1979 in DC Public Housing

In the DC Archives the other day, I came across two interesting items from 1979. On January 2, 1979, Marion Barry became the second mayor of Home-Rule-Era DC.

First, resident representatives of the DC public housing projects met with Mayor Barry on June 12, 1979. One of these resident representatives, Vivian Williams, told Mayor Barry:

Ms. V. Williams: We have a priority. I would very much like to see us keep our eye on Ellen Wilson. This property is right up on Capitol Hill and if we aren't careful folk will take it right from under us. (1)

Vivian Williams did see what the future held! In 1988, everyone was moved out of Ellen Wilson with the promise to renovate the buildings, but then the entire project was destroyed and rebuilt as a mixed-income development called the Townhomes on Capitol Hill. Vivian Williams was quite aware of what was going on on Capitol Hill, since she both lived in public housing and worked as a public housing organizer through Friendship House. Here is a sampling of the activities she and the rest of the small staff at Friendship House organized, from my previous post:

During one three-month period in 1982, Friendship House had distributed 6,175 flyers, pamphlets, and newsletters (about resident council meetings, jobs, school activities, bingo nights, etc; usually distributed door-to-door allowing them to know personally many Hill residents); connected 150 residents with resources; assisted 33 renters or owners; advocated for city-wide policy changes; organized public housing meetings and a disco to fund public housing resident councils; helped people get jobs; dispensed clothes; gave out emergency food assistance; enrolled 84 families in a food cooperative; organized parents to improve the public schools; provided a breathtaking array of youth activities; provided seniors with meals and services (including visiting them in the hospital); and more (GWU Special Collections, Friendship House Association records). They organized public housing residents into resident councils to advocate for repairs and security, formed food cooperatives and low-cost food buying clubs, and organized residents as consumers to work to improve the Safeway and call for lower utility bills.

Today, these resident councils still exist. It would be interesting to hear how they are doing.

Second, the resident representatives noted the 1979 schedule for the Mayor's Department of Housing/Property Management Administration Special Summer Youth Programs. Mayor Barry had set up a special summer youth program for public housing, which included a bike program, horticulture program, video tape program, reading program, soccer program, and drama program. These programs also provided jobs for those running the programs (Washington Youth Corps [WYC]). Here are a couple of the schedules:

1979 Bike Program

15 WYC Supervisors, 1 per 5 youth.

Monday: Arthur Capper, Montana Terrace

Tuesday: Sheridan/Barry Farms, Highland/Valley Green

Wednesday: East Capitol/Capitol View/ East Gate

Friday: Stanton/Frederick Douglas/Edgewood



1979 Horticulture Program

2 Supervisors (17-21 years), 10 WYCs - 1 per 5 youth.

Monday: James Creek

Tuesday: Greenleaf

Wednesday: Arthur Capper

Thursday: Woodland

Friday: East Capitol

Monday: Lincoln Heights

Tuesday: Potomac.


(1) DC Archives, NCHA Advisory Board, Advisory Board Meeting with Mayor Barry, June 12, 1979.
(2) DC Archives, NCHA Advisory Board, Advisory Board Meeting with Presidents of Resident Councils, July 16, 1979.

What is "world class"?

Clinton Yates wrote a great piece in the Post today: "Officials who want 'world class' need to look no further than D.C.'s Fish Market." Yates has looked at the plans for the Wharf, a $2 billion project to redevelop the SW waterfront, which, in Yates' words, "would gut the quaint grittiness of the waterfront and replace it with amenities that sound like they've been created in a college marketing class." 'World class' is a phrase used to draw in international investors "and inflate the egos of those involved in the courting." It is clear that 'world class' developments look a lot like other 'world class' developments. Take a look at the plans for the SW waterfront: http://www.swdcwaterfront.com/about/Presentation_Community_Forum.pdf

Every aspect of the development plan refers to some other city, especially Seattle around Pike Place Market, San Francisco around Ghirardelli Square, and Baltimore around the Inner Harbor (including the tall ships). Thus, the design refers to or speaks the international language of the 'world class.' As many sociologists have noted, since the urban fiscal crises of the 1970s, cities around the world are in competition with each other for international investors' funds and use all sorts of strategies to lure investors. Surprisingly, sociologists have found that entrepreneurs are a pretty risk-averse bunch, which Malcolm Gladwell has discussed in detail. For example, based on a survey with new entrepreneurs, INSEAD entrepreneurship professor Hongwei Xu and Duke University sociology professor Martin Ruef found that "nascent entrepreneurs are more risk-averse than non-entrepreneurs." Many entrepreneurs are interested in assured profits, which might explain the unimaginative developments around DC. For example, compare the current fascinating and much enjoyed McMillan Park (two photos on left) and the development plans by Vision McMillan Park that have almost nothing to do with the fascinating nature of the space (photo on right):

