April 17, 2019

"The SWAT team, the overdose, the complaints of pot smoke in the air and feces in the stairwell... at Sedgwick Gardens, a stately apartment building in Northwest Washington."

"[T]he Art Deco complex, which overlooks Rock Creek Park and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places... [l]ocated in affluent Cleveland Park... was once out of reach for low-income District  residents. That changed two years ago, when D.C. housing officials dramatically increased the value of rental subsidies [up to $2,648 a month]. The goal was to give tenants who had previously clustered in impoverished, high-crime areas east of the Anacostia River a shot at living in more desirable neighborhoods.... As of February, tenants with city-issued housing vouchers had filled nearly half of [Sedgwick Gardens's] roughly 140 units.... Some tenants with vouchers say they have been made to feel unwelcome by their new neighbors, a dynamic that has unavoidable undertones of race and class in a largely white neighborhood.... Cleveland Park is a bastion of urbane liberalism where just 1 in 20 voters supported President Trump in the 2016 election. Yet from the beginning... it was clear that some of the building’s older residents were discomfited by the new basement dwellers.... After moving into the building about two years ago, voucher holder Joseph A. Bundy, 69, said he was smoking outside one day when another resident approached him: 'This lady came up and said, "Don’t you know there’s a park up the street?" I said, "What you talking about, a park up the street? My home’s right here."'"

From "D.C. housed the homeless in upscale apartments. It hasn’t gone as planned" (WaPo).

"... a bastion of urbane liberalism... Yet..." — oh, the assumptions in that "yet"!

83 comments:

mccullough said...

It’s a public housing project now.

Kevin said...

'This lady came up and said, "Don’t you know there’s a park up the street?" I said, "What you talking about, a park up the street? My home’s right here."

Wait until you hear what she tells the illegals dropped off by the feds.

mccullough said...

It did not go as planned, but it has gone as expected.

Time to scale up the pilot program to the progressive white enclaves throughout the US.

Just make sure to leave some slots open for asylum seekers from Central America.

Reality is the best teacher.

Kevin said...

Cleveland Park is a bastion of urbane liberalism where just 1 in 20 voters supported President Trump in the 2016 election.

If you can't make it here, you can't make it anywhere...

tcrosse said...

Unexpectedly!

Kevin said...

Tenants say they have also confronted a slew of less serious nuisances such as panhandling,

Don't the other residents occasionally work from home?

JohnAnnArbor said...

How hard is it to avoid pooping in the stairwells?

exhelodrvr1 said...

House the illegal immigrants there.

Nonapod said...

Upperclass white liberals love to lecture the deplorables about how racist and xenophobic they are for supporting OrangeManBad. They love to point out how racist and hateful and wasteful it is to want to build a new border wall and to want to be a bit more selective about who to let into the country. They assume that their wealth and location safely insulates them from any negative repercussions of unchecked migration (if they ever even consider it at all).

But of course all the selfless moral superiority vanishes when faced with reality. All their pretensions dissappear when things get a bit smelly and noisy in their vicinity.

Anonymous said...

One would have to have a heart of stone...

Lucid said...

I read the article earlier today. For the Washington Post, it's surprisingly balanced and even sympathetic to the non-voucher tenants. Even the comments! Usually I regret trying to read the comments of even my favorite columnists. I guess when there aren't Republicans around they can discuss things.

Ignorance is Bliss said...

I said, "What you talking about...

Was the woman's name, by any chance, Willis?

Birkel said...

Everything before the but is a lie.

Everything before the yet is a lie.

Kevin said...

How hard is it to avoid pooping in the stairwells?

How hard is it to step around the poop?

How hard is it to attend mandatory consciousness-raising sessions on the indigenous cultures of stairwell-pooping peoples?

How hard is it to recognize poop-shaming when we see it, and the much uglier poopist privilege it highlights?

Tolerance and diversity people! Let's live our values!

Kevin said...

The real disgrace are the 1 in 20 Trump voters who live among them.

All this panhandling and stairwell pooping is keeping them from discovering who they are and finding ways to get them evicted.

Anonymous said...

