Tag: Housing

Do it for the old people

I swear there are certain promises and proposals that get hoisted up the flagpole that supposedly wave you through, “affordable housing”, “senior housing”, youth something or other. I gather you propose these things and certain rules no longer apply to you and thus you get away with all sorts of foolishness. Yesterday I wandered by a site that, according to the historic papers I had been going through (1985-1999), should have had housing and job training. That site has none of those things in 2008. I’ll have to look to find out what the heck happened or why things didn’t happen.
According to our friends in Mt. Vernon Square, someone is suggesting a boatload of foolishness under the flag of elderly housing. There are requests for zoning variances for 1238 and 1242 New Jersey Avenue. According to Si’s letter (seen here) the owner is suggesting that he going to building housing for the elderly, despite making the previous elderly tenant run for her life when 1242’s structure failed and collapsed. Take a read of Si’s letter, she’s a bit more clearer about this than I.

Addition: If you are here from the DC Blogs link a list of candidates is found in my comment here.

How’s it looking on your block?

Housing that is? I can read the Post about regional and national trends but what’s happening on your block? Mine? A few houses up for sale, a few more houses getting rehabbed and there is the confusing tale of one foreclosure that I can’t tell who all the players are without a detailed playbill. One of the houses getting rehabbed was a foreclosure, but that was a case of an investor who spent too much on the property. And now that one of our more louder drama prone neighbors has relocated, a loudmouth lawyer with a cell phone is the only thing that stands between me and peace and quiet.
Also on the housing front, down in the Hanover region of the TC there is to be a permament housing shelter for 17 homeless women on 57 O St. NW. According to the mayor’s press office:”..the Dunbar Apartments, the first permanent supportive housing project for women funded by the Fenty Administration. The project will not only provide apartments for chronically homeless residents, but comprehensive support services as well.”

Renting out rooms

DCRA has their website, ThisShouldBeIllegal.Com mainly aimed at college kids to get them to rat out their landlords. Well it has proven helpful to me, answering something I wondered about. I’ve always had roommate, ranging from my sister in my parents home, to dormmates in college, group housemates in grad school, to regular run of the mill roommates. So when I bought the house I didn’t figure on changing my lifestyle. I kept having roommates. Anyway, I worried that I was on the wrong side of the law as I wasn’t licensed or whatever the hell DCRA wanted. But according to the comments on one of DCRA’s posts “If you are living in the house, you can have up to 3 unrelated people living with you without being flagged for a business license. If you did not reside there, you would have to get a license.”
So I guess I’m fine, as I only have one non-related person in the house. Two would drive me nuts. Also I left behind the ‘joys’ of group house living and would be happy never to experience that again.

Neighborhood Character in Post

There is some disagreement between me and my source, but I think I know of the “Derrick” in the article appearing in Sunday’s Post article “After A Few Months in DC, It’s Not Just The Rental Options That Stink.” The author moves in a group house on 1st St NW, and though he says it’s near U Street, the “Derrick” he meets sounds too much like a Truxton Circle “Derrick” who haunts 1st St. This Derrick hits the author up for a beer so he could celebrate his anniversary with his wife. This was the give away, as there is a TC Derrick who is known for hitting people up for beer and acting like a self appointed street mayor. Yet my source thought 1st Street could possibly have several Derricks, besides the TC Derrick, who is actually named Derrick and may ask for a beer.
So Bloomingdale, y’all got any storytelling beer-mooching Derricks up there?
Anyway, one of the things that made my source doubt that the Post’s Derrick and the TC Derrick were one in the same was the rest of the author’s story. Apparently, the author moved in without signing a lease. The guy who was on the lease collected the housemates money but never paid the landlord and they all got evicted. Which sounds like the same thing that happened to Nora Bombay’s brother in Florida, where the housemate collecting the rent ran off with the money and everyone got kicked out. But then again, that was a case of don’t have crackheads for roommates, and especially don’t give them the rent money.
I really don’t understand. Almost all the places I rented, despite having roommates, I paid the landlord or manager directly. The only sort of exception was when I was renting in DC and had occasional roommates who were staying for a few months, where I was collecting the rent.
A word of advice kids, get on the lease and/or at least have management aware that you have the right to stay there. You never know when you’ll get locked out of the apartment/condo and need to convince the doordude that you belong there and he needs to let you in.

History lesson, and no this won’t be on the test

I have something. It is long and if you have time I’d like you to read it and give your thoughts. I’m leaving off the date and the source so I can ask you the following questions:
When do you think this was written? What year, what decade? Language will give a clue.
After reading the following passage, how do you see DC’s housing problem?

Washington’s Problem (select part of report sumbitted to govt body) by John Nolen (govt employee):

__________’s long study of the housing problem in Washington has revealed without question that the inhabited alleys are not only the most serious part of the situation but are, to a great extent, the cause of a general housing problem in the sections of the city in which they are most predominant. Moreover, relative to other cities in the United States, the inhabited alleys of Washington are as serious from a social, health and public welfare point of view as are some of the slums in the industrial centers.
The general importance of the inhabited alley situation to the city as a whole lies in the social and economic blight that envelops many alley dwelling area. These areas have so depreciated that both white and colored population area moving away to the better neighborhoods. Although in the old city of Washington all but one section declined in total population during the last decade, and all sections declined in white population an average of 20%, in more than half of the old city the colored population increased, so that many section heretofore predominantly white have changed in the short period of ten years to predominately colored. This encroachment, especially in the northwest direction in areas that have always been white, has resulted in part from the depreciation of the neighborhoods normally occupied by colored residents of the better economic class. This shift in population over such a short period of time seriously affects property values and the use of existing school facilities, and raises many other municipal problems. The increase in vacancies in the blighted areas has brought pressure for changing the zoning of residential area to commercial in sections of the city where there is already an ample supply of commercial area. Moreover, a normal proportionate share of improvements to private property during the last eight or ten years has failed to go into the reconstruction of the deteriorated residential portions of the old city. There has been a relatively insignificant increase in assessed values affecting the tax income of the municipality from these areas. All of these forces, operating apparently to an increasing degree, have left areas of stagnation and blight, many of which are favorably situated for housing the lowest income groups in a manner conducive to the public welfare and an adequate return on private capital. Such enterprises, aside from their local benefit, should have a city-wide effect in stabilizing the character and value of neighborhoods.

Fun with Redfin: Houses Under $200K

Seven years ago, when I started looking for a place to buy, the RE market was starting its roller coaster ride up to crazy. In the “better” neighborhoods houses didn’t stay on the market very long and there were bidding wars. I was looking for fee-simple places under $125K, which was hard but not impossible. The third house I looked at, was way less than $125K and on a street I liked, so I bought it.
Fast forward, the roller coaster has gone up, and now it is heading down. Playing around with Redfin I decided to see what was out there and lo and behold prices that start with a ‘1’ are back. Just not a lot of them.
There are a bunch of under $175K condos over in the Petworth and Fort Totten area, if we want to limit this to NW DC. Bump the search up to $200K and a house will appear in Columbia Heights.
Expand the under $175K search to NE DC and more houses do appear in Frozen Tropics’ Trinidad.
The point is that the affordable house I believe is coming back. Right now it’s a handyman special or a about to be foreclosed condo. It’s not luxury for cheap but something to start with.

A plan for Bates Street

I have the 1968-1974 (the dates I’m unsure of) brochure of “A Plan for Bates Street” in PDF form. It’s a big file and because it is so large, I’m not posting here. However, I will mail it to folks who ask (offer expires in 30 days). Basically, like the title says, it was the government’s plan for the two blocks of Bates, to improve the housing.
Houses on Bates Street (well the houses on Bates I’ve been in) are deep and some of them are divided into two units. It seems that when they were initially built by Washington Sanitary Housing (or Washington Sanitary Improvement, I’m still working on the facts of this), they may have all been two unit structures. You can see it in the placement of windows and doors.
The wonderful fellows at Truxton Circle have a few pictures from the brochure. This first one shows the street plan for squares 552 & 615. It appears there was the intention to remove some structures for the creation of small parks, a tot lot, a teen lot and parking. Spaces for adults apparently were to be carved out of existing space. The second picture, shows a typical Bates Street house prior to any renovation. The first and second floor are two separate units with their own living rooms and kitchens. The plan was to combine the two to make one unit, replace 2nd unit doors with windows, move the kitchen to the 1st floor center, and create more bedrooms, going from 1 to 3 or 4, as seen here.
Looking around Bates Street now, there seem to be fewer 2 unit houses than 1 units.