Current McMillan Park, Friends of McMillan Park

Current McMillan Park, Friends of McMillan Park

Plan by Vision McMillan Park, Friends of McMillan Park

NYU anthropologist Tom Looser has noticed that professionals moving through global cities or supposed 'world class' cities tend to be indifferent to their local surroundings, local history, and local culture, and to feel little responsibility for others and for local government in these cities. At the same time, as Richard Florida has argued, many of these professionals also demand "unique," "authentic," "local" experiences. So, they would not desire a dinner at a McDonalds or other chain restaurants. However, many restaurants, cafes, and events appear locally distinct, when, in fact, they are owned by major global investors and reflect the global demand of the "creative classes." As a result, we see similar "local" events all around the world -- outdoor movies, gallery walks, business district food fairs, ferris wheels, etc.

Yates quoted someone else stating that the SW waterfront plan "unites the whole waterfront into a kind of singular amenity that is going to really be great for Washington, D.C." As a result D.C.'s Fish Market -- according to Yates, "the oldest still-running fish market in the United States" -- is swept up into this singular amenity, into this uniform controlled space of the waterfront, rather than building the waterfront plans on the Fish Market, the uber-modernist buildings of the 1970s, the monuments, the houseboats, the seafood restaurants, Westminster Church, and so on.

One commenter on the a Post article on the SW development wrote: "As a SW resident, I am so happy this is finally getting done! There has been virtually nothing in the area and the current wharf is a dump." Developers and city governments let places deteriorate for decades as they wait for investors. Decades of deterioration also undermine and delegitimize opposition to even uninspired development projects. In Jane Jacobs' words, these investors bring "cataclysmic" money, which is used to wipe out the existing buildings and the people and create a whole new community. Planners sought to do exactly the same thing during 1970s urban renewal in SW DC. Jane Jacobs would have called for "gradual" money, which maintains and builds on what is there.

Another commenter on the same Post article criticized the new plans for SW, "The DC metro has hundreds of franchised Ye Fake Olde Irish Guinness Pubs and bland upscale apartments and movie theaters. We only have one place where you can go buy crabs unloaded from boats in an open air stand under an overpass." The standardization involved with creating 'world class' cities might make cities...boring.

P.S. DC has many examples of communities, which have fought this boring, expensive, and exclusionary uniformity. Such as residents of Adams Morgan (see this interesting report by former GWU political science professor Jeffrey Henig) and the current-day Friends of McMillan Park. Consider helping the Friends of McMillan Park save this remarkable park! 

High Modernism returns to DC (the Utopian Potential)

City Center, Washington Post, 4/23/2014

In my last post, I talked about the dystopian nature of high modernist architecture, as architecture for multinational corporations, global finance, the wealthy, an elite society. In DC, high modernist architecture replaced the vibrant communities of SW and was the object of protests by historic preservationists on Capitol Hill and elsewhere. We can see high modernism returning to DC at City Center and on the Waterfront. Yet, at the same time, modernist architecture has always also had a utopian potential, reflecting or encouraging an inclusive democratic society.

This weekend in his Post interview, How the “Sassiest Boy in America” became the most interesting man in rock-and-roll, Ian Svenonius so succinctly expressed the utopian potential of modernism. The excellent Post interviewer, Chris Richards, captured so many interested comments by Svenonius. Svenonius talked about his band from the early 1990s, Nation of Ulysses:

In a sense, Nation of Ulysses was a pastiche band...We loved James Brown and the Futurists and Situationism. I'd say the band was innovative in that it was presenting an immersive package that wasn't a revival. And punk is essentially a revival -- a revival of modernism. Punk comes out of postmodernism, but it's real desire is to inhabit modernism in that it says, "Art has meaning and is revolutionary." 

Postmodernism says, "Oh, Bauhaus looks cool, but we don't have to subscribe to the ideas of Walter Gropius. We can just have this cool thing and still be bankers." Know what I mean?

Bauhaus Dessau, built 1925-1926

From my quick education in Walter Gropius and his art school called Bauhaus in Germany, I learned that he sought to integrate art (sculpture, ceramics, weaving, metal work, painting, wood carving, stained glass), industry, architecture, nature, etc., as well as sorts of elements, such as rich wood, broad expanses of glass, pre-fab concrete, and so on, to create a new kind of building for "A society such as ours, which has conferred equal privileges on everybody, will have to acknowledge its duty to raise the general level of responsiveness to spiritual and aesthetic values, to intensify the development of everybody's imaginative faculties..."(1) Modernist architecture was seen in contrast to "charming Tudor mansions with all modern conveniences" and was a critique of pure commercialism and pure materialism.(2) Modernist architecture, especially imagined and built in collaboration with artisans of all sorts and in dialogue with nature and society, could be broadly meaningful, radically inclusive, and revolutionary.

