August 19, 2007
Light in August
Former Editor-in-Chief Ryan Avent writes a weekly column about neighborhood and development issues.
For much of the past year, this column has taken a hard look at many aspects of District life, from crime and schools, to transportation planning and development, to the uneven distribution of growth in the city, and found them wanting. It’s never difficult to be critical of the way things are done in the District, and yet there are obviously many satisfied Washingtonians, myself among them, who are happy to call this place home. This week, as the city continues to enjoy its August downtime, I think it’s a fine time to remember how good things are in D.C. Now is clearly no time for us to rest on our laurels, but it’s important to recall just how far the District has come.
Never in recent memory has the city been this safe. Residents remain rightly concerned about occasional flare-ups and a homicide rate that is still well above where it should be, but both the trends and the absolute numbers are clear. Last year, Washington recorded its lowest homicide total in decades, and the city is on pace to come in below that this year. The homicide count for the past 365 days is 15 percent below that for the 365 that came before, and west of the Anacostia River the decline is 30 percent. While some categories of crime did tick up last year, overall trends remain positive, and great strides have been made in the 1st and 3rd Police Districts, fast growing areas of the city that gave the police headaches last year but which have shown great progress this year. Many communities continue to cry out for more police attention, complaining loudly when outbreaks do not generate enough police response. That, in itself, is a good thing, showing not that criminal activity is increasing, but that community involvement and public demands for police accountability are on an upswing across a broadening swath of the city.
That broadening is itself evidence of the rapid growth the city has recently enjoyed. Census figures show steady, moderate increases in Washington’s population, but beneath the total a different dynamic is clear. West of the Anacostia River, and particularly in the dense center of the District, population is booming. That area has experienced a net annual gain of between 5,000 and 7,000 people in recent years, resulting in a remaking of many neighborhoods. While new buildings continue to go up on underused lots across the city, vacant and deteriorating properties have been patched up and occupied. The growth in new and improved residential property has been rooted in strong fundamentals, allowing the city to weather the housing market downturn far better than other major metropolitan areas. Home sales and prices in the District have begun to increase relative to last year’s numbers; even condo sales are up as inventory declines. That is due in part to a change in developer strategy on some projects, shifting condo units into rentals, but such a shift is possible and profitable because the local rental market has also remained strong.
Photo by elle decouvre.
The growth in population and the relative steadiness of the housing market are rooted in the continued strength of the local economy. The District remains the largest center of employment in the Washington region, which has itself been at or near the top of the rankings in annual job creation. The District and inner suburbs boast an unemployment rate of only 3.3 percent, well below the national average, and while the District’s rate sits at 5.7 percent, that is down from 6.1 percent a year ago, and is one of the lowest rates the city has had in the past ten years. D.C. adds about 8,000 jobs a year, a remarkable and remarkably consistent performance, especially considering that average hourly compensation in the city is above, and often well above, the national average for most professions, from lawyers to cashiers.
Recent economic growth and a new sense of fiscal prudence relative to the past has meant a steadily improving balance sheet for the city. Last year, the District posted its tenth consecutive balanced budget, a feat which has prompted all three major credit rating agencies to rate city bonds as investment grade, saving D.C. millions in loan costs. A better balance sheet has allowed the city to invest in itself and improve services for residents. The District is spending to improve streetscapes across the city and create new parks and trails. It’s laying the groundwork for a streetcar system that will improve mobility and bring transit to new neighborhoods. It’s spending $2.3 billion to modernize school facilities. While the District’s public school system has been perhaps the most stubborn problem for the city, there are signs that that, too, may be on the road to improvement. DCPS’ new leadership begins its job with student performance numbers low—but better than they were the year before.
But the city cannot, of course, be captured by numbers alone. The real measure of the city's success is its new creative energy. In the past few years, the growth in new restaurants and bars, theater companies, music venues, shops, and art galleries (and blogs to cover them all), has been extraordinary.
Can we do better as a city? Absolutely. But perspective is important. Healthy criticism requires a recognition of the great progress that has been made. Next week, I'll be back to telling District leaders what they ought to be doing with their time and money. For now, I'm happy to reflect on the good things.
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Thanks for taking a moment to enumerate the positives, Ryan. It is a great time to be in DC.
