Reply to Chevy Chase Community Center Redevelopment

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]What I always find funny about these “Ward 3 is white because of racism” folks is that they’re almost always white transplants who made the decision to move to ward 3. Ward 3 is white because that’s where white people like them decided to move, and then they cry that it’s racist that people like them decided to move there.

For instance, here’s Matt Frumin, who’s from Michigan:

“I’ve been saying this: Ward 3 came to look the way it did” — that is to say, White and rich — “because of exclusion based on intentional policies — exclusion and then segregation,” Frumin told me. “And we need intentional policies to remedy what happened in the past.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/01/31/making-dcs-ward-3-an-example-all-land/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=wp_local

Frumin, the reason ward 3 is full of well-off white people like you is because that’s where you and other well-off white people like you [b]decided [/b]to move to. You could have moved to any other neighborhood in the city if you thought white people moving to ward 3 was segregationist. But being a white person, moving to a neighborhood, and then acting like it’s a travesty when other white people do the same thing is idiotic.

(The article is funny too, because Frumin says ward 3 is white because of segregation, and then goes on to say that he thinks his black friend didn’t buy a house in Tenleytown because his friend didn’t want to be around so many white people.)[/quote]

You really miss the point.  It is in the bolded.  And also this from the article:

"Today, White households in D.C. have 81 times the wealth of Black households — with 1,500 households in the city worth more than $30 million, according to the DC Fiscal Policy Institute."

Nobody is claiming that a white person's choice to move to the neighborhood is segregationist.  They are claiming that the fact that more people have the opportunity to move to that neighborhood is the result of intentional policies in the past.  And the belief that intentional policies are required in the present to remedy that.[/quote]

I’d love to live in Potomac, but I can’t afford to.  What about me?
[/quote]

I do think that more affordable housing should be developed in Potomac as well.

And the point is exclusionary policies that led to segregation in certain areas, as well as impeded generations from attaining wealth.  That is what people are trying to remedy.  They are not claiming that everyone should be able to afford to live anywhere.[/quote]

Let’s be clear:  the proposed public private partnership, whereby the library and community center sites are given over to a private developer, is supposed to have an affordable housing component.  But there clearly is no fixed required percentage of affordable units right now (other than the DC statutory minimum) when a decision is being made on whether to proceed.  So what is being proposed is more market-rate development with some undetermined amount of “affordable”, likely IZ units. Proponents keep telling us that this is about addressing long ago  “exclusionary policies” and creating affordable housing, but never really show, much less explain, how more dense, mixed use is supposed to achieve those objectives.  Indeed, we can see how this trickle-down growth experiment is playing out all around Ward 3.  City Ridge is is fine but how is it affordable, particularly for families?  How does Upton Place, marketed as one of DC’s “most exclusive” enclaves, address exclusion?  Of course, these are private developments on privately owned land.  Yet now  the plan in Chevy Chase is to turn over public assets so a favored developer can do more of the same, but with only hopes and aspirations for some true affordability?  We’re all suckers and fools if we continue to fall for the development industry’s trickle-down fanstasy dust.[/quote]

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