Chocolate City Takes on Gentrification
We've had plenty of heated debates on the issue of gentrification here at DCist, but if we're honest, few of us have likely seen the issue through the eyes of those being gentrified out. And so steps in Chocolate City, a new documentary that attempts to take on the complex issue from the view of residents pushed out in the name of development.
The new movie, first screened last night at the Festival Centre on Columbia Road, follows the story of 400 low-income families of the Arthur Capper/Carrollsburg housing projects in Southeast who lost their homes in 2002 to make room for a new, mixed-income development funded in part by a $34.9 million HOPE VI federal grant. Though they were promised the chance to come back, the movie claims, both the number of low-income units to be built and the threshold used to define "low-income" in the new development pushed them out for good.
Filmed and directed by local filmaker Ellie Walton and British journalist Sam Wild, Chocolate City doesn't seek to deal with gentrification comprehensively. There are no statistics, no historical perspective, and no comparisons to other cities. The documentary merely offers a human portrait of a community pushed out of their homes, both through their immediate experiences and through the interpretation of playwright Anu Yadav, who developed a one-woman performance based on their story. In this, the 46-minute piece is engaging and thought-provoking, ably balancing first-person commentary, Yadav's performance, and imagery of District neighborhoods in the midst of frenzied construction and change.
While the process of gentrification is initially presented in a somewhat binary fashion -- rich white person pushes out poor black person -- Walton and Wild delve into the political conditions that allow low-income residents to be forced out, first among those the city's lack of voting rights and general institutional inability to address the concerns of the city's poorest. They also touch upon the complicated dynamic of the District's growing Hispanic population. While one displaced woman talks of the power a unified black-Hispanic community to face down developers, another expresses resentment towards illegal immigrants, defiantly saying, "The immigrants should be the ones in shelters."
In the end, Chocolate City leaves many of the questions surrounding gentrification unanswered. This is both good and bad. It's good in that it offers up a platform for discussion; it's bad in that it doesn't stop to consider more deeply the causes, culprits and opportunities of a changing city. More timely and relevant it could not be -- the groundbreaking for the new Capper/Carrollsburg development was just last June, and the new development will rise mere blocks away from the new baseball stadium. And as Mayor Adrian Fenty seeks to fulfill campaign promises that include more affordable housing, the documentary adds a certain urgency to the issue.
The next screenings will be on January 26 at Busboys and Poets at 11 p.m.; January 31 at the Marvin Center at George Washington University (time to be announced); and Februart 10 again at Busboys and Poets at 4 p.m. See the website for mroe details. Picture of the Capper/Carrollsburg housing project taken from JDLand.