Serious neighborhood crime is down. The precursor of that, petty juvenile crime, also seems to be decreasing. Local bodegas, markets, cafes, etc are opening in place of shady corner liquor stores. Streets are being re-treed and reconfigured for urban life.
DC is like an unfolding chrysanthemum blossom. Really.
Kudos on the title of this one, Ryan. I just wish you'd maybe touch on the whole racial subtext of Faulkner's work in relation to the economic "success" of the District. Or maybe that's a bit too po-mo for dcist's audience. Regardless, it's sorta comforting to know that the rich in DC will continue to get richer, and the poor will continue to be marginalized. But hey, they don't pay taxes into DC's coffers anyway, so no loss there.
As for the "developer strategy" to move unsalable condo units to rentals, it's not so much a strategy as an economic necessity, what with pre-sale buyers taking a loss on their deposits in order to avoid being saddled with a bloated mortgage.
Historically, DC's been relatively recession-resistant, but anyone who was here in the 1970s and '80s knows these things are cyclical. The next couple years are going to be very interesting, whether we're going to re-live the boom years of the 1990s or whether cheese heroin becomes the new crack.
I imagine the Third Districts real numbers are about to go down even more, but that only because it's shuffling off a few neighborhoods to District Two.
I agree that the next few years will be crucial, mostly because I suspect the city's revenues will level off or even decline with the cooling off of the real estate market. It's been relatively easy for the city to remain in the black for the last 10 years or so, I am interested whether they can keep doing it with a headwind instead of a tail wind.
I don't know that the revenues will level off very much, let alone decline. It seems to me that many residential property tax assessments are still below today's market value. I'm around 70-80%, myself. And because the % increase in tax (regardless of assessed value is capped, we've got a few years cushion in that, too. And then there's the commercial market which, in DC, shows no signs of cooling.
Oops. Forgot a " ) " after the word "value".
This should be in the Post's Outlook "Close to Home" section.
Yes, yes, I agree things are good in the city for the "yup-yups", which being a recent graduate and professionally employed -- I guess I am technically one, although I have been raised in the city library system and by the lost souls of our city who do not frequent Starbucks or Whole Foods.
I also have an interest in this article and the continuing growth of our city for two main reasons.
On September 4th I will be entrusted with educating, challenging, and raising the expectations of nearly 80 9th graders at Cesar Chavez Public Charter School for Public Policy - Parkside in NE.
These young adults have a different worldview than us "yup-yups". Our Light in August is their Dark House -- because the lights are off and the phone has been turned off. It is not our faults, the “yup-yups” --- it is the continual rat race of the city where resources are scarce and petty crumbs are transformed into valuable gold bullion. These young folks have to get theirs – they have to have and earn their own – on their own merits and ability. This will be realized through education and legal entrepreneurship.
The development, let's say for example on H Street NE, (ex. Trader Joes) will create jobs. These young adults of the city not PG, MoCo, or NoVA, need to get and hold these jobs. Furthermore, the young adults of the city who live in Woodland Terrace, Kelsey Gardens, or Mayfair, who work hard everyday to overcame the deeply engrained disadvantages that the city bombards them with when they leave their doors need to also share in our collective feelings of optimism.
Coupled with my aforementioned remarks, I know the city will prosper because of what is going on on the street. Young people are moving to city, the young people of the city are taking accountability for themselves in the face of the ever growing threat of outside forces (for example going off to college at YALE), the elders are reaching out to take back the communities they built up before the 4 days in April. We are all in this together. It is for us to now enjoy.
There is a renewed optimism, energy, sense of service, and collective commitment to live by my favorite Faulkner quote………….. “Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.”
With this said, I am taking it upon myself to lift up the youth, the lost souls, the unsung heroes, and the whole city to stand on the shoulders of giants to make DC a cultural epicenter.
This is being achieved with a deceptively slow expediency by DreamCity Theatre Group (www.dreamcitytg.org)
For us to be successful and in the image of NYC’s Public Theater we need the city to continue to grow and mature.
This was a great article. Thank you for promoting the positive things that are happening in our city. Let us all work to be better than ourselves and our city will then reap all of the benefits.
