and ambassador training program conducted by Cultural Tourism DC, a landscaping training program by UDC, and an school-based landscaping and heritage training program.

Learn more about this program and other projects and goals of the 14th & U Main Street Initiative at our 1st Annual Membership Meeting that will occur

on Monday, September 29th at the True Reformer Building at 1200 U Street, NW from 6:00 ­8:30.

PSA 312 Meeting

Sadly only 2 residents showed up. Basically Sgt. Evans went over the crime stats and we 2 citizens mentioned crime hot spots, which if there are any hot spot past 4th St, they weren’t reported because there weren’t any east of 4th St residents there.

The community of PSA 312 has not shown up for meetings in the past quarter in any great number. Sometimes this is the fault of the police who have sometimes failed to send a representative. A lot of time the residents can be faulted for their failure to come to the meetings in numbers greater than 3.

This was a good weekend for the block.

Brian was cleaning the sidewalk and streets.

My new neighbors were tearing apart/rehabbing the house, meeting other neighbors, and playing with the neigborhood kids.

The sun was shining.

Kelly showed me a bullet they had pulled out of the floor as they have been rehabbing the house and liked the info I had on the 1930 version of the neighborhood.

All the neighbors (okay not all we still have the anti-social types) were out talking to each other, exchanging information, it was beautiful.

Gettin’ in touch with my inner Republican

I wonder if some neighborhoods are better because residents take on some problems themselves with out waiting for the city government to take a lead?

This weekend I tackled the problem of illegal dumping in backyards. Well one backyard in particular. The owners, who do not live there, had cleaned out the yard that was filled with wet cardboard boxes, bags of garbage and discarded furniture. Well that lasted a good month before someone dumped a couch and a bedspring in the yard. The problem I saw, was that the yard was open and exposed to anyone coming through the alley and ripe for dumpers as well as prositutes and crack-heads.

What business of is it of mine? Well when I look out my window I see it, and it is ugly. It attracts rats and I don’t want rats getting too comfy close to my house. Same goes for crackheads.

One way is to complain to DCRA. But that may take weeks or months and nothing may happen.

I decided to close up the hole. I took about $17 worth of materials and used what was in the alley to fill the 6 ft wide hole in the fence. So far so good. It is still up. I don’t see trash. I can’t see into the yard.

My inner Republican claims credit. It says that you shouldn’t believe that government can solve your problems. That if you want something done you’ll have to make it a DIY project. Trash, clean it up yourself & hire a guy to take it away. Noise, ask the violator nicely if that doesn’t work, sue them. When I noticed crackheads wandering into neighbors fenced yards I informed them. When that didn’t seem to stop the problem I offered to put locks on the gates. Yes, there are somethings you can’t do yourself but let’s just work on the stuff you can.

DC City Services Form

http://dc.gov/citizen/request.shtm

When it is not a rush, as a reply may come 5 days later.

Kennedy Playground to Open!!!!!!

“After more than a decade of lobbying, planning, construction, and interminable delays, the new Kennedy Recreation Center at the Kennedy Playground will open on Thursday, August 28, 2003, with ceremonies beginning at 6:00PM.

Mayor Williams, Ward 2 Councilmember Evans, and other dignitaries are expected to be on hand. The entrance to the rec center is on the east side of the 1400 block of 7th Street, NW, just south of P Street.

The new center’s facilities include an indoor gymnasium, weight training room, an arts and crafts room, two classrooms, a computer lab, locker rooms and showers, a tennis court, two children’s play areas, and a new outdoor basketball court, in addition to the baseball field and picnic area that existed previously.

The successful completion and opening of this important facility is a milestone for our community. The opening ceremonies are free and open to the public, so please attend if your schedule permits. And be sure to let your neighbors know, especially kids, that the new rec center will begin normal operations the next day. Hours of operation and schedules of activities will be available at the center.

If you can’t attend the opening, please plan on stopping by for a tour of the facility when your schedule permits.”