Thursday-Friday Grab Bag

Warning for some of you car owners, traffic enforncement is now in tow. I’ve been seeing cars get moved by the city on a regular basis. Today I saw a truck taking away a car on New Jersey Avenue. The day before it was moving a car on R St. You’ve asked for city services, and well you got one.

With the housing problem we are surprised why? Remember oh, back to 2004, 2005, and 2006 when I said real estate agents were on crack and the houses were overpriced? So, what happened? We discovered the houses were overpriced. The bubble deflated. I can’t say burst because it’s not like the houses are worthless, just worth less. We knew people were taking out loans too large for them to handle. We knew this day would come. We knew a few years back that there would be a lot of foreclosures, and guess what? 2008, there are a lot of foreclosures. Who knew? Yes, there are people who are losing their homes, but where I am, so are a lot of developers and flippers and speculators who came into Shaw, looking for a quick buck. Some of them got out in time. A good number didn’t and so we are stuck, until the next housing uptick, with vacant, 1/2 done, or crapily done houses, and cut-up townhomes created into funny looking condos.

Central Union Mission is going downtown. And there was great rejoicing in Pentworth and some other NW neighborhoods. For lo, they moveth the men’s shelter to 65 Mass Ave NW, where they are not far from other homeless services. And someone remind me, wasn’t the Gales School (65 Mass Ave) used as a shelter before?

I’d support more harpsichord players. Because they are artists, performing artists. And tearooms? Since I don’t drink coffee, I’m stuck with loving Teaism, so if the landed gentry come in and put in tearooms, I’m all for it. Besides I spent most of my undergrad years studying the rise and fall of the British aristocracy, I’d be pleased to observe them up close.

DC is 1st time homebuyer friendly

Well, not in terms of prices, but programs. So in order to do something useful with my $50 Manolo housing rant, let me tell you of why I know DC is a great place to be a first time homeowner.

$5000 Tax Credit (pdf form)
OK, five grand is just a drop in the bucket, but I found the refund I got back for the two years after I bought my home (I didn’t pay enough in taxes to collect it in one lump sum), helpful. Besides every penny counts.

Below Market Rate Loans From The Housing Finance Agency
I was working with a councillor from the now defunct non-profit who steered me over to the DC Housing Finance office over on Florida Avenue. At the time they were offering 30 year mortgages at a rate so low, it was almost like an interest free loan. They were offering something lately but the 5.6% rate with 2 points was only good till Dec 15, 2007. The process was not without its headaches. I thought the woman administering my paperwork was slow and a bit mean. But in the end I got the loan, which will be forever called the 1st mortgage that will not be touched.

Tax Abatement
My housing councilor and my Realtor pushed the tax abatement, which in those early years made my house payment affordable. If you’re low-moderate income, you’d probably qualify. I was making what I’ll call a starter salary in my profession, so I wasn’t poor, but I wasn’t completely economically stable either, and the year before I made half of squat. So I qualified, with about $10K between me and the cutoff.
The abatement is a five year period of not paying real estate taxes. The money I saved, allowed for an emergency fix-crap fund. It seems that I could have extended the abatement if I hadn’t made $400 over the cutoff amount. So in year 6 I got hit with the full assessed amount, which was a lot, as the assessed value was 4x as much as it was when I bought it. I just got my tax bill and I praised G-d. My taxes have readjusted so it reflects what I would have been paying had I not taken the abatement. So I wasn’t punished for taking that deal. I can’t find an earlier post I made about how the RE tax system rewards long-term homeonwers who stay put AND take the Homestead Exemption. Long and short of it is, people who have owned their homes for a number of years (basically prior to the Real Estate boom) tend to pay less taxes than their neighbors who bought recently IF (big if) they have the Homestead Exemption.