...[l]ocated in affluent Cleveland Park...

I guess just not affluent enough to avoid being shat on by those just as self-righteous and self-regarding, yet more affluent still.

I may be wrong about this. But if I had to bet, I'd bet that the perps behind this schadenfreudelicious bit of section-8'ing didn't section-8 their own fine selves.

But if they did, that would be funny, too.

Bay Area Guy said...

It's funny how the well-intentioned Left operates. They've been doing the same thing for 50 years now.

Essentially, it is this:

1. You poor SOB don't have any money. But it's not your fault!
2. So, we will give you money
3. Problem solved!

or,

1. You poor SOB don't have a home. But it's not your fault!
2. So, we will give you a home
3. Problem solved!

Life is hard enough. But some smart folks have said that 98% of Americans can avoid and/or escape poverty if they: (1) Graduate high school, (2) don't have kid out of wedlock, (3) work full time, even at a menial job.

Just sayin'



Fernandinande said...

The goal was to give tenants who had previously created high-crime impoverished neighborhoods a shot at creating another high-crime impoverished neighborhood.

Infinite Monkeys said...

I think the reason the issues at Sedgwick Gardens came to a head is that there were a couple of residents that were causing a problem. That could have been true whether they had a voucher or not,” said D.C. Council member Brianne K. Nadeau (D-Ward 1), who chairs the council’s Committee on Human Services.

I bet it's easier to evict a paying tenant who poops on the stairs than it is the ones with vouchers.

Is the problem with marijuana smoke in the halls the marijuana part or the smoke part? Marijuana is legal in DC, both medical and recreational, but since the article talked about Mr. Bundy smoking outside, I thought the problem might be the smoke inside.

Fernandinande said...

Don’t you know there’s a park up the street?

IIRC, chain-smoker Kurt Vonnegut was either ticketed or kicked out of a public park for smoking.

JohnAnnArbor said...

During the housing crisis, parts of Southfield (despite its name, a suburb just north of Detroit) had quite a few people move in from Detroit proper, as Southfiled houses became more affordable. The new residents clashed with the old about basketball at 2am, late loud parties, etc. The original residents were accused of racism, if I recall correctly, which was hilarious because all involved were black.

Can't find the article now.

mockturtle said...

Kevin@1:02: Great post.

Yes, unexpected results from idealistic but unrealistic [in other words, totally clueless] Progressives.

bgates said...

Some tenants with vouchers say they have been made to feel unwelcome by their new neighbors, a dynamic that has unavoidable undertones of race

Oh for the good old days of redlining, when you'd find only nice wholesome Anglo-Saxon poop in the stairwells.

Big Mike said...

It could be worse for the residents of Sedgwick Gardens. We could send them Robert Cook.

Kirk Parker said...

Oh come on, Big Mike. I don't agree with more than 1% of Cook's comments, but nothing he has ever written here makes me think he's not for real. (Contrast The Usual Suspects...)

Michael K said...

just 1 in 20 voters supported President Trump in the 2016 election. Yet from the beginning...

Yes. "Yet, from the beginning."

Big Mike said...

@Kirk, I was being facetious, of course. Real he may be, but I wouldn’t mind having him confront the logical end result of the policies he espouses.

Big Mike said...

Interestingly, Sedgwick Gardens has its own Wikipedia page. Here’s an excerpt:

“Its entrance has been designed so that the eye of any visitor is drawn upward toward of a pair of high relief female figures, a pair of bas-relief male figures, and further toward the rose window on the massive square elevator tower in the background. White brick bands within the red brick facade line the main and top floors while shorter white bands lay just below each floors’ windows. Triangular projecting sculptured panels and niches that hold wrought iron deco railings.”

The apartment doors are solid mahogany, and the lobby floor is marble.

Birkel said...

Socialists want power over you to enforce their ambitions.
Robert Cook is no different.

Free markets.
Free people.

Big Mike said...

Slightly off thread, but I wonder whether the apartment complex is named for Union general John Sedgwick, whose famous last words were “Get up. They couldn’t hit an elephant at this dist ...”

Krumhorn said...

The old description of this as social engineering is as apt today as it was decades earlier. But the lefties mean so, well and they occupy a perch of moral superiority over us haters and deplorables. And yet I repeat myself.

The schmucks paying market rates for their units must bear this burden for the rest of us.

- Krumhorn

Bob Boyd said...

It hasn't gone as planned

That pretty much sums up the entire history of the left, doesn't it?

mockturtle said...

The same type of idiocy that spawned school busing.

Anonymous said...

Cabrini Green NE edition...

h said...

There is another aspect of this which is interesting. Decades ago, the common thinking was that industries wanted to avoid being regulated because that meant government agencies could restrict the activities of industry. But over the years, there has been a growing awareness that industry can and often does welcome government regulation because the regulated industry can use the regulations to their own advantage, often in subtle ways. So here, the owners of the apartment building (or perhaps owners of individual apartments -- I'm not sure) have some tenants who have been there so long that they are protected by years old rent control. So with this program, the owners do lose some control -- they may have to rent to some people that they would prefer not to rent to; but the owners gain as well -- they get the government paid subsidies for the low-income renters, and they also create a situation that strongly encourages older tenants to move out (eliminating the rent control for those apartments).

Rob said...

It's awfully elitist to complain about feces in the stairwells. DC is fighting inequality one stairwell at a time.

Here's the thing about overcoming inequality. It's impossible to raise the least of us to the level of the privileged. But it is possible to lower the privileged to the level of the least of us. DC has accomplished that at Sedgwick Gardens.

langford peel said...

It’s fun to visit the monkeys at the zoo. Not so much fun to be living in the monkey house.

Enjoy libtards.

langford peel said...

Blogger Big Mike said...
Slightly off thread, but I wonder whether the apartment complex is named for Union general John Sedgwick, whose famous last words were “Get up. They couldn’t hit an elephant at this dist ...”

Actually it was named after Edie.

wendybar said...

If you build it, they will come....especially if it is free.

NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...

Big Mike said...
Slightly off thread, but I wonder whether the apartment complex is named for Union general John Sedgwick, whose famous last words were “Get up. They couldn’t hit an elephant at this dist ...”

Yes, it was. Sedgwick was an inveterate stairwell pooper and was once almost cashiered from the Army after he was seen fleeing the grounds of the US Naval Observatory just prior to the discovery of a massive pile on the observatory steps.

FullMoon said...

Unless the joint was half empty prior to the subsidy, seems many people have moved out and been replaced by subsidized.

Which might make one wonder if management raised the rent to profit from the higher subsidy, driving out prior tenants.

rhhardin said...

Subsidizing good character might work.

rhhardin said...

They could do the same thing to the Watergate, just for amusement.

Infinite Monkeys said...

Which might make one wonder if management raised the rent to profit from the higher subsidy, driving out prior tenants.

Or accepted subsidies to drive out the rent control tenants.

Quaestor said...

Essentially, it is this:

1. You poor SOB don't have any money. But it's not your fault!
2. So, we will give you money
3. Problem solved!


Essentially, it is this:

1. You poor SOB don't have any money. But it's not your fault!
2. So, we will give you someone else's money, taken from them by force of law.
3. Problem solved!

FIFY

Ralph L said...

It's funny that the government is trying anti-gentrification. It won't help their tax base.

Alexandria VA tried dispersing some of their public and subsidized housing in the 80's with partial success.

A large run-down, crime-ridden garden apartment complex near us in the "affluent West End" got a HUD loan to gut and rebuild contingent on staying rental for 20 years with ~30% subsidized. I think they had to renovate some again when they went condo. I remember it as much safer and prosperous, but we'd moved just far enough not to hear the sirens and firetrucks barreling down the hill 10 ft behind our backyard.

Anonymous said...

There is no "Yet" involved in this situation. This is exactly the result expected, exactly the result desired. That progressive boot stomping on your face? It is a feature, not a bug.

Yancey Ward said...

Wow. $30,000/year/unit in housing subsidy, just to turn something into a typical low income housing project within a decade or less.

People pay $2500/month to get away from the poor and all the social behaviors they bring with them, they won't continue to pay that amount now.

285exp said...

Sounds like the place is going from affluent to effluent.

Gabriel said...

As usual the media does not ask the right questions.

At Sedgwick Gardens, the effort met with wild success. As of February, tenants with city-issued housing vouchers had filled nearly half of the building’s roughly 140 units.

How did half the units become empty so that they could be occupied by folks with housing vouchers?

Until recently, the building was occupied by a quiet mix of tenants made up primarily of couples and single apartment dwellers, said Carren Kaston, a former literature professor who has lived at the complex for more than three decades and is president of the Sedgwick Gardens Tenant Association.

That began to change about two years ago.


So was it half empty two years ago and the complex decided to bring in folks with vouchers? These places were rent-controlled. Did it start out 5% empty, and then people living there started to leave? Did the management make people leave, or did the worsening environment make people leave?

Or did the Black Death hit and I missed it?

Bay Area Guy said...

The monthly DC rent subsidies should require 10 hours/week of an American civics class, taught by Victor Davis Hanson.

Gospace said...

Surprise! Surprise! Not.

Remember, if you do separate area maps with percentage of section 8 vouchers and crime rate, then overlay the two, high crime areas are roughly congruent with section 8 housing.

Swede said...

Liberals are just disgusting, vile, filthy people.

Truly a mental disorder.

walter said...

"..rental subsidies [up to $2,648 a month]."
Shit yeah!

Ray - SoCal said...

The homeless industrial complex has done an amazing job of rebranding the homeless crisis as one of lack of affordable housing.

Based on this so called fact, the logical idea is housing will solve this.

No action needed in drug and mental issues.

Great video/ report:

Seattle is Dying:
https://www.city-journal.org/seattle-residents-rebelling-homelessness

Unknown said...

Has anyone watched "The Elephant Man" lately?

That was sure a good movie.

Diversity is our strength!

BUMBLE BEE said...

John from Ann Arbor +1 on Southfield black vs black issue. Read about that too. Oak Park, ditto!. Geoffrey Feiger's Oak Park High, which graduated half the Jewish MDs and lawyers practicing in Michigan, mostly to U of M, is now considered an "at risk" high school due to "migrants" from Detroit. A major concern is most non-blacks often seek peace and tranquility at home. The immigrants want to PARTAY. It is class related ... not race. With the downturn in manufacturing, many apartment complexes went from redneck to section 8. A friend of mine has one such backing up to his subdivision. They don't lock their car doors, as side windows are expensive. Stereos as well.

Achilles said...

Same thing is happening in Seattle.

Leftists destroy everything they touch.

RK said...

"D.C. housed the homeless in upscale apartments. It hasn’t gone as planned" (WaPo).

This kind of shit never does.

Rosalyn C. said...

The low income housing program was designed by well intentioned people who never lived in low income housing. Big lesson: when you place homeless drug addict/mentally ill people into apartments they are still addicts and still mentally ill. Placing them in upscale neighborhoods doesn't solve the chronic problems of mental illness and addictions.

I'm not saying that rich people don't have their problems with bad neighbors, they do of course. That's the reason for condo and co-op boards in upscale apartments and housing complexes.

RK said...

Everyone wants neighbors that hang out on the street, make a lot of noise, and leave litter everywhere.

The Godfather said...

I lived in and around Washington DC from 1969 to 2004. Since leaving, I've sometimes missed it. Thanks, @Althouse, for curing that.

Fen said...

We live in Montgomery County. Through corruption, Maryland's "woke" politicians left the lion's share of Section 8s to Montgomery Village.

We had ONE unit and it destroyed the neighborhood. First sign was every family with young children moving out, because it was no longer safe for their kids to play outside.

Then came the broken window phenom - ghetto trash bringing their ghetto values with them. Trash dumped wherever they felt like it. Shiftless male teens hanging out on the porch all day doing drug deals and surveiling the neighbors cars for opportinity. Asking them to stop parking in your driveway was to court a trip to the ER. And did you buy a nice tv or computer and display the empty box on trash pickup day? Bad call. Welcome home your front door has been kicked in.

