Has Au/tenley town gotten seedier? Lots of homeless and random people

[Anonymous]

Yes. Can't even go into McDonalds with kids

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:"...that NPS allows to live in the little triangle pocket parks..."

NPS turned the triangle parks over to D.C. years ago. D.C. then outsourced dealing with the homeless in this area to Friendship House.

The convenience store at Booeymongers is an immigrant trying to start his own business. He sells the same type of wine found at Rodman's and not much else so far. He is open past 9 pm when all the other places close. That may also be the only place between Friendship Heights and Rodman's that sells wine.

+1 that guy isn’t shady at all, have any of you been there and talked to him? He’s going to bring in a professional management company that will stock more snacks and other convenience items. I’m glad to have a closer option than Rodman’s for that stuff since the CVS closed down

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:CM Frumin has a plan to make Ward 3 more “welcoming” to these folks, so it’s only going to get worse. Enjoy.

Him getting elected was a bit of a headscratcher. The Ward 3 highschool has 1/3 out of boundary students, which overcrowds it to the extent that parents of in-boundary students who want to send their kids their are instead opting to pay for expensive private schools. But Frumin says his main focus is - making sure Ward 3 is doing more for people living in other wards? I see Councilmembers from other wards sticking up and trying to get more for their wards, while the Ward 3 Councilmember is trying his best to take more from it.

Not to mention his habit of completely blowing off constituents who write to him.

I mean, I know D.C. elections across the city are almost entirely decided by personality rather than policy, but I thought there’d still be some limits. Not sure why Ward 3 voters weren’t interested in having an advocate for the ward.

You have this completely backwards.

The out of boundary students are backfill because the schools have excess capacity due to all the wealthy Ward 3 residents who send their kids to private school and would regardless of the composition of student at the public schools.

Sure, there's some number of people who send their kids to private school because they see black kids at Wilson and go into a racist tizzy, but they're not the cause of it, they're being reactionary to it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"...that NPS allows to live in the little triangle pocket parks..."

NPS turned the triangle parks over to D.C. years ago. D.C. then outsourced dealing with the homeless in this area to Friendship House.

The convenience store at Booeymongers is an immigrant trying to start his own business. He sells the same type of wine found at Rodman's and not much else so far. He is open past 9 pm when all the other places close. That may also be the only place between Friendship Heights and Rodman's that sells wine.

NPS didn't give the District all the federal triangle pocket parks -- what are you talking about? Are you one of the locals who predictably recommends that NPS "turn over" all kinds of green space around Deal/Murch/Janney/JR to DC, so the kiddies can have more portables and playground crap, and swimming pools?

Oh no, schools, playgrounds and pools. What a dystopia!

Federal park land preserved in permanent conservation for all of society shouldn’t be repurposed for short-term needs that arise from poor city planning

Don’t rob future generations of green space so Walker and Astor can have smaller teacher:pupil ratios for the whopping 6 yrs they’re in DCPS. Or more convenient swim lessons because your nanny doesn’t drive

You embarrass yourself. Truly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"...that NPS allows to live in the little triangle pocket parks..."

NPS turned the triangle parks over to D.C. years ago. D.C. then outsourced dealing with the homeless in this area to Friendship House.

The convenience store at Booeymongers is an immigrant trying to start his own business. He sells the same type of wine found at Rodman's and not much else so far. He is open past 9 pm when all the other places close. That may also be the only place between Friendship Heights and Rodman's that sells wine.

NPS didn't give the District all the federal triangle pocket parks -- what are you talking about? Are you one of the locals who predictably recommends that NPS "turn over" all kinds of green space around Deal/Murch/Janney/JR to DC, so the kiddies can have more portables and playground crap, and swimming pools?

Oh no, schools, playgrounds and pools. What a dystopia!

Federal park land preserved in permanent conservation for all of society shouldn’t be repurposed for short-term needs that arise from poor city planning

Don’t rob future generations of green space so Walker and Astor can have smaller teacher:pupil ratios for the whopping 6 yrs they’re in DCPS. Or more convenient swim lessons because your nanny doesn’t drive

You embarrass yourself. Truly.

You stun the crowd with this insight and powerful rejoinder. Sincerely.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:CM Frumin has a plan to make Ward 3 more “welcoming” to these folks, so it’s only going to get worse. Enjoy.

Him getting elected was a bit of a headscratcher. The Ward 3 highschool has 1/3 out of boundary students, which overcrowds it to the extent that parents of in-boundary students who want to send their kids their are instead opting to pay for expensive private schools. But Frumin says his main focus is - making sure Ward 3 is doing more for people living in other wards? I see Councilmembers from other wards sticking up and trying to get more for their wards, while the Ward 3 Councilmember is trying his best to take more from it.

