🚀 go-pugleaf

Kenneth Cornelius wrote:
> 
> Eternal Nay-sayer wrote:
> 
> <snip>
> 
<snip snip>

> When I was going to Central High (now, I guess, Cardozo) in 1938,

Jeeze, yer an ol' duffer! Heh heh. 

> there was a
> group of large apartments next to it called Clifton Terrace.  They were very
> nice.  A couple of my school friends lived there.  There were
> receptionist/concierges at a desk in the entrance hall and carpeting on the
> floors.  They were well cared for places.  Twenty-five years later, when my
> mother moved in for awhile, they were still clean and cared for.  When I wanted
> to install a TV antenna for my mother, I had to have a big conference with the
> janitorial staff and get their approval.  Fair enough.  That was then.
> 
> Then the ownership and everything else changed.  Most of the staff vanished.
> The boilers went to hell.  Piss stains appeared on the walls and holes appeared
> in the plaster.  The laundry rooms became a free kill zone.  My mother, of
> course, was long gone the instant this started.  I retained a mild interest in
> the place and one day I woke up to discover that my Clifton Terrace was just
> about the most notorious slum in the city.

This confirms my understanding of the place, originally it was very
upscale, as was that whole hilltop area. For instance, to compare, look
at the high-address end of the 1400 block of Belmont Street NW. Around
the turn of the century, this was the big hill north of Florida Avenue,
and essentially undeveloped. Some rich person put in the Italianate
gardens creating Meridian Hill Park and the hilltop was developed around
1915 to 1925, IIRC, and Belmont, Chapin Streets were "the cat's meow" to
use the then-current (again IIRC) term. 

> 
> I've long been puzzled about this.  CT was not public housing then, though it
> probably is now, what with Barry's lady and others having had their way with
> it.  I've read books about "Defensible Space" and other stuff blaming
> slumification on architecture, but that doesn't apply here.  It was the same
> buildings all along.   What seems to have happened is that the succeeding owners
> just started sucking all the money out of it without ever intending to put any
> in.  The character of the tenants was the least of it.

Cora Masterson Barry was, IIRC, at one time the head of the the city's
public-housing or public-properties organization, she actually paid
fines or did time over something to do with Clifton Terrace. Anyone who
knows the exact details, please post them. Or write a book, I'll buy it.
But IIRC the problem was that initially it was mixed site, with old
former tenants living there in one side and public-housing folks mixed
in on the other side. Then C. Barry did something lame and the place was
shuttered for about three years, when it opened back up, little had been
fixed and there was some money-problem that precluded fixing the place
at all and next thing you know, it's not that the clientele had ruined
the place, but the only clientele that the place could attract was...
less then wholesome. Eventually they dragged down the entire surrounding
area.

> 
> The same principle must apply to scattered site housing.  As I understand this
> the idea is to dilute the unfortunate amongst the more prosperous.  I agree with
> you in that I don't want Clifton Terrace next or near to me here in the suburbs,
> nor scattered site housing as it is likely to be implemented.  It is expecting
> perhaps not the impossible, but at least the highly unlikely, that some hard
> scrabble type juggling two jobs is going to take very much interest in
> maintaining a showplace.  His place will indeed go to hell unless he gets help.

Not necessarily. See this last-month's entry at
http://www.clark.net/pub/klaatu/district.html for some in-detail remarks
on "how it is being done" (badly) on the "QT" for some disabled folks,
and how it probably ought to be done is easily seen. Basically it needs
a combination of free-market on the one hand, and some regulation of the
free-market on the other hand. The city itself ought to be involved only
peripherially and a safety-regulation capacity only.

> 
> > Looking at the extreme, meticulous caution that DC has historically taken
> > when undertaking public projects,
> 
> <Sarcasm Alert!!  Beep!   Beep!>
> 
> > and the fact that there's nothing that
> > can be done if this fascinating little social experiment doesn't work out
> > for the best, I'd really rather not have this game of financial Russian
> > roulette going on in my neighborhood.
> 
> Quite so.  I was about to suggest that the neighbors of proposed scattered site
> housing units get an agreement with the sponsoring government about the
> maintenance of the property. 

Ideally the government does no sponsoring. They simply make sure that
the tenants aren't abused or forced to live in substandard dwellings
that can't make code.

> Any agreement with the District would be
> worthless.  The situation in the suburbs is not so hopeless.
> 
> > What right do I have to say this? I own a home here. If the neighborhood
> > goes bad, I'm left owning a property I no longer want to occupy and can't
> > afford to sell. We're talking about my home here, where I and my family
> > live, that may someday probably be the biggest chunk of our estate
> > to be left to our kids. If you want to offer me assurances (in some
> > legal sense) that the neighborhood isn't going to end up with one totally
> > trashed eyesore, I'm willing to listen, but to the best of my knowledge,
> > no such promise has ever been offered beyond "Our utterly meaningless
> > study predicts that there won't be a problem".

There are several "scattered site" locations in my community, admittedly
not pre-release or post-release housing for hardened criminals, but they
don't cause any more problem than, say, immigrant family houses, and in
fact they're generally a little cleaner and more orderly, if not as
spiffily decorated with weird little shrines and stuff hanging from
trees flapping in the wind.

> 
> Don't ask for a promise; demand a binding commitment.  If you don't get it,
> fight.
> 
> > If you want to play this game in your neighborhood, and other neighborhood
> > homeowners support you, fine. Build scattered site housing in your
> > neighborhood. But leave my neighborhood out of it.
> 
> The flip side there is, if they're not in your backyard, they're in my
> backyard.  They for sure aren't going away.  We've already seen in Chicago and
> elsewhere that large projects don't work.  I don't think scattered site housing
> is going to vanish, either, or even that it should.  The trick is for the
> neighborhood to set the terms.

No. This is not the trick... not at first. The neighborhood ought to be
as helpful as possible, an adversarial relationship from the outset is
in general a really bad idea. When stuff starts going to hell and starts
doing it obviously, you should have already known about it through your
consistent and continued efforts at outreach.

> 
> In back of my house, behind a palisade fence, there is some sort of County care
> facility.  They have taken over a private residence and use it for several
> people who use wheel chairs.  Mornings, there arrive a couple of big vans that
> haul these folks off to work and bring them back in the evening.  They are good
> neighbors and I have no objection.  One thing of interest though.  The County
> did not tell us they were doing this and certainly did not ask if it was OK with
> us.  I have been told that it is against some sort of regulation to do so.

It is. Americans with Disabilities Act and EEOC regs.