So this makes me happy. I know the kind of limosine liberals who live in the areas discussed (20 mins from us) and they deserve to be thouroughly shafted by every inch of this.

They are the same types clutching their pearls because Trump threatened to send all the "undocumented" to tbeir sanctuary cities.

But yah, it was educational to see how quickly an entire neighborhood devolve down the lowest common denominator. Once you see a massive exodus of white collar families moving out it's too late, you're trapped. Watch for it and sell before the buyers figure out your cozy little neighborhood is going to be a toilet.

Fen said...

"But if I had to bet, I'd bet that the perps behind this schadenfreudelicious bit of section-8'ing didn't section-8 their own fine selves."

I'm sorry Sir, but we can't give you odds on that.

Would you care to wager on Water Is Wet at 5-4?

That's EXACTLY what happened to Montgomery Village, Maryland. I guess our Congress-critter was at Martha's Vineyard that week.

Fen said...

"Everyone wants neighbors that hang out on the street, make a lot of noise, and leave litter everywhere."

The stark difference is the difference in conflict resolution skills, related to that verboten topic (hint: rhymes with IQ). And correlates to levels of compassion and empathy.

Me and my hommies are going to shoot hoops in the street. Below your bedroom window at 2am during the work week. No awareness that other people had to go to work in 4 hours. No father to have a word with. The mother is in a heroin daze. And you quickly realize that asking them to stop would be "disrespectful" and their conflict resolution skills comprise a very short list. Risk of violence over the little things. So you wind up calling the cops to enforce boundries that normal civilizied folk would never cross.

mockturtle said...

What is it that they used to say? You can take the girl out of the trailer park but you can't take the trailer park out of the girl. One can make a similar but un-POC parallel to apply here....

Note: Trailer park people, please know that I mean no disrespect. I've met some very nice people who live in trailer parks. This was a saying. It did not originate with me. :-)

rcocean said...

"It's funny how the well-intentioned Left operates. They've been doing the same thing for 50 years now."

Are they "well intentioned"? Provide evidence, please. They certainly want everyone to think all their "boo-boos" are due to their "bleeding hearts". But is that true?

rcocean said...

We should give illegal aliens some "housing vouchers" and put them in Malibu and Beverly Hills. Also, put some low-income housing there. Diversity is needed.

Anonymous said...

Fen: So this makes me happy. I know the kind of limosine liberals who live in the areas discussed (20 mins from us) and they deserve to be thouroughly shafted by every inch of this.

Thank you for this heartwarming update.

todd galle said...

Fen,
Happened to us outside a smallish city. I was the only father on the block (after 3 PM when my neighbor went to work) with about a dozen kids about. Basically the old camels nose under the tent. Section 8, vouchers, reduced police presence, so we got out ASAP. The fella who bought our house had one of those 'interest only' loans and lasted about 6 months before defaulting. We had our check though, and went to brighter pastures.

Achilles said...

"It's funny how the well-intentioned Left operates. They've been doing the same thing for 50 years now."

They are not well intentioned.

What is finally making me think there is a chance is more people are finally noticing what pieces of shit the leftists really are.

Big Mike said...

So let me summarize this thread. Liberal Democrats are why we cannot have anything nice.p

William said...

My guess is that it's easier to teach people not to poop in stairwells rather than to teach people to be tolerant of those who poop in stairwells. It's not that hard to do. Henry Lee who brought Singapore from grass huts to skyscrapers in one generation had a solution to the problem. Any person caught pooping in a public area had his face and the nature of his crime exhibited on a poster on every doorway in the project. The pooper was shamed and soon changed his behavior. No one wants to be known to his neighbors as a pooper.......Many problems are unsolvable. Teaching people not to poop in public areas is not one of them.

mockturtle said...

The pooper was shamed and soon changed his behavior.

Asians are more concerned about saving face and avoiding shame than we are. I can just picture the 'Proud Pooper' tee shirts...

Bunkypotatohead said...

