Category: Uncategorized

Quick thought on housing and gentrification

There is someone moving into the neighborhood today, who in 5-10 years will complain that gentrification moved them out. This thought came to me after a quick conversation with an older woman (maybe not quite senior citizen) who was moving into a rental house. A house that has been ‘affordable’ since I’ve been in the neighborhood. And it has had a fair amount of turnover (but that’s because the landlady is horrible) so it remains a housing option.
There is little purity in the gentrification that happens in this neighborhood. All the poor people do not move out at the same time to be replaced by people with more money. Not all the landowners sell when the market is hot, some keep holding on, maybe through greed or apathy, and then the market cools. There is loss, there are fewer housing options for lower income groups, however there isn’t a 100% loss of affordable housing from the market.
I write this from what I’ve observed on my block. At least three houses (there might be more) in the six years I’ve been noticing appear to fall in the ‘affordable’ category and they though the crazy RE market and it’s current cooling have had some turnover with tenants and yet have had the same kind of tenant.

What is this?


Mystery fruit
Originally uploaded by In Shaw

So before the renovation, I threw seeds in things and on the ground. So the front yard is whatever survived construction workers throwing stuff on top, stepping on, etc. The backyard is whatever was there before and this thing.
Look at the picture. What the hey is this thing? It is in a pot so there is a 70% chance I put it there. At first I thought it was a cucumber because the plant is kinda small and it is a clingy plant. Well when the fruit got bigger than a golf ball I knew, not a cucumber. Cuke has little thorny bits, this has soft hairs.
So I had Jimbo come over and used his plant superpowers to determine what it was. First guess was watermelon. But the leaves were wrong for watermelon. Second answer, don’t know. Then somehow Jim put on his landscape architecture hat and made all sorts of suggestions of turning into some garden with a water feature.
So I’m taking this to the people. Any guesses of what this is?

DC taxes hurt small businesses

The problem is the chains will not make the neighborhood a neighborhood, it will just make it another part of generica. Sitting with Richard Layman at a window table at the Big Bear Cafe we very briefly mentioned how the city actually hurts small business. Taxes is one method of putting on the hurt as reported in today’s Post article “Feeling the Pinch of D.C.’s Prosperity.
And the city does give lip service about supporting the arts. Having Warehouse consider closing down, and stressing other live action theaters, art galleries (particularly the ones that don’t feature art that goes well with the living room couch), and other artsy venues with high taxes is quite unsupportive.
Come on there must be a couple of intelligent people on the council who could think of a way to properly tax businesses, small businesses, the businesses who take a chance on transitional neighborhoods like mine, without discouraging them and pushing them out. Why would a 10% cap be bad? If that’s intolerable how’s about a 20% cap? Well Jack (Evans, who supports a 10% cap, though no one else on the Council seems to) I support you.

North Capitol, Catania Bakery

For news about the TC it seems I have to keep up with the Eckington listserv. How wacky is that? Anyway, as some of you know Saturday Catania Bakery was robbed, as sadly one of the many summer crimes that has occured in the area in the past month or so (I’ll be so happy when school starts up). Discussion on the listserv about the robbery brought up this from ANC leader Kris Hammond:

There is some good news. Nicole the owner is currently renovating one of the buildings. Pat Mitchell, myself, Jessica (Nicole’s granddaughter), and Paul of Warehouse on 9th Street recently viewed the property for artist studio potential. We all want the buildings filled and it has been very slow, but I recently learned that there have been some personal extenuating circumstances that are part of the reason. Hopefully it will all change soon. Nicole/Catania just recently successfully rented out office space on the second floor of another building.

Kris

Well good thing that office got leased out.

City of Magnificent Intentions

I can see why children hate history. I’m returning the textbook on the history of the District of Columbia to my library since it is ILL (inter library loan) and it is just depressing. Really, I can see why school children can hate history. I love history. It is like learning about another country, where you can’t get a visa.
The textbook, City of Magnificent Intentions: A History of Washington, District of Columbia is useful in that it is crammed, crammed I say, with dates and facts. What I learned from what little I read and skimmed through has been fascinating. However, I read very little because I could not read this like I have been able to do with other books. Reading, I felt like tons and tons of facts were being shoved at me and the story, the narrative was secondary. It was like reading the encyclopedia…. for those of you who remember encyclopedias when they were in book form.
I understand why the book was written the way it was written. Gotta shove those dates and facts at the kids. You can test for that. But it does not make for leisure reading and I can see how a reader can get resentful.
It is most enjoyable when you flip through it. The photographs of people and locations around the District are interesting and the maps showing growth in the region has been helpful. Reading subsections of chapters is do-able, and pausing to think about what was written, and applying it to the present, allows for ah-ha moments. For example there is a section on neighborhood history and white flight to the suburbs and an organization “Neighbors, Inc”. A caption in the chapter reads:

By fostering communication and cooperation, Neighbors, Inc. helped halt “white flight” in the part of Northwest roughly east of 16th Street and north of Kennedy Street.

