Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

The caseworkers essential to the city’s housing-first approach work for service providers contracted by the District. They are supposed to help program participants like Watts with tasks that include creating household budgets, building community support networks and connecting with mental health and substance abuse services. For this, city contracts show, the Department of Human Services pays $755 per tenant per month. The contracts allow caseloads of up to 25 clients per caseworker.

Under the agreement, caseworkers must make at least two contacts with participants a month, one of which must be in person — down from a minimum of four contacts a month required until last year.

Yikes, that is not much and it's my understanding that participants do not need to even open the door if a caseworker knocks, never mind be compliant with MH treatment, addiction treatment, etc. Housing First does not allow requirements re: job training or education or moving toward self-sufficiency, in fact DC seems to have recently converted what used to be 1 year vouchers into PSH, not sure how that will be financially sustainable or if the end is built in when the buildings will be emptied, tenants who could exercise TOPA rights gone years before, and flipped to condos? No idea if audits are done to substantiate even these extremely minimal contacts, we know from WMATA how often records are faked.

If this is true then Housing First is Bull* in terms of benefiting ANY constituents, and I will no longer listen to a word they say. Is it?

Once again, why should basic housing have requirements? When you have too many unhoused people, crime will arise because those people have nothing to lose. That is a dangerous place to back a human into a corner.

why should one person get to ruin the quality of life of others? if they can’t follow community norms, they can go elsewhere.

Why are you linking unhoused peoples with crimes of violence? Most unhoused people are not the ones committing acts with guns and smash and dashes.

We’re talking about the voucher recipients who are very much linked to a whole lot of disorder. Not all of them, but many.

It's not even recipients themselves necessarily but boyfriends, family members, associates. In public housing you can be kicked out. DC has made it hard to evict voucher recipients and in a recent WP piece it was noted that they almost never lose voucher even if violent crime is committed by them or a visitor to their unit, they are just relocated. The young mom who was tied up, strangled and thrown out of the window in front of her toddler in the Connecticut House was the voucher holder, her boyfriend was not an official tenant. He had a veritable arsenal in the apartment, drugs and cash too and was a felon in possession of a weapon.

At one time, embassies encouraged staff to locate their family in the Forest Hills rental corridor, with the kids attending Murch and Deal for the few years they were here. The safety, walkability and school quality were noted by foreign governments. Things have changed a lot on Connecticut and Wisconsin. That is where 3,000 of the 5,000 permanent supportive housing vouchers are being used.

Visible drug dealing and public use has really increased in Cleveland Park, Van Ness and Forest Hills. No idea if those people live here or not but it's new. And with dealing valuable merch for cash come guns and violence. No idea if Saturday was a deal gone wrong, an attempted robbery, some crew dispute, mistaken identity or what, but in the past a shooting on the corner of Connecticut Avenue at 3pm on a Saturday by a playground was unthinkable.

Selfishly, the decay of the Conn Ave apartments has been a big disappointment to me personally. We are EOTP without a huge housing budget, and my backup plan was to move to a 2-br apartment to send my kid to Deal or JR. Although I think I have identified some buildings that are safer than others, it’s a totally different scene than I expected even a few years ago. And I do not begrudge economic/racial diversity in schools *at all*. (My kid attends a school more diverse than any leftie who wants to scold me for being a “nice white parent.”) But I need my kid to at least be safe in his own apartment building. As a consequence we would likely move to Bethesda instead of NW DC. It’s a real shame that bad DC housing policy has hollowed out options for the middle class even more than they were before.

Same, I'm the PP who moved from EOTP to Forest Hills for the reasons you mentioned. And now we are thinking through moving options. I would be super wary of almost any building at this point, up to Chevy Chase circle. A few very disruptive tenants/guests, increasing incidents, more people moving, more replacing with far more lucrative voucher residents and buildings can shift/tip very rapidly, it has been pretty astonishing to see. One DC government official admitted that some buildings become de facto very overpriced private public housing, but without the rules, security, etc. You could live here without a car, in an older rent stabilized building, the schools were good and there were walkable groceries.

t's not just rentals, condo buildings have had violence issues too with units that are rented. And even from a house the frequent sirens and changes in the neighborhood are still a stressor and I'm way less sanguine about my kids roaming than I used to be. Moving is expensive too, so better to go with the surer bet.