There are other programs for 1st time homebuyer available to DC residents like the HPAP, but I didn’t use those, so I cannot testify to their goodness or badness. Also I think there were some real estate transaction costs that were dismissed because of my status, but I’m fuzzy on that. And there is a caveat to the loan (and/or maybe another program), in that if I sold my house within 10 years of purchase I’d have to pay the city back some of the benefits.

DC looked like a better deal when I was first looking because it has various programs like I mentioned above, that I could not find for Maryland or Virginia.

Like going to Neiman Marcus to buy $50 Manolos

…not going to happen. Well, maybe, on-sale, size 10, scuffed and in some hideous style.
Warning this is a rant, and despite the beginning, not about shoes.

Yes, there should be affordable housing, and young people starting out should be able to buy into the American Dream. However, the vibe I’m picking up from a few segments of the population is that at least 900+ sq ft of move in condition fee simple/condo housing in approved hoods (read nothing but NW) should be in the price range of a GS-5 step 1, which would be in the $70K-$100K range. The likelihood of finding such, is pretty much the same as finding those $50 genuine Manolos.

A now defunct non-profit once offered wonderful first-time home buyer classes that helped me become a homeowner. One of the lessons I learned from the class was that getting the house is the easy part, keeping it is hard. Some of y’all are too caught up on the gettin’, thinking all will be right. Furnaces die, roofs leak, drains clog, and when you are a homeowner, there is always something. And something starts at $500 and goes up from there. If the stress is stretching the financials to get a house, then when ‘something’ happens and messes up another ‘something’ (overflowing toilet destroys carpeting in adjoining room), where is the money going to come from? Particularly with somethings that require you fix it that day or that week? So you skip that month’s mortgage payment to fix the something, and you get behind, and something else happens and you get further behind, and then you’re in danger of having your house foreclosed. Then there is plain old maintenance, which is on going, and while not expensive, could be annoyingly time consuming.
Even if a non-profit or exceedingly generous person were to provide a house/condo to a family at a low price there are other problems. Taxes. There are several generous programs to abate and reduce taxes for seniors, and low income persons. However, if you do not qualify for these programs and you live in an area where the properties are assessed in the $300K and up range, you’re screwed. Taxes could run you $200 a month. If you pay your taxes late, there are high interest charges. If you don’t pay your taxes at all the tax lien will be sold at auction and the buyer of the lien could foreclose on you. If you’re in a condo, then there are the blessed condo fees. These can range from less than $100 a month to about $1000 a month, on top of your mortgage. If you don’t pay it, well, it really depends on the condo board. Some will sit and stew and deny you services. Others will attempt to take your condo away.
So back to my poor GS-5 step 1 in need of affordable housing. My advice is to become a GS-9. Short of or in addition to that, first clean up her credit and reduce her debit so she can get a better mortgage. Second, save up for the down payment and closing costs. Get a second job (preferably at a place where you won’t blow the paycheck on the merch with your employee discount — a mistake I made) to help with that short term goal. Third, shop the neighborhoods you can afford. There is a lot in NE and SE DC for under $250K. I’m partial to NE, because there are a lot of hidden gems near the MD border, cute little bungalows and rowhouses needing some love and attention. Third, shop around for a good mortgage and first-time homebuyer programs. Lastly, the house you do buy is not necessarily the one you will live in forever. You may trade up in the future. You may move. You don’t know what life will throw at you (divorce, kids, new job relocation, etc) so keep that in mind.
When I bought my house I was making about $35,000 (I’m guessing it would be above $40K in todays dollars). It appeared in ok condition (learned later that wasn’t the case) in a sorta not so great neighborhood. With the help of a loan from the DC Housing Finance Agency, low interest rates, excellent credit, a re-finagled student load payment, a tax abatement, and $10K saved up this single black woman was able to buy her skinny little plot of the American Dream. Seven years later I live in a much better neighborhood and a much better house and my address never changed.
So it irritates me when people say that it is impossible to buy a home. Hard yes, difficult maybe, but not impossible. The market has come a bit more to its senses and you have a better chance of finding that affordable house. So kids, save your pennies, clean up your credit, and do your homework.