Diversity

Soon in a week or a month Brett and Ira will move in. At that point my block will have a gay couple, a white nuclear family, a coupla of white married couples, black families (nuclear and other), Africans (immigrants), a hispanic family, single females (black and white), 1 single black male, roommate situations, senior citizens, and a Howard U student group house. We got professionals, blue collars and section 8s. We are diverse. Tolerating each other almost appears possible. People who don’t like each other aren’t on speaking terms anyway, and since they are not actively going after each other, I’ll call it tolerance.

Drama Mamma is getting tolerable. There is still the large band of kids who congregate in front of her house and bounce the ball up and down the walkway at all hours. But I’m not hearing the loud music at all hours. I’m not hearing the stereo blasting so loud that I can hear it from inside the house. The people coming through her house are less obnoxious now. I don’t foresee any more guests simulating sex acts on cars in front of my house anymore.

The Seventh Day Adventist church on the block is tolerable. They feed the hungry on Sundays and manage it well. The people they serve don’t congregate in large numbers outside. They don’t loiter.

The mosque down the block is tolerable. So far (knock on wood) I have not been woken to the sounds of the 5 something-ish o’clock call to prayer.

The crowds and crackheads from the block up…. well we’re still working on that.

Residents in Shaw Fight for Their Street

Cars Damaged in ‘Retaliation’ Attacks

By Petula Dvorak

Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, August 21, 2003; Page DZ03

The first attack came before midnight, and it was loud. A brick shattered the driver’s and passenger-side windows in a blue convertible and thunked off the side of the green car parked in the next space.

Then another brick cracked the windshield of a white car. More bricks and some rocks began hitting the house, thudding against the wall, clanging on the burglar bars.

“It was so clearly an act of retaliation, it was beyond vandalism or destruction of property,” said resident Brian Gehman as he stood in the glow of a street lamp at midnight last week, waiting for police to arrive.

Gehman and his neighbors have been at war this summer with drug dealers, prostitutes and shady customers who do business on the short street they’re trying to call home. On many of the mornings after they’ve summoned police, residents have awakened to scratched vehicles and shattered windows, gunfire and, once, to find that the foam in a car’s headrest had been ripped apart by a bullet.

“This summer is the worst I’ve ever seen it,” said Jim Norris, who recently repaired several thousand dollars of damage done to his car by bricks and bullets. Norris has lived on the 400 block of Richardson Place NW for two years.

Richardson Place is south of the intersection of Florida, New Jersey and Rhode Island avenues. Twenty steps north of the small street are gas stations and liquor stores where prostitutes stand in the fluorescent glow, waving down customers.

Many nights, Gehman and his neighbors hear arguments and the screech of vehicles in their cobblestone alley. Stolen and abandoned vehicles are dumped there and left for months and, in one case, two years, residents said.

The neighbors record statistics on all vehicles left there and report them to the Department of Public Works for towing.

Late last Monday night, Gehman and Stephen Szibler, who has lived on Richardson Place for three years, circled a car with expired plates that showed up outside their homes.

Two people rounded the corner and told them to stop meddling. The residents went inside to avoid further confrontation and about 30 minutes later, the hail of bricks and rocks began.

Police arrived several hours later. No police were assigned to the local Patrol Service Area (PSA) that night, so officers assigned to other parts of the Third District left their posts to respond.

“We have no consistent policing here,” Szibler said. “We meet a sergeant, he’s around for six months, then he’s gone, and we have to start all over again. Nobody has been able to do anything about the problems on this corner.”

Convinced that the abandoned cars are the magnet for most of the crime there, he wrote a letter this summer to Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D) explaining the situation:

“I do not choose to live in a junk car lot. I recently paid $150 to have my old car properly registered and the license updated, not to mention registration fees and repairs, and initial licensing and tax fees. Why can’t the police do their job and ticket and/or have these cars towed? Why can’t they do it on a regular basis? Why do they have to be begged and pleaded with to do their job?”

Lt. Alveta Dennis, the officer in charge of the local PSA, said abandoned cars are not the only magnets for crime in the area. A school playground near Richardson Place remains unlocked all night, despite police efforts to lock it down, she said. The schoolyard is a hangout for drug users and other troublemakers, she said, acknowledging the difficulty she has had with staff turnover in the area. “It’s difficult to keep anyone in place for a while.”

Of the block, Dennis said, “They have problems there. They are not outrageous problems, but they are unacceptable.”