May 9, 2006
A Difference of Opinion
Back in January, I wrote this post on demographic trends in the District. The Census Bureau had just released its population estimates for 2005, which showed a drop in population in Washington of about 3,700 from 2004. I looked at Ward-level data and showed that growth in the western part of the city would likely reverse the population loss trend before long.
I'm still happy with that piece, though if I had to do it again I'd mention two additional things. First, I'd note that there's a pretty good chance that D.C. is already back in the population positive. Washington's population is uniquely transient and we have high concentrations of immigrants and lower-income residents, both of which generally cause the Census to undercount. Second, as many commenters noted after that earlier post, I should have pointed out that it really doesn't matter whether or not we lose a few thousand people each year. Not the way we're growing.
The District is the economic motor for a metropolitan region of over 5 million people (and growing, rapidly). Over the last few years, according to tax revenue statements on the District government website, property tax revenues have increased by around 7 percent per year, and sales and income tax revenues have each increased by between 4 and 5 percent per year. Comparisons between the 1997 and 2002 Economic Census show that arts, entertainment, and recreation receipts in the District nearly doubled during that five year period while accomodation and food service receipts increased by about $700 million during that time. Metro ridership is higher than ever; 8 of the 10 highest ridership days have occurred in the past two years, and one only has to look around to note that empty lots without construction cranes are the exception rather than the rule.
So what, exactly, was the Washington City Paper thinking when it ran this week's cover story on the District's impending doom? Consider this passage:
And a dropping population starts all sorts of downward spirals. Abandoned houses lead to crