Tawana Holland of DC’s Department of Human Services told a December 16th meeting on the subject of increased emergency calls to Van Ness-area apartment buildings that many residents, upon receiving a rental subsidy, choose this neighborhood because “there have been other places in the city where they have been traumatized for many, many years. And when they get a voucher they want to have a better life, they want to go to a neighborhood that they perceive will be safer and will be more welcoming to them.”
Some who come here find their safety is not guaranteed.
MPD Second District Lieutenant Stephen Amodeo reported at the May 17th ANC meeting that the Office of the Attorney General has accepted MPD’s referral of three Van Ness apartment buildings to OAG’s nuisance properties division. 3003 Van Ness and the Chesapeake and Saratoga apartments potentially face lawsuits and penalties over landlords’ alleged unwillingness to address security issues.
Still under OAG consideration are MPD’s referrals of 3002 Rodman, where a man was fatally stabbed on May 4th, and Connecticut House, where on April 21st, a woman fleeing her alleged attacker jumped from an eighth floor apartment. Amodeo said the woman, who survived the fall, remains hospitalized.
People who know both victims said their apartments were rented through vouchers. The number of voucher renters in Ward 3 has increased since 2017, when Mayor Bowser added a subsidy to HUD-calculated fair market rates so vouchers would cover rents in more DC apartment buildings.
The newcomers are welcome here. But some are recently homeless and have behavioral health issues exacerbated by their lives on the street, and they struggle to adjust. Some have children that they struggle to care for. Some are targets of assault, robbery, and worse. They need additional, long-term support beyond a place to live. And while DC agencies say they are providing these services, reports from tenant leaders and other residents suggest otherwise.
They tell me of stabbings and other violent crime behind closed doors. Of children wandering at all hours, knocking on doors to beg for money or food. Of children, left to fend for themselves, starting kitchen fires. Of people yelling and screaming all night. Of trash dumped in hallways instead of being properly disposed of. Of dogs allowed to relieve themselves in public spaces.
At Connecticut House, police found an illegal high-capacity firearm in the apartment from which the woman had jumped. Shortly after that, a tenant organizer told me she overheard two fellow residents, also voucher holders, talking about the incident. One told the other that she was thinking of moving out. She thought the building had become too dangerous.
Who in their right mind would not demand a fix?
Representatives from DC agencies have long denied there are any problems. They’ve admonished the critics of housing vouchers and support services, explaining away the complaints as white residents’ discomfort with the newcomers.
The complaints are in fact coming from people of all races, from people with housing vouchers and without, from longtime residents and newer arrivals. Something has changed. And at long last, someone in Mayor Bowser’s administration admitted as much. At the April ANC 3F meeting, Deputy Mayor Chris Geldart spoke of visiting 20 apartment buildings, spread throughout the District, with similar issues. He talked about support services promised but not provided, and of landlord incentives that made voucher holders more lucrative, “creating de facto public housing” in one building, which now demands a high level of emergency resources. Geldart said the current system “ain’t working,” and that he was working with the heads of agencies and the Office of the Attorney General on solutions.
Tenant leaders need to be included in this conversation. In some buildings, they’ve succeeded in working with landlords and the police to improve safety and conditions in their homes, and they have an on-the-ground perspective of what works, and what doesn’t. Tenant leaders from apartment buildings along Connecticut Avenue have banded together to talk to candidates and office holders about these issues. They have asked Mayor Bowser to speak with them too. She has not responded to their request.
Let’s stop accusing each other of racism when there is a real problem we need to confront. The mayor’s voucher system, put in place without adequate follow-up and services for recipients, has created safety issues and worsened living conditions in apartments throughout the District, not just Van Ness.
Mayor Bowser, we need you to make this right. A crucial step is sitting down with tenant leaders.
George Hofmann says
This article about the Connecticut Ave problems was commendable. Thank you!
Forest Hills Park is a critical piece of the neighborhood – right now it could be instrumental in positive ways, and in the future, perhaps even more so.
The most obvious way to bring together support for the Park would be ANC3F, but ANC is being confronted with a lot of ongoing neighborhood problems, so it might take the formation of a new partnership for change to happen..
Hopefully this post will help to bring this to the attention of neighbors in the immediate surrounding area – the neighbors on Chesapeake St., the Saratoga/Chesapeake, Brandywine and other buildings, the building management companies, the Adventist Church, the baseball, tennis and basketball players, the dog walkers, Rock Creek Conservancy, etc – all could play a role, working with the city and not-for-profit agencies with programs – jobs training, youth, conservation, for example – brought together for positive action and healing for a neighborhood sorely in need, and rich in talent and creativity, now and in the long term.
Let’s pull for Forest Hills, Van Ness and All!
Ken Lonse says
I live in ANC1C in a Lenkin Company owned property. They do such a poor marketing job that they have come to fill the most expensive units with voucher holders. Some 19-year old kid got a two-story townhouse on a pool deck, only to have his guests terrorize the place. I mean really, a two story 1.5 bath place ON A DAMNED pool deck.
Green Eyeshades says
The main post says this in paragraph five: “The number of voucher renters in Ward 3 has increased since 2017, when Mayor Bowser added a subsidy to HUD-calculated fair market rates so vouchers would cover rents in more DC apartment buildings.” There is a link underneath the words “HUD-calculated fair market rates” which connects to the very complicated multi-step arithmetic HUD uses to calculate fair market rent (FMR) in any particular zip code. Nothing at that link reveals the number of “voucher renters in Ward 3” and I would love to see how many “voucher renters in Ward 3” actually exist.
Also, nothing at the HUD link shows that “Mayor Bowser added a subsidy” in 2017. I would love to know what the amount of that subsidy was, and whether it allows the FMR to be higher than the amount of rent charged for rent-controlled apartments.
The basic facts concerning crime among voucher holders, and crime committed by “voucher renters in Ward 3,” and crime committed AGAINST “voucher renters in Ward 3,” are also missing, except for the mention of one murder at 3002 Rodman on May 4 and the crimes against the woman who jumped from Connecticut House on April 21.
DC’s Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) claims it has “over 4,000 sworn and civilian members.” (Link to follow.) After searching for two hours, I could not find the answer to the question “how many social workers are employed by the DC government?”
What we need to understand better is that the Covid pandemic had huge, damaging, impacts on DC residents, including voucher users. To take just one specific example, DCist reported last month that domestic violence crisis intervention “providers say the increase in the number and complexity of cases they are managing during the pandemic has left them stretched thin. DC SAFE, the District’s 24/7 crisis intervention agency for domestic violence, served about 6,000 clients a year before the pandemic — but since the start of the pandemic, that number has grown to 10,000 a year.” (Link to follow.)
Last year, DCist reported that the DC government could not distribute all of the housing vouchers that are available to it. “Between October 2019 and February 2021, D.C. used only 56% of its permanent supportive housing vouchers reserved for individuals, the data show. The agencies did even worse on such vouchers reserved for families, allocating just 37% of them. (DHS Director Laura Zeilinger tells DCist that those numbers have since ticked up slightly to 68% and 51%, respectively, when adding in those that were granted in one fiscal year and actually used the following.) Those numbers represent significant drops from fiscal years 2019 and 2018, when about 80% of permanent supportive housing vouchers were utilized.” (Link to follow.)
It seems obvious that the problems of the voucher program in Ward 3, whatever they are, are tiny compared to the malfunction and dysfunction in the housing voucher programs District-wide, and the woeful shortfall in funding for domestic violence crisis intervention services. DC needs hundreds more social workers to provide services to residents suffering from every kind of trauma and deprivation, including residents who happen to use vouchers to pay their rent. Until DC residents force our legislators and executive branch to fund employment for social workers to meet the need, all other social safety net programs will be dysfunctional.
The voucher system isn’t the only part of DC’s government that is broken, DC’s human services budget is broken. Funding for domestic violence intervention services is broken. Increasing the size of MPD without funding social services adequately will never solve the problems of the voucher system or domestic violence intervention services.
Green Eyeshades says
Link to MPD claim that it has over 4,000 police and civilian employees:
https://mpdc.dc.gov/page/mpd-who-we-are
Link to DCist article in April 2022 about domestic violence crisis intervention services:
https://dcist.com/story/22/04/12/d-c-s-domestic-violence-services-organizations-say-they-face-budget-shortfalls-amid-skyrocketing-need/
Link to DCist article in April last year about District government’s failure to use all available vouchers:
https://dcist.com/story/21/04/12/dc-wasted-hundreds-of-permanent-housing-voucher-subsidies-last-year/