This practice of modernist architecture is quite different from what seems to be going on at DC's City Center and elsewhere in DC (see end of previous post). Maybe City Center looks like modernist architecture but really is postmodern?

Hotel Bonaventure, L.A. Weekly

The amazing Professor Fredric Jameson at Duke University argues that we are living with postmodern architecture that is merely pastiche, bringing together all sorts of elements arbitrarily and superficially. Thus, modernist forms can be appropriated without the inclusive democratic politics. The modernist forms can be used to create exclusionary, elitist worlds. Postmodernism represents the victory of commodification of all spheres of life.(3) Jameson specifically discussed the commodified world within the Hotel Bonaventure (image to left), but we can see a similar commodified worlds created in DC's City Center: "Dior, Hermès, Longchamp, Paul Stuart, Salvatore Ferragamo and Zadig & Voltaire. Tumi and Allen Edmonds have both already opened their stores and Burberry, Hugo Boss and Kate Spade have announced their plans to follow." (Post, April 23, 2014). As Svenonius said, postmodernism says, "We can just have this cool thing and still be bankers."

What were people thinking when they destroyed the communities in SW during the 1960s and built the modernist architecture that stands there today? Was there an original utopian potential that was undermined? Or was it realized in some ways and not in others?

(1) Hoffa, Harlan. 1961. "Walter Gropius Innovator," Art Education 14(1): 12-15+26+28. 
(2) Murphy, Kevin D. 2011. "The Vernacular Moment,"  Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 70(3): 308-329.
(3) Modules on Jameson, "On Postmodernity" and "On Pastiche." 
(4) Washington Post, April 23, 2014.

High Modernism returns to DC

Last week, I attended the excellent Cities at the Center of the World conference organized by Mason's Center for Global Studies and Cities and Globalization Working Group in collaboration with the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Of the many interesting discussions, I want to talk first about UCSB Professor Paul Amar's outstanding keynote lecture "Cities of Megasecurity."

Amar began by talking about the high modernist architecture and urban planning of the 1940s and 1960s. The high modernist view involved both a certain kind of monumental building:

L'Enfant Plaza Hotel, Expedia.com

and a lunar view of the city or the view from a military plane ready to bomb or already bombing the city:

Southwest DC during urban renewal 1955, National Capital Planning Commission

High modernism was the project of, in Amar's words, crony state actors and corporations. Jane Jacobs and many others have criticized high modernism, calling for a more human city. Yet, Jane Jacobs was soon coopted by developers into giving a human face to the now walkable corporate landscape.

As the extraordinary Columbia University sociology professor Saskia Sassen has shown, cities in the 1980s became financial hubs and primary agents in the global economy. Interestingly, I have found references to DC as a financial center at this time. Richard Florida gave this financial city of modern buildings and monumentalism a "fun" spin, as the Creative City. An example of this is the Yards area of DC with its restaurants, parks, and monumental buildings:

Forest City's rendering of the DC waterfront project, JDLand

Importantly, according to Amar, the Creative City is an increasingly privatized city, run by real estate management or other kinds of corporations.

Amar's keynote primarily explored the new fantasy cities of the Third World, spectacular, monumental, high modernist cities modeled on Dubai. These new cities are managed primarily or completely by private corporations and highly secure, defended by either state militaries or by private police, and funded by Saudi, Qatari, or other Gulf investment groups.

High modernism of this new sort has appeared in DC, in City Center. As reported in December in the Post:

Qatar’s real estate investment arm decided in 2010 to pump $650 million into City Center, becoming the main owner of the $1 billion project on the site of the District’s old convention center in Northwest Washington...“Qatar is a family business with a seat at the United Nations,” said Chase Untermeyer, a business consultant who was U.S. ambassador to Qatar under President George W. Bush. “It doesn’t really matter who owns Al Jazeera or Qatari Diar [the state-owned real estate investment company] because it’s all part of the same family business.”

Here is an image of a planned hotel at City Center, which will join luxury retail: "Dior, Hermès, Longchamp, Paul Stuart, Salvatore Ferragamo and Zadig & Voltaire. Tumi and Allen Edmonds have both already opened their stores and Burberry, Hugo Boss and Kate Spade have announced their plans to follow." (Post, April 23, 2014):

Washington Post, April 23, 2014

Amar noted that these new forms of spectacular high modernism funded by Royal families are created for a wealthy crowd who seek megasecurity, to be protected from the rest of the city in enclaves, including from people who work for them. In contrast to such exclusive cities or enclaves, those in Tahrir Square in Egypt called for an integrative city. What kinds of cities do monarchies create? Can DC be an integrative city?

P.S. What would Jane Jacobs say? Jane Jacobs harshly criticized such urban renewal based on "cataclysmic money," huge investments that fundamentally change a section of the city. Jacobs called for gradual change in communities and gradual money invested in neighborhoods.

Interesting Graphs about 1980s/1990s DC

The Wire City narrative presents cities like Baltimore and DC as emerging out of a past of chaos and devastation. The show "The Wire" repeats the narrative that the city was destroyed, but now it is finally recovered and vibrant. With the riots in 1968, the murder rates of the past, and the problems since then, DC seems like a prime example of a city once in decline and in chaos, which is now on the upswing. I happened upon a 1998 report written by Craig Johnson and John Mikesell, professors at Indiana University's School of Public and Environmental Affairs, about the financial state of the District leading up to the take over by the Control Board in 1995.(1) In general, they criticized the financial affairs of DC. However, these graphs were surprising.

In Figure 1, we can see per capita income in DC (black bars) and in the US (white bars) from 1986 to 1995. Over this period, per capita income is continually increasing, except in 1991 (the middle bar). DC income is also always above the national per capital income level:

In Figure 2, we can see the Total Annual Assessed Valuation of Commercial (black bars) and Residential (white bars) Property from 1986 to 1995. We can see the assessed value of both forms of property increasing through 1992. Residential value is still increasing until 1995, while commercial property values are decreasing:

In Figure 3, we can a significant drop in construction and the value of construction from 1988 to 1995:

In Figure 4, we can see the DC Operating Deficits from 1986 to 1995. The DC government is operating at a deficit in 1990 and 1994. In 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, and 1993, the DC government was operating with a surplus:

So, was DC on an upswing through the 1980s? through the 1970s and the 1980s? What happened in 1994 and 1995? I'm not suggesting that a downturn could happen any moment, rather I am asking: Have the narratives of the DC's past been incorrect? And what have people done based on these perceptions of DC's past?


(1) Johnson, Craig L., and John L. Mikesell. 1998. The Collapse of Federal Fiscal Home Rule in the District of Columbia: An Analysis of Municipal Financial Condition. Bloomington, Ind: School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University.

The Centaur State and Gentrification in Baltimore

Today I was looking through files of slides at the National Archives in College Park, in search of photos of the Potomac Gardens public housing project. I came across a file titled "Housing (Renewal)/Urban Homesteading," which was about Baltimore. The photos showed many empty 19th-century houses in the Otterbein, Barre Circle, and Stirling St. areas of Baltimore in 1980. No one was around, except one person walking by in one picture, but the houses were encircled with fencing and under renovation. Under urban homesteading programs, cities like Baltimore sold abandoned houses for $1 to those who promised to renovate them. What caught my eye were two photos: one of a "Relocation Office" run by the city of Baltimore and the other was a sign selling "Fourteen Fine Townhomes" by a subsidiary of Lovell/IMG Holding.

Why was no one living in these houses? What had happened? In 1967 or 1968, in order to expand a highway, Baltimore established a condemnation line. Within this line, a swath of Baltimore would be condemned and demolished, including Barre Circle, Sharp-Leadenhall, Fells Point, etc. In addition, several high-rise residential buildings were also planned in Otterbein and Stirling St. It seems that this process of condemnation for the highway did not begin until 1972, which led to the city owning at least 100 houses (maybe many more?). This explains the photo of the Relocation Center. Through a Relocation Center like the one I saw in the photo, the city moved people out of their houses and out of their neighborhood. 

Very quickly, in 1973 and 1974, the city declared that the highway plans and the high-rise buildings had been scrapped, in part due to public outcry. The continually indecision about the highway and building plans since the 1960s had led the overwhelming majority of residents to move away, owners not to make repairs or needed renovations, and the city not to provide services or repair infrastructure. One resident told the Baltimore Sun that this process made the area "into a ghetto." 

At about the same time, the city started its urban homesteading program, selling the condemned houses for $1. Otterbein soon became quite a tony neighborhood. Developers also arrived in the area, building luxury townhouses. This explains the Lovell/IMG Holding sign in the photo. Overseas real estate developers like Lovell/IMG (IMG Homes is a subsidiary of Investors Management Group) were investing throughout the Baltimore-Washington area. For example, the fourteen townhouses built by Lovell/IMG in Otterbein priced (according to a 1981 Baltimore Sun article) at $140,000 (about $375,000 today). The 19th-century Victorian history was celebrated, and a historic district created. (In this post and this post, I wrote a bit about the problem of seeking to return to the Victorian era.)