It's difficult to watch your neighborhood slowly turned into a ghetto. But it is infuriating to realize your tax dollars are being used to pay for its ruination.
It seems white flight will never end. Future generations will be fleeing to Mars to find some peace of mind.

Narayanan said...

"It hasn’t gone as planned"

Mind resending by WaPo.

How do they know what the plan is, for whom and by whom to what end result?

Commenters falling into same trap.

Josephbleau said...

I live in downtown Chicago
who cares, we live in a good block with police support
And don’t go south of 75 th street so we stay out of trouble

DavidD said...

“ ‘The goal was to give tenants who had previously clustered in impoverished, high-crime areas east of the Anacostia River a shot at living in more desirable neighborhoods.... As of February, tenants with city-issued housing vouchers had filled nearly half of [Sedgwick Gardens's] roughly 140 units.’ ”

Letting a few people escape impoverished, high-crime areas makes sense; filling nearly half of an area with people from impoverished, high-crime areas does not.

NotWhoIUsedtoBe said...

I live on the same street as an apartment building full of Somali immigrants. Very devout people, clean, work hard.

Great neighbors, no problems, and their presence seems to deter the local homeless from hanging around.

I live in Portland, Oregon. There's a difference between immigrants and people who won't work.

NotWhoIUsedtoBe said...

I thought the jury was in on what happens when you put too many underclass people in one place. I read about the phenomenon twenty five years ago.

Personal experience: poverty is behavioral. I work at low-paying jobs, but I stay middle class. How? I am married, I work a lot, I didn't have kids outside of marriage, and I don't do drugs. That's pretty much it. I have worked with people making the same wage and their lives were a mess. It has nothing to do with income. Middle class behavior leads to middle class status. No amount of money will let a person who acts poor stay middle class. You can feed them, house them, educate them, and it won't matter if they don't change their behavior.

Gospace said...

We lived in a nice and new subdivision in CA. Across the street neighbors were black- middle class black. Kept the yard nice, acted just like everyone else in the neighborhood, a mixture of Anglos, Hispanics, more than one variety of Asian. Newest building codes were in effect when the houses were built. Electric boxes were on the OUTSIDE and easily accessible so in the event of earthquake, wildfire, or other disaster, first responders could turn off power and make safe entry.

Nephew/cousin/, whatever, some relation of the father came fora visit. After parents left for the day and kids were in school, turned on his music loud enough for the neighbors to hear. Took over a half dozen times losing power at the main breaker before he realized the neighbors really wanted a quiet, peaceful neighborhood. I guess he complained to the actual owner about the neighbors doing this. Because the owner came around after he left and apologized for him. We think he was supposed to be job hunting- not hanging around the house disturbing the neighbors, but no one ever asked.

It's not hard to act middle class. But I hear stories that in the 'hood it's called "acting white" and actively discouraged.

Skippy Tisdale said...

"It's difficult to watch your neighborhood slowly turned into a ghetto. But it is infuriating to realize your tax dollars are being used to pay for its ruination."

This. I live on Minneapolis's north side in a house my family has owned for four generations. When I moved in 34 years ago, I could walk the neighborhood alone at night without worry. Then the City decided that neighborhoods with charming bungalows owned as rental property would be a great place for section-8 housing, at which point things began to take a turn for the worse.

Then the gangs moved in because they could have someone's mother buy a house with no money down. In fact they often got 5-10K cash-back that was added to their mortgage. (this was during the lead-up to the housing bubble blowing up).

Of course they never paid a dime of rent and certainly not their utility bills. Then they would use the house to sell drugs, launder money, serve as an illegal bar, etc.. Lots of shootings -- blood on the sidewalk, bullets in peoples houses, constant break-ins while folks were at work. Total craziness.

Then the housing bubble bursting put a stop to this madness. They had to rent apartments up in Brooklyn Park. Now it's back to working folks with families in my neighborhood. And very diverse too. Folks from all over the world.

The housing bubble bursting was the best thing that ever happened to my neighborhood

Josephbleau said...

If you spend any time I. Mexico you quickly understand that the Spanish MexicNs run the show and they isolate themselves by stone and barbed wire walls