Not to mention his habit of completely blowing off constituents who write to him.

I mean, I know D.C. elections across the city are almost entirely decided by personality rather than policy, but I thought there’d still be some limits. Not sure why Ward 3 voters weren’t interested in having an advocate for the ward.

You have this completely backwards.

The out of boundary students are backfill because the schools have excess capacity due to all the wealthy Ward 3 residents who send their kids to private school and would regardless of the composition of student at the public schools.

Sure, there's some number of people who send their kids to private school because they see black kids at Wilson and go into a racist tizzy, but they're not the cause of it, they're being reactionary to it.

Is Jackson-Reed (current name, not Wilson PP) not still massively overenrolled? I have never heard of it having 'excess capacity". That's a head scratcher. It has extremely wide boundary lines and a high quantity of feeder schools. Jackson-Reed has universally acknowledged great college placements (for some) and also a massive achievement gap. Problematic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:CM Frumin has a plan to make Ward 3 more “welcoming” to these folks, so it’s only going to get worse. Enjoy.

Him getting elected was a bit of a headscratcher. The Ward 3 highschool has 1/3 out of boundary students, which overcrowds it to the extent that parents of in-boundary students who want to send their kids their are instead opting to pay for expensive private schools. But Frumin says his main focus is - making sure Ward 3 is doing more for people living in other wards? I see Councilmembers from other wards sticking up and trying to get more for their wards, while the Ward 3 Councilmember is trying his best to take more from it.

Not to mention his habit of completely blowing off constituents who write to him.

I mean, I know D.C. elections across the city are almost entirely decided by personality rather than policy, but I thought there’d still be some limits. Not sure why Ward 3 voters weren’t interested in having an advocate for the ward.

You have this completely backwards.

The out of boundary students are backfill because the schools have excess capacity due to all the wealthy Ward 3 residents who send their kids to private school and would regardless of the composition of student at the public schools.

Sure, there's some number of people who send their kids to private school because they see black kids at Wilson and go into a racist tizzy, but they're not the cause of it, they're being reactionary to it.

Is Jackson-Reed (current name, not Wilson PP) not still massively overenrolled? I have never heard of it having 'excess capacity". That's a head scratcher. It has extremely wide boundary lines and a high quantity of feeder schools. Jackson-Reed has universally acknowledged great college placements (for some) and also a massive achievement gap. Problematic.

There were 2100 kids at J-R this year in a building with a capacity of 1850 (in reality its capacity is 1550, but DCPS has mysteriously added 300 to the capacity over the years, probably to get the fire marshal off its back).

So yes, massively over-enrolled. MacArthur will help a little, but J-R still will be overcrowded.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is Jackson-Reed (current name, not Wilson PP) not still massively overenrolled? I have never heard of it having 'excess capacity".

It is massively overenrolled. The other poster is doing something that's unfortunately extremely common here - spreading misinformation to hide real problems that students in the city face, and making baseless accusations of racism against anyone who wants the city to address the issues.

Here's the Jackson-Reed school newspaper this past year talking about how bad overcrowding got:

Portable classrooms, also called demountables or modular classrooms, were first announced to the Jackson-Reed community in late May of the 2021-2022 school year as part of a comprehensive plan to address overcrowding. With a carrying capacity of 1,840 students, Jackson-Reed is well over capacity with approximately 2,300 students and growing.

Many classrooms are packed, and some teachers are instructing in spaces that aren’t fit for purpose.

“We have some classrooms that are using science [labs], we have some classrooms using storage spaces,” Brandon Hall, Strategy and Logistics Director at Jackson-Reed said. He clarified that the portables will accommodate between 24-28 students each.

https://thejackson-reedbeacon.com/19841/news/jackson-reed-adds-portables-as-overcrowding-worsens/

Seeing the school overenrolled by hundreds of students, to the point that kids are being taught inside storage rooms, and then claiming people "send their kids to private school because they see black kids at Wilson" is simply crazy. And anyone who knows anything about Jackson-Reed will tell you how the school can't find enough teachers for all these students, and some students miss a year in a subject because of it.

This is with over 1/3 of the students coming from out of boundary, likely from feeder rights. If someone gets an out of boundary slot at an underenrolled elementary D.C. gives them an out of boundary slot at an overenrolled middle school which gives them an out of boundary slot at a severely overenrolled highschool. If D.C. wants to keep feeder rights, they need to at least give appropriate resources towards the issues it causes. Right now, we have a local highschool where out of boundary students are crowding out in-boundary students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I haven't been before COVID. But today we walked around and noticed a lot of randos loitering and hanging out at the chick fila and Panera, both inside and out. Also lots of homeless people loitering around. Felt seedier than before. Have things gone down hill? Is this the new norm?

