Pennsylvania Ave SE Crime and Potomac Gardens

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, nobody is defending the current state of things, but you can't possibly expect to be taken seriously when your best suggestion for improvement is demolition and bus tickets. When you come up with a more reasonable solution you may find more people to agree with you. In the meantime, I'd love to hear how you came to the conclusion that there is no way PG can be "kept safe and functional." What do you know about what has already been tried? What sources are you relying on? I'd love to see some links.

You are absolutely defending the current state of things. Every time this debate occurs, we get treated to some idiocy about how we just need to build one more rec center, or add some cameras, etc, etc... We've been trying to make concentrated poverty warehouses "safe" in this country for half a century. It hasn't been done yet.

Frankly, it's pretty obvious to everyone reading this thread that penning the poor up in zoos doesn't work. I'd love to see your real world examples of success stories.

[Anonymous]

Pretty much all the "solutions" to "fixing" a place like Potomac Gardens in situ involve fervently hoping for tectonic shifts in national policy.

Meanwhile, the well-meaning do-gooders get funding for "just one more midnight basketball league", nothing ever changes, and the poor are consigned to yet another decade of crime and blight.

[Anonymous]

i live in Alexandria and have public housing townhouses about 3 blocks away and other townhouses and condos in a mixed use community also nearby. The majority of the public housing people are black with some Hispanic and white housesholds scattered throughout. Other than a deputy sheriff at the local 7-11 on Friday and Saturday nights, we don't seem to have much of an issue with the nearby public housing. I think the local redevelopment housing authority puts the "better" people in the housing near me and keeps the "worst cases" (the authority uses these words) in the housing along Rt. 1. Alexandria also has a lot of public housing scattered throughout the city in small clusters of 16 to 32 townhouses so that there is not a huge concentration that leads to problems. I don't think anything is ideal in public housing, but I think Alexandria does a reasonably good job.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here:

so is your suggestion that longtime neighborhood residents should be sent elsewhere just so you don't have to deal with it.

This is a total misrepresentation. My suggestion is that PG should be torn down, converted into mixed-use housing, a portion of residents should remain, and the majority of existing residents should be given vouchers to live in "normal" housing with folks who aren't 100% poor.

You want to warehouse them behind that wrought-iron fence and take the cost of the crime--which strikes residents disproportionately--as just something that happens.

I'm curious, how long do you expect increasingly middle-class DC voters to support this kind of mass warehousing of poverty? Would you choose to live there? Frankly the current residents deserve a Hell of a lot better.

And quite frankly, you can go fuck yourself with your charges of "latent racism". Maybe you should look in the mirror, since you're clearly content to keep a 100% Black community penned up like animals.

NP here and not the poster you told to go masturbate. This post of yours is much more thought out than your OP. You should go back and read your original post and you may then notice that you said naught what has been proposed in your masturbation post.

[Anonymous]

Why are the DC taxpayers subsidizing the housing of criminals? We all know that the criminals and their relatives or friends are in and out of PGardens and Hopkins. Everyone knows this but they're too afraid to address this for fear of being tagged as "racist". Even though it is true. This is why some of us refuse to live in DC even in Spring Valley because we hate seeing our tax dollars wasted.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know good people who live in public housing, including Potomac Gardens and the Hopkins apartments, who are victimized by the crime even more than the people like me who live nearby -- and, yes, some of them are even under the age of 65!

If you don't want to be called racists, then stop talking about these places as if *everyone* living in them were vermin. 12:17, you said you grew up in a good building with people who cared so you know that it's an overgeneralization to say that the people who live there made them slums. Did you make your building a slum? Well neither did the kids who attend the tutoring program where I volunteer.

So let's address the crime problem without demonizing every young person who calls public housing home. Because a lot of them, like 12:17, don't deserve to be labeled criminals. Differentiate, people, differentiate!

OP here. I don't disagree at all. There are plenty of people stuck in the Hell that is public housing, including Potomac Gardens. The fact that it's a shit-hole that cannot be managed effectively makes them victims as much as any neighbor. More so, actually.

What I'm unclear on is why this is considered some sort of argument in favor of maintaining the status quo. It's pretty clear that concentrated publicly financed housing for the poor doesn't work. That's why you need to shut the damned thing down. The difference between you and I appears to be that you want to keep folks penned up in this unsafe ghetto. I want to break it up and give its residents options.

But what you want and what I want don't really matter. At this point its only a matter of time before the whole crumbling edifice comes down. The reason you need to keep these places safe and functional is that, without the support of the public, public housing cannot be maintained. It's pretty clear this place cannot be kept safe and functional. Therefore it will be closed.