It ends on a sad note as it was published in 1997. It leaves with a Control Board overseeing the District government, Marion ‘the bitch set me up’ Barry was re-elected, and downtown DC decaying. Sitting here 10 years in the book’s future with no control board, a young bald mayor named Adrian and a vibrant downtown, I feel good.

Truxton Circle RE location

Between painting (if you haven’t seen me, it’s because I’ve been painting) I stopped to read the Sunday Post. Curious I wanted to see what houses were advertised for sale in the area, and how far Logan East is these days. Well to my surprise I spied a house advertized as “Truxton Circle/ Shaw /Eckington”. Two out of three isn’t bad. But it isn’t in Eckington. Eckington is the other side of Florida Avenue. This house is at 26 Hanover Pl. NW. Nope, Eckington several blocks over. And you can be in Shaw & Truxton Circle at the same time.

Crime and spats

King Karl has reported that the most NW block of the TC has had another robbery this weekend, making it about 5 in the last month for that block. This is a problem, living on the edge of 5D, the getting ignored bit. I don’t know if more patrols would help as for 3 of the 5 (I don’t know what the other 2 were) the houses were entered from the rear. So it would not have been something a passing patrol car would have noticed from the street. Another thing was 2 of the houses, maybe three, had alarm systems. From what I know it seems that having a motion detector helps inspire intruders to vacate promptly.
And filed under ‘I’m not quite sure what to do with this information’ is a spat between neighbors. Not literal neighbors, but people who live in close enough proximity to give the other nasty looks on a regular basis. The problem for me is I know both and a possible 3rd party, and I consider them all to be very nice people. Neighbor A accuses Neighbor B of committing a very bad neighborhood sin (I’m not going to say what it is lest I attract the attention of Neighbor L who gets all worked up about these things) via possible Neighbor C. A confronted B about the thing C was doing on behalf of B. B dismissed A who is now pissed and telling the story. The event seems a little out of character, but completely possible*, for B. So it is another set of people who need to stay away from each other.
I remember surprising someone on the topic of old timers vs newcomers that old timers can have longstanding neighborhood feuds with other old timers. Wrongs that were committed way back when that have never been forgiven or things that were started and just snowballed from there. Newcommers, the same, just the start date is more recent. And sometimes, newcommers can join the old vs old spat and visa versa.
This whole thing just ruined what I was planning on posting, inspired by my priest’s sermon on ‘who is your neighbor’. He said a neighborhood does not make love, love makes a neighborhood. Maybe spats do too, but I’d like less of them, cause I really can’t remember who all can’t be in a room together.

*All things are possible. It is possible that you may find me running down the street 1/2 naked chasing someone with a kitchen knife, unlikely, out of character, but possible.

Foreclosure

The house next door to mine is being sold by the bank. I suspect that the guy who bought it overpaid for the 2bd/1.5 bath no basement and probably overestimated how much he could rent it out for. Rents in the eastern Shaw area (based on a quick Craigslist search) range from $1500- $1700 for similar units. Dude paid about $400K for the place. I’ve been in it, it isn’t worth $400K. Heck, even my beautifully renovated 1/2 painted house isn’t worth $400K.
Now it is on the market for something in the mid 300K range ‘as-is’. Competing with it on the same block is a nicer end unit in the low $400K. I don’t know how the two will play off each other, but have seen at least one set of buyers look at one and then the other.
I realize that this is not the only piece of real estate where some ‘investor’ paid too much and failed to notice that the mortgage, taxes and insurance were more than what the market would bear as a rental. But I’m not all that sympathetic to a group that jacked up the housing prices because they couldn’t gage the market. Also I think this is the same group that ‘renovated’ houses for flipping without a decent eye for beauty only to have their properties sit because they u-g-l-y. But that’s another post, for another day.