So when you were walking around, were you not also a rando loitering and hanging out? How were the rest of us to know the difference between you (proper, not loitering) and the randos (seedy, loitering)?

By the way they are dressed, hygiene and the way they are acting and they aren't eating food just hanging out. They don't look like college students, seedy is a good word.

What do college students look like?

I would also like to know what college students look like.

We all know what college kids look like. Generally, they’ve showered in the last 24 hours and their clothes are visibly dirty and don’t stink.

[Anonymous]

For what it's worth, and I realize this is a tangent, but the J-R posts prompted the thought: I don't think portable classrooms on their own are indicative of a problem. My MCPS elementary school had portable classrooms nearly 40 years ago. Seemed fine then.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DC in general has turned into a dump. The willfully blind are so because they do not want to admit that Democratic policies and politicians made this mess.

A dump? Please. This city is pretty damn clean compared to most in the US. Do you get out much?

I'm not the PP, but DC is terrible these days. I was born here and have lived here consistently for 20+ years. Tony Williams revived downtown (and got slammed for it as he had to make some concessions to developers). However, he was bringing business back into the city and the results speak for themselves to this day if you remember places like Gallery Place pre and post TW. It got cleaner, better, safer with so many more options for entertainment and commerce. Now the development collusion under the current Mayor and GGW ilk is on high profit housing - business is an afterthought. High rents plus tons of incentives for landlords to let storefront properties sit vacant for long periods have greatly affected our beautiful corridors, bringing in both stagnation and big box/fast food. Friendship Heights "makeover" has pretty much driven out the businesses, they destroyed the marble facade on Mazza rather than repurposing it (not great environmentally), empty stores, institutions just poof gone, but yay more condos coming! The urban loft architecture of City Ridge--just what we needed, more super boring "urban lofts" (hello, the 90s are calling). The city's policies around section 8 have been a disaster--we've all seen the mini haz zone on Connecticut Ave they've created by illegally offering landlords more than typical rent to flip rent controlled apartments to Sec-8 without any oversight or services. And the defund the police/restorative justice folks have created a greenhouse for nuisance crime, which plagues the whole city TBH. Some of us remember when metro was a source of pride and Fawn Hall was cited for eating a banana while awaiting her train. Can you imagine that today? Don't get me started on the vermin everywhere (how many rat catchers does DC have? 1, 2, 3? the number is shockingly low) and mentally ill/addicted face planted on the sidewalk. I think I am the only person who calls in wellness checks because I have compassion--the rest of you step over the bodies as far as I can tell because you don't want to "bother" them? And car crime. But it's just an insurance matter. Whatever. Anyway, yes, DC's trajectory is appalling and those of us who enjoyed its rise are mourning its fall. To the person crowing about Ward 3 "getting served", you come across as emotionally and intellectually immature. And it's not Ward 3, it's city-wide.

DC is exponentially better than it was 30 years ago. If you disagree then you haven't lived in the city during the transformation. Sure, there is an increase in crime recently, but DC has become a world class city with robust development/amenities. It is one of the largest concentrations of wealth in the United States.

To those that hate the development, move to a small midwestern city. Change is necessary and good.

[Anonymous]

NP. Obviously some of the rise in issues in places like Tenleytown are the result of nationwide or citywide trends. But, I think that a lot of Ward 3 folks don't realize that quite a bit of it is also the consequence of their own NIMBYism and resistance to development.

Cities are incapable of remaining static. There is a constant cycle of depreciation and redevelopment going on, and Ward 3 has worked for decades to ensure that most of that redevelopment happens elsewhere. As other neighborhoods grow more dense and open many new businesses, they draw foot traffic away from the older commercial districts. This leads to a decline in the number and quality of businesses that can remain viable in the older districts. And, unless there is pretty high residential density (to quote Jane Jacobs, "eyes on the street") this decline also provides for the kind of space that is easily occupied by individuals who create quality of life issues for other residents. It can easily become a self-reinforcing cycle of disinvestment and decline.

This isn't a new story for DC, it's basically what happened to H Street and U Street in the 1950s when the desegregation of downtown businesses led to a large decline in foot traffic there. Obviously the subsequent riots didn't help, but it took many decades for those business corridors to recover, and they only really took off when new residential development led to an increase in residential density.

In the long run, I worry that Ward 3 might start to look more like Wards 7 and 8, where beautiful but low density neighborhoods aren't enough to sustain strong business districts, and the result has been that residents there are both underserved and less safe. I know that there are plans for redevelopment in places like Friendship Heights, but the scale and scope of what's planned (a single 5 over two with a TJ Maxx) doesn't seem like it's nearly enough to stem the underlying forces of decline.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"...that NPS allows to live in the little triangle pocket parks..."

NPS turned the triangle parks over to D.C. years ago. D.C. then outsourced dealing with the homeless in this area to Friendship House.