DreamCity 4 Life
Thanks DC4Life. It was nice to have that perspective. DC to me is not nearly as vibrant a place as it was in the 1990s. The arts community (which everyone seems to rave about) has been here before, and frankly there is nothing to keep it here. Or to transform it to the next level. DC has had vibrant creative communities -- even more so in my opinion -- like it has now, but it lost those too. People do not stay. And that is a serious problem that the city will have to overcome.
In regards to giving our lost youth a chance (and finding work to keep our artists artists and not white collar sellouts) -- I don't see enough money and time going into attracting good union jobs. But they probably won't come, because the hippies and elites in Bethesda and Takoma Park effectively killed all cross District Interstate plans -- and with them, took the good warehouse and shipping jobs and light industry to Landover and other points closer to the beltway or even farther away to Richmond and Baltimore. Not that there shouldn't be other options -- but right now DC has the classic job market of a very economically split city: service jobs and white collar jobs and nothing in between. And so the working class will continue to exit. And the artists too, who would most likely like to have a working class job so they can spend more time in their studios. And so in addition to institutional problems (lack of studio space, lack of competitive MFA programs, lack of light industrial areas for creative businesses) you are also losing the job market for them as well. It's no wonder there has been a steady loss of artists over the age of 25 to Baltimore, Philly and New York since at least the early 1990s.
Actually, a lot of artists can't afford NYC any more and moving to Buenos Aires.
DC's neighborhood development cycle involves encouraging artists to move into run-down areas (Gallery Place, Shaw, Southeast off South Capitol Street) which then become magnets for small independent commerce which paves the way for large-scale economic development. By which time, the artists can't afford the neighborhood anymore. There's no motivation on the part of the local government to preserve such space for an arts community, since their primary concern is generating the maximum amount of tax revenue per square foot. The trick is to develop a sustainable arts community as well as maximize economic development. Seems like DC is always concerned about the latter at the expense of the former.
DC1974: Excellent points. DC government is implicated in the losses of cultural human resources, and lack of studio space is a key failure. Even in the baddest of old days the Landsburg Building and later the Stables Art Center were DC-backed arts incubators that nurtured many performing and visual artists who are influential today, and the DC Arts Commission once advocated zoning decisions and provided competitive grants which supported operation of nonprofit studios, places where art was created. More recently, when not using public money to fund its own productions (which compete with those of the nonprofit arts organization it purported encourages), DC government policy has emphasized consumption of art rather than its production, theater-restaurants instead of studios. Without policy change, DC will be importing most visual and performing arts within in few years.
Having recently moved to DC from Baltimore, I agree, DC IS a nice place to be. People actually are concerned about murders on the block, police are (believe it or not) relatively responsive and present, and I rarely find garbage and chicken bones on my sidewalk.
But I don't believe what DC has accomplished in most places could be classified as community development. It IS neighborhood change or (here comes the buzzword) gentrification, but not community development. In order to say that DC is doing great work, we need to look at changes in demographics and crime rates in surrounding jurisdictions like Price George's County. Like many of America's cities that are "improving," the suburbs absorb those who can no longer afford the city. They are not necessarily improving communities - just exchanging one population for another. But in our case, Prince George's and Charles Counties are taking in those who cannot afford the city. Crime isn't going away - it's just moving.
While DC has done some impressive things with utilizing vacant lots and making investments, I think the challenge is to improve neighborhoods and allow for stable, safe working class neighborhoods.
Why not use all of that delightful revenue and work with community programs to help stabilize (not gentrify) communities to keep some housing permanently affordable and also allow those who need additional city services have access?
10:
You make some valid points about how development displaces crime and poverty while not solving the problem. However, crime displacement is not a zero-sum game. The real hot-spots of crime occur in areas of concentrated poverty. If a high-rise housing project is demolished for new condos, the displaced residents will scatter across the region. Some will settle back into other densely packed projects, but the overall effect will be a more even spread of poverty.
Less concentrated poverty == Less overall crime
"However, crime displacement is not a zero-sum game. The real hot-spots of crime occur in areas of concentrated poverty. If a high-rise housing project is demolished for new condos, the displaced residents will scatter across the region."
And, some people in the region are bitter because of this. They would rather let the crime stay in DC. Too bad. The entire region should share this burden.
"The entire region should share this burden."
It's not just that the region should share, it's that by deconcentrating poverty, the crime rate goes down.