I had looked around at all of the elderly when we first moved here, who aged in place, and thought maybe we'd be old timers here too. Even in bad neighborhoods it used to be safer to go out in the daytime, now that "rule" is kind of gone too. One elderly neighbor was traumatized to be in the Van Ness CVS getting a prescription when there was a flash mob robbery and the manager had his jaw broken, broad daylight. She had valued the walkability for the exercise and socializing, now she is very nervous to go out but can't' afford to move, she is paying way under market rate. Since the building could get SO much more for her apartment from a voucher tenant/city she feels like there is a target on her. It's all sad. Rent controlled units are swapped out for lucrative voucher units. At one point we had thought of moving an elderly parent here, there were so many elderly walking back and forth to Giant, etc. and the safety and walkability were great.

Voucher tenants have moved out of some of the buildings because they did not believe they were safe, it's not all delicate flowers from the burbs who are concerned.

Anonymous wrote:https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/a-shaken-washington-copes-with-surging-violence-this-is-not-normal/ar-AA1gxQJ9

Yet, months of persistent gun violence is causing many Washingtonians to question their safety and commitment to the city with an intensity perhaps unseen since the drug wars.

In the 90s there were lots of empty school buildings because so many families had moved out of DC. It seems to happen in cycles, after the riots, during crack epidemic, and I think another one now, with remote work or hybrid schedules making it easier.

In the 90s W3 was fairly insulated from violence but that has changed somewhat. Drug dealing is visible but other constant cues of changes are things like all the empty shelves at CVS or all the locked products at Target. In the past it was a mix of best of suburbs and urban living with short commutes and good schools, but it is more stressful now.

the most recent data has DC proper gaining population, whereas the close-in burbs are losing. and I don’t think school enrollment numbers or housing prices are declining in NW DC. It could happen but come on, Cleveland Park is not H St NE ca 1969.

https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/dc-up-prince-georges-down-a-look-at-dc-area-population-changes-in-2022/20895

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/a-shaken-washington-copes-with-surging-violence-this-is-not-normal/ar-AA1gxQJ9

Yet, months of persistent gun violence is causing many Washingtonians to question their safety and commitment to the city with an intensity perhaps unseen since the drug wars.

In the 90s there were lots of empty school buildings because so many families had moved out of DC. It seems to happen in cycles, after the riots, during crack epidemic, and I think another one now, with remote work or hybrid schedules making it easier.

In the 90s W3 was fairly insulated from violence but that has changed somewhat. Drug dealing is visible but other constant cues of changes are things like all the empty shelves at CVS or all the locked products at Target. In the past it was a mix of best of suburbs and urban living with short commutes and good schools, but it is more stressful now.

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:I have no faith that a floor is going to be put in the crime situation in NW, never mind it improving.

Frumin is not someone who inspires confidence in the future and Bowser admin reps have attended countless community meetings with things only getting worse. The only one who seemed genuinely concerned about public safety was Chris Geldart and he had issues and is long gone.

It makes me quite sad and my family is going to have to look seriously at relocating, having been in DC for 30 years. We moved west for schools and safety after 20 years EOTP and that worked for a long time and now the calculus has changed again. I wish we had gone to the burbs a long time ago, and become established then, we are not at life stages that are super conducive to moving right now.

Well that’s a little excessive. Unless you live in the Sedgewick or on top of the Tenleytown metro, it’s not going to get that much worse.

Actually, the PSA that includes Saratoga, Brandywine, Connecticut House was found to have the greatest crime increase of anywhere in the city, numbers were crunched from DC Crime Cards. Obviously not highest numbers in city but greatest change. Now a daytime weekend shooting after a lot of MPD focus for years. I live in that PSA and the effects of quality of life and safety in the past few years have been tremendous. There are tennis courts and a playground on the block where a shooting occurred at 3pm on a Saturday. We won't be the only ones likely to move. And for those that leave the Saratoga and Brandywine, the ratio of paying tenants may shrink further. My kids go to school near and often use the Tenleytown metro. I'd be remiss as a parent not to react to real shifts in safety levels. YMMV.

Crime becoming less predictable, more random and more diffuse has stretched a smaller MPD very thin. The commercial tax base has shrunk and population is dropping so there will be less money for safety initiatives, services, etc. It's happened before, maybe newcomers don't know that.

Not really the time to be Pollyanna when it comes to my family's well being when we heard the shots on Saturday. We moved away from that to what used to be a very quiet, safe area, for that and for the schools. Now, it's far less safe. There have been dozens upon dozens of community meetings in the past few years. For those unaware of that history, they may think there is some likely fix if they send a few emails or make a few calls, but no. The idea that Courtney Carlson can impact this in any way is laughable, Mary Cheh was not able to do much, with more power, and living even closer to the problem buildings. In fact, talking about the issues may have led to pushback that caused her to not run again.

Thanks for your support and concern for my family's well being, PP, the heartfelt scorn is noted.

I live in an area with much more crime and am concerned about it. Still, I think you’re being a bit absurd. Moving to the burbs and driving a lot is statistically higher risk for you.

A lot of people are leaving and the tax base is shrinking, the CRE impact is tremendous. The quality of life in DC is really going to change.

There are walkable neighborhoods outside of DC, with metro access, and good schools that do not have daytime shootings on the same block as playgrounds. It's absurd to think that won't impact property values, which has not been mentioned.

Sure I can believe some will choose to locate elsewhere or leave the troubled apartments. But nobody is selling their $2 mil Cleveland Park home due to an uptick in already very low crime levels. The people actually impacted are renters.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

The caseworkers essential to the city’s housing-first approach work for service providers contracted by the District. They are supposed to help program participants like Watts with tasks that include creating household budgets, building community support networks and connecting with mental health and substance abuse services. For this, city contracts show, the Department of Human Services pays $755 per tenant per month. The contracts allow caseloads of up to 25 clients per caseworker.

Under the agreement, caseworkers must make at least two contacts with participants a month, one of which must be in person — down from a minimum of four contacts a month required until last year.

Yikes, that is not much and it's my understanding that participants do not need to even open the door if a caseworker knocks, never mind be compliant with MH treatment, addiction treatment, etc. Housing First does not allow requirements re: job training or education or moving toward self-sufficiency, in fact DC seems to have recently converted what used to be 1 year vouchers into PSH, not sure how that will be financially sustainable or if the end is built in when the buildings will be emptied, tenants who could exercise TOPA rights gone years before, and flipped to condos? No idea if audits are done to substantiate even these extremely minimal contacts, we know from WMATA how often records are faked.

If this is true then Housing First is Bull* in terms of benefiting ANY constituents, and I will no longer listen to a word they say. Is it?

Once again, why should basic housing have requirements? When you have too many unhoused people, crime will arise because those people have nothing to lose. That is a dangerous place to back a human into a corner.

why should one person get to ruin the quality of life of others? if they can’t follow community norms, they can go elsewhere.

Why are you linking unhoused peoples with crimes of violence? Most unhoused people are not the ones committing acts with guns and smash and dashes.

We’re talking about the voucher recipients who are very much linked to a whole lot of disorder. Not all of them, but many.

It's not even recipients themselves necessarily but boyfriends, family members, associates. In public housing you can be kicked out. DC has made it hard to evict voucher recipients and in a recent WP piece it was noted that they almost never lose voucher even if violent crime is committed by them or a visitor to their unit, they are just relocated. The young mom who was tied up, strangled and thrown out of the window in front of her toddler in the Connecticut House was the voucher holder, her boyfriend was not an official tenant. He had a veritable arsenal in the apartment, drugs and cash too and was a felon in possession of a weapon.

At one time, embassies encouraged staff to locate their family in the Forest Hills rental corridor, with the kids attending Murch and Deal for the few years they were here. The safety, walkability and school quality were noted by foreign governments. Things have changed a lot on Connecticut and Wisconsin. That is where 3,000 of the 5,000 permanent supportive housing vouchers are being used.

Visible drug dealing and public use has really increased in Cleveland Park, Van Ness and Forest Hills. No idea if those people live here or not but it's new. And with dealing valuable merch for cash come guns and violence. No idea if Saturday was a deal gone wrong, an attempted robbery, some crew dispute, mistaken identity or what, but in the past a shooting on the corner of Connecticut Avenue at 3pm on a Saturday by a playground was unthinkable.

Selfishly, the decay of the Conn Ave apartments has been a big disappointment to me personally. We are EOTP without a huge housing budget, and my backup plan was to move to a 2-br apartment to send my kid to Deal or JR. Although I think I have identified some buildings that are safer than others, it’s a totally different scene than I expected even a few years ago. And I do not begrudge economic/racial diversity in schools *at all*. (My kid attends a school more diverse than any leftie who wants to scold me for being a “nice white parent.”) But I need my kid to at least be safe in his own apartment building. As a consequence we would likely move to Bethesda instead of NW DC. It’s a real shame that bad DC housing policy has hollowed out options for the middle class even more than they were before.