The convenience store at Booeymongers is an immigrant trying to start his own business. He sells the same type of wine found at Rodman's and not much else so far. He is open past 9 pm when all the other places close. That may also be the only place between Friendship Heights and Rodman's that sells wine.

NPS didn't give the District all the federal triangle pocket parks -- what are you talking about? Are you one of the locals who predictably recommends that NPS "turn over" all kinds of green space around Deal/Murch/Janney/JR to DC, so the kiddies can have more portables and playground crap, and swimming pools?

Oh no, schools, playgrounds and pools. What a dystopia!

Federal park land preserved in permanent conservation for all of society shouldn’t be repurposed for short-term needs that arise from poor city planning

Don’t rob future generations of green space so Walker and Astor can have smaller teacher:pupil ratios for the whopping 6 yrs they’re in DCPS. Or more convenient swim lessons because your nanny doesn’t drive

You embarrass yourself. Truly.

You stun the crowd with this insight and powerful rejoinder. Sincerely.

I mean, what’s there to say about someone griping about installing playgrounds and pools?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:NP. Obviously some of the rise in issues in places like Tenleytown are the result of nationwide or citywide trends. But, I think that a lot of Ward 3 folks don't realize that quite a bit of it is also the consequence of their own NIMBYism and resistance to development.

Cities are incapable of remaining static. There is a constant cycle of depreciation and redevelopment going on, and Ward 3 has worked for decades to ensure that most of that redevelopment happens elsewhere. As other neighborhoods grow more dense and open many new businesses, they draw foot traffic away from the older commercial districts. This leads to a decline in the number and quality of businesses that can remain viable in the older districts. And, unless there is pretty high residential density (to quote Jane Jacobs, "eyes on the street") this decline also provides for the kind of space that is easily occupied by individuals who create quality of life issues for other residents. It can easily become a self-reinforcing cycle of disinvestment and decline.

This isn't a new story for DC, it's basically what happened to H Street and U Street in the 1950s when the desegregation of downtown businesses led to a large decline in foot traffic there. Obviously the subsequent riots didn't help, but it took many decades for those business corridors to recover, and they only really took off when new residential development led to an increase in residential density.

In the long run, I worry that Ward 3 might start to look more like Wards 7 and 8, where beautiful but low density neighborhoods aren't enough to sustain strong business districts, and the result has been that residents there are both underserved and less safe. I know that there are plans for redevelopment in places like Friendship Heights, but the scale and scope of what's planned (a single 5 over two with a TJ Maxx) doesn't seem like it's nearly enough to stem the underlying forces of decline.

I always have to wonder where the "there's no development in Ward 3" crowd gets its information from (probably GGW, which isn't exactly reliable these days). It's just so lazy.

A massive residential development (City Ridge) just opened in Tenleytown, and another massive residential development is soon to open right next to it. The Mazza redevelopment will have 320 residential units, which -- sure -- isn't enough by itself but it's still 320 units! Other developments that are soon to go up: 5500 Wisconsin (380 units), Friendship Center (350 units), the old Fox 5 site (214 units) and Lisner Home (~130 units). Plus whatever happens to the CCDC core on Connecticut, which will add hundreds of units to the pipeline.

But please, keep saying "TheRE's nO dEVelOpMeNT iN wArD 3!!!!" You sound so edgy and informed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"...that NPS allows to live in the little triangle pocket parks..."

NPS turned the triangle parks over to D.C. years ago. D.C. then outsourced dealing with the homeless in this area to Friendship House.

The convenience store at Booeymongers is an immigrant trying to start his own business. He sells the same type of wine found at Rodman's and not much else so far. He is open past 9 pm when all the other places close. That may also be the only place between Friendship Heights and Rodman's that sells wine.

NPS didn't give the District all the federal triangle pocket parks -- what are you talking about? Are you one of the locals who predictably recommends that NPS "turn over" all kinds of green space around Deal/Murch/Janney/JR to DC, so the kiddies can have more portables and playground crap, and swimming pools?

Oh no, schools, playgrounds and pools. What a dystopia!

Federal park land preserved in permanent conservation for all of society shouldn’t be repurposed for short-term needs that arise from poor city planning

Don’t rob future generations of green space so Walker and Astor can have smaller teacher:pupil ratios for the whopping 6 yrs they’re in DCPS. Or more convenient swim lessons because your nanny doesn’t drive

You embarrass yourself. Truly.

You stun the crowd with this insight and powerful rejoinder. Sincerely.

I mean, what’s there to say about someone griping about installing playgrounds and pools?

Try to follow along: don't take national parkland out of commission for Murch's portable trailers, artificial turf soccer field, or a pool. Pur these lovely things elsewhere, on city-owned land.