Why weren't the former residents invited back? The city of Baltimore sought to "attract back into the city individuals whose incomes can help balance the increasing proportion of low-income families in the city," to "increase the tax base," and to create on every homestead block "a new neighborhood" (quotations taken from Emily Lieb's excellent Columbia University dissertation on Baltimore). The point of urban homesteading was not for the former residents to return, but rather was to bring new wealthier residents to the city. These areas of the city were seen as merely abandoned and seen as profitable. Their history was Victorian, not the history of the recent past. According to CUNY Geography professor Neil Smith's rent gap theory, gentrification "is most likely to occur in areas experiencing a sufficiently large gap between actual and potential land values" (p. 464). These areas had decreased so severely in value, but many could see their potential value. In the view of the city of Baltimore and the real estate industry, this potential value required a new kind of person with a certain kind of taste and the income to realize this taste.

UC Berkeley sociology professor Loic Wacquant talks often about the "centaur state," how the state punishes the poor (through displacement, mass incarceration, and paternalist disciplining) and nurtures the middle class and the wealthy. Did/does Baltimore experience the centaur state? What was the role of companies like Lovell/IMG and the real estate industry? What happened to all the people who passed through the Relocation Office? Did they try to buy a house for $1? Were they rejected? Did this happen in DC?

P.S. For more about urban pioneers and vigilantes, see my previous post "Capitol Hill Vigilantes."

Keep Public Housing II

According to Where are They Now?, a fascinating study of those evicted from SW, "Southwest Washington was a rat-infested, refuse-covered, unsanitary slum," from which DC cleared out the housing and 23,500 residents by 1960 "in order to build a 'new town in the city' with air-conditioned apartments for middle and upper income groups as well as some 929 public housing units." I wrote previously about how some of those displaced became sick with grief, similar to that experienced by a death in the family. This was a common reaction to such relocations nationwide.

Before 1960, those who had lived in SW often resided with extended family or made extra money housing boarders. The housing market in DC, especially for African Americans, was incredibly difficult, and was made more difficult after the evictions of 1960 with thousands of residents looking for new housing. A lucky few made it into public housing or adequate private housing. The Where are They Now? researchers were most surprised by the different responses from those who had moved to public housing and from those who had moved to private housing. In line with the popular dislike of public housing in the 1960s, the researchers had expected much better experiences among those in private housing. They instead found: "the public housing resident is a much more integrated, optimistic, and informed person than the private housing dweller. The picture is consistent in every area that was studied." Why? While they complained about the institutional nature of public housing (especially the bureaucratic rules), the public housing residents had a sense of community. The researchers found:

The respondents in public housing are less anomic, more hopeful as to what the future will bring them, have a greater sense of belonging to their new neighborhoods, believe more strongly that they can organize for community improvement, have a great knowledge of community institutions, and believe to a greater extent that the Government actions to eliminate the blight of old Southwest was correct.

These social connections are a much needed by low-income residents, and public housing can enhance such connections. (see also the comment here by a former resident Arthur Capper public housing project)

When the lucky few moved into public housing, however, they were no longer allowed to house members of their extended families or boarders. In interviews, former public housing residents remembered cousins or other relatives periodically living with them. To move into public housing, families had to be transformed into more nuclear families. This was likely also the case with private apartments that often are zoned to have a certain number of residents. As a result of these restrictive policies, many people likely became homeless for various periods of time.

Now, with the tearing down of public housing and replacement of it with mixed-income, families are transformed again. The Post had an article about the stalled redevelopment of the several public housing projects, including Lincoln Heights. Finally, some Lincoln Heights residents were invited to move into a new mixed-income building. The article describes how one former resident moved into a wonderful new apartment. Another resident, however, "opted to stay where she was. She was approved for a one-bedroom but did not want to leave her two adult sons on the street." The family was being transformed again, as relatives had to be neglected and the family reduced to just one person or just a few people, who can fit within the studios and one-bedroom apartments that might be available in DC. Luckily, the woman could choose to stay in Lincoln Heights public housing and be with her sons.

Public housing must remain as an option for people. This post also suggests that affordable housing must be more than studios and one-bedrooms. All sorts of people do miraculous work taking in relatives, friends of friends, friends of relatives, and others desperately in need of housing. This system of mutual aid has become overloaded too, which might explain the recent surge in homelessness that left one mother with a two-week-old baby homeless. Public housing must remain an option for our DC neighbors.