Blaming neighbors for refusing to wholeheartedly support a property that regularly emits folks who attack, rob, and assault them is ridiculous. Calling them "racist" makes the word meaningless.

Did I say that I wanted to keep Potomac Gardens and Hopkins as they are? No. I merely said I wanted the discussion to make it clear that not everyone who lived there was a criminal. You're the one making assumptions about my position on public housing. I'm all for discussing solutions but not in over-the-top terms implicating everyone under the age of 65 as a danger to the neighborhood. I'm not the pp who accused other pps of racism but if you would like to avoid such accusations, it would be best to moderate your language.

BTW, there is plenty of crime in PG and Hopkins but not all the criminals live there. The guy who attacked the young woman living near the metro with a knife didn't live there -- I think he lived in NE. The guy who was breaking into people's houses last Christmas lived on 15th St. Doesn't mean PG and H don't have a lot of problems that should be addressed -- just that they're not the source of every problem in the neighborhood. Recognizing that would help your credibility.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here:

so is your suggestion that longtime neighborhood residents should be sent elsewhere just so you don't have to deal with it.

This is a total misrepresentation. My suggestion is that PG should be torn down, converted into mixed-use housing, a portion of residents should remain, and the majority of existing residents should be given vouchers to live in "normal" housing with folks who aren't 100% poor.

You want to warehouse them behind that wrought-iron fence and take the cost of the crime--which strikes residents disproportionately--as just something that happens.

I'm curious, how long do you expect increasingly middle-class DC voters to support this kind of mass warehousing of poverty? Would you choose to live there? Frankly the current residents deserve a Hell of a lot better.

And quite frankly, you can go fuck yourself with your charges of "latent racism". Maybe you should look in the mirror, since you're clearly content to keep a 100% Black community penned up like animals.

You're complaining about your position being misrepresented but you keep accusing other posters of being in favor of warehousing the poor and opposed to mixed-income housing when no one on this thread has advocated for that position.

[Anonymous]

I'm not complaining about being misrepresented: I expect it, since that's the only argument the pro status-quo folks seem to have. Anyone who thinks the existence of this giant warehouse of poverty is unacceptable must be a racist--and a hater of poor people to boot.

This must be the very first time you've ever come across this issue if you don't realize that there is a very large number of folks who are absolutely in favor of keeping Potomac Gardens essentially the way it is. They want the exact same capacity and socioeconomic breakdown as exists there currently. No tear-down and rebuild; no mixed-income.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Did I say that I wanted to keep Potomac Gardens and Hopkins as they are? No. I merely said I wanted the discussion to make it clear that not everyone who lived there was a criminal. You're the one making assumptions about my position on public housing. I'm all for discussing solutions but not in over-the-top terms implicating everyone under the age of 65 as a danger to the neighborhood. I'm not the pp who accused other pps of racism but if you would like to avoid such accusations, it would be best to moderate your language.

Do you honestly think that anyone cares whether or not you're going to make accusations of "racism"? That charge is absolutely the last refuge of the scoundrel when discussing these matters, and utterly destroys any credibility you might have with anyone who might be sitting on the fence.

Seriously, if you want to do right by the folks living in PG, you might want to dedicate your energies to figuring out a way to dismantling the whole enterprise in an orderly fashion, and making sure everyone the current residents have got a place to go.

Because, at this rate, we're heading for a tipping point where community support for it evaporates. And when that happens, it they really will just turn off the lights and give folks some vouchers as a fig leaf.

Public housing is a form of charity. And like it or not, charity depends on the goodwill of the person doing the giving.

[Anonymous]

I grew up in public housing / section 8 housing. I'm white. I have seen it all. Our housing project was most certainly "slummy." About 20 percent of the residents cared about one another and the rest were either too desperate, angry, exhausted, or entrenched to give a damn. Even fewer cared about things like upkeep and cleanliness. I'm not sure I could accurately predict how many of the parents cared about their kids, but the reality is that the way the children were raised in the projects is not at all like the way children are raised by most middle-class or even working class non-project residents. In some cases the parents were just checked out, but in many other cases the parents were subject to the same pressures stated above -- too exhausted, angry, desperate, etc, to spend as much time with their children as they'd like. The time they did spend was not usually quality time. And children and young parents were indoctrinated into the same culture they saw. It was very much self-perpetuating. When I was growing up, welfare was still aid to families with dependent children and not the current temporary assistance to needy families. Parents weren't booted off public assistance with no child-care subsidies in a short two years the way they are now.

So take all of the things I mentioned above and then add to the mix parents having children at a young age and then being forced either back into the workforce or into a life of crime (or depending on the criminal acts of another) just to get by. And if they're in the workforce, they're not making enough for quality childcare or ANY childcare. So you take a child who has never really seen true parental involvement, whatsoever, and you remove the "village" that many of us suggest it "takes" to raise children and replace it with a cast of characters who are too trapped in their own personal hell to think about the example they are providing to those coming up, and what do you get?

Teenagers who are bitter, angry, lonely, isolated, envious, furious, and detached. Who take their impotent fury out on vulnerable white women who look like they have more privileges than these kids will ever know. God knows I don't think this kind of terrible violence is excusable. Nor do I think our current justice system is doing anyone any favors by letting the children who have committed these crimes get off without consequence. Perhaps there truly is nothing to do for this generation that is out there punching women, perhaps they are truly lost. Or perhaps there is a way to get through to them. Honestly, I don't know the answers, but I don't think the revolving door of juvie court is doing much but making it plainly clear there are no consequences.

Still, if we don't attempt to at least understand where this behavior is coming from, and attack the root of the problem, we can continue to cut the dandelion heads off again and again only to have more and more angry detached youth popping up with every subsequent generation. This is NOT going to get any better until we demand more for every human and stop talking about it like we're providing charity. Think about these people as human beings, who have complex psyches that have been badly deformed by what has happened to them. You do NOT have to sympathize with them, but you do have to understand why it's happening and do your part to nip it in the bud.

Whether it is mixed-income housing, or childcare reform so that the working poor can know their children are being cared for, or a more family friendly welfare program that substitutes life-skills and counseling for forced-work, I don't know these answers either.

This thread makes me as sad as the original violence does.

Signed,

14 years on the Hill, now in Brookland

[Anonymous]

PP Thank you

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:I grew up in public housing / section 8 housing.

This was a very interesting post. Would you mind if I reposted it on the home page as a blog article?

[Anonymous]

12:37 - Do you realize you assumed that all project residents are black in your assumption the poster was racist? Talk about racist and small minded.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Did I say that I wanted to keep Potomac Gardens and Hopkins as they are? No. I merely said I wanted the discussion to make it clear that not everyone who lived there was a criminal. You're the one making assumptions about my position on public housing. I'm all for discussing solutions but not in over-the-top terms implicating everyone under the age of 65 as a danger to the neighborhood. I'm not the pp who accused other pps of racism but if you would like to avoid such accusations, it would be best to moderate your language.

Do you honestly think that anyone cares whether or not you're going to make accusations of "racism"? That charge is absolutely the last refuge of the scoundrel when discussing these matters, and utterly destroys any credibility you might have with anyone who might be sitting on the fence.

Seriously, if you want to do right by the folks living in PG, you might want to dedicate your energies to figuring out a way to dismantling the whole enterprise in an orderly fashion, and making sure everyone the current residents have got a place to go.

Because, at this rate, we're heading for a tipping point where community support for it evaporates. And when that happens, it they really will just turn off the lights and give folks some vouchers as a fig leaf.

Public housing is a form of charity. And like it or not, charity depends on the goodwill of the person doing the giving.

Oh puh-lease, I live in this neighborhood and have lived here for years. The community "support" for PG is non-existent.

If you would read my statement more closely, I said I was NOT the pp who accused you of racism and I merely suggested that you could avoid such charges by moderating your language.

If you are really interested in replacing PG with mixed-income housing, then you should be pressuring the city to get Potomac Gardens back on the New Communities list where it used to be. PG and H have been slated for replacement for years so why don't you work on getting it moved up higher in line for replacement? It will happen faster if you can build a broad-based coalition supporting it but if you want to make it broad-based you'll have to moderate your language and show the world that you actually care about what happens to the people who live there, not just the people who live nearby.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm not complaining about being misrepresented: I expect it, since that's the only argument the pro status-quo folks seem to have. Anyone who thinks the existence of this giant warehouse of poverty is unacceptable must be a racist--and a hater of poor people to boot.

This must be the very first time you've ever come across this issue if you don't realize that there is a very large number of folks who are absolutely in favor of keeping Potomac Gardens essentially the way it is. They want the exact same capacity and socioeconomic breakdown as exists there currently. No tear-down and rebuild; no mixed-income.

Except that no one has supported that position on this thread -- so go fight your phantoms elsewhere.