Say Goodbye to Potomac Gardens?

*This wasn't intended as a breaking story, but rather a discussion of the problems around redevelopment for public housing residents. The plans to redevelop Potomac Gardens/Hopkins may have been terminated due to lack of funds, but there were redevelopment plans. I'm waiting for a statement from DCHA.*
The DC government is planning to redevelop Potomac Gardens and Hopkins public housing into a mixed income rental/homeownership development:

A joint venture redevelopment between DCHA and a private developer to do a one-for-one replacement of 510 units of public housing located in the present Potomac Gardens and Hopkins Plaza developments. The proposed redevelopment will be a mixed income rental and homeownership containing 510 replacements units out of a total 1,230 units located on the two public housing sites and in the
adjoining neighborhood.

A firm has been brought in as "architects of community." Have you walked around and experienced the "community" at Capitol Quarter, where the same firm planned the community? Will this redevelopment help the public housing residents? Or will the residents be displaced as too poor or not appropriate for the neighborhood? At Ellen Wilson, of the 134 households living there, only "24 families were able to make the successful transition from public housing to homeownership" (DCHA 2008). From Capper-Carrollsburg, the majority of the 707 households were displaced and replaced with those who could pay for the many townhouses starting at $662,000 or more, workforce townhouses with subsidized mortgages for those making $82,800-119,025, and affordable apartments (I was told by the developer that these were for those making around $50,000-60,000). Where did the former public housing residents go? What happened to them?

Potomac Gardens has an important history in the neighborhood as a place that helped many people move from poor agricultural life in the South and start a new life here (while maintaining connections with family in the South):


And Potomac Gardens continues to provide housing to those in great need. As I discussed in a previous post, at a meeting I attended, one Potomac Gardens resident said that she was just like everyone else in the room; she went to work and put her sons through college; she just didn't have enough money to afford non-public housing. According to the DCHA, 40 vacancies are filled there each year. Is there a way to redevelop Potomac Gardens and Hopkins without displacing the residents and without destroying the community and social connections that they have built and depend on? 

P.S. In his "Gentrification and Community Fabric in Chicago" article, John Betancur has shown that the poor rely on social connections much more than those with higher incomes: "Limited in their mobility and exchange value resources, lower-income groups depend on such fabrics far more than do the higher income. In fact, they have fewer choices and are most vulnerable to place-based shifts...the real tragedy of gentrification was not market displacement per se, but community disintegration." Could the "architects of community" be destroying one community (a group in the most need of this community) in the name of building another community for others?

P.P.S. See the official statement by the DCHA: "We do not have plans to redevelop Potomac Gardens at this time."

P.P.P.S. See my more recent post on Potomac Gardens: "Wikipedia and Community History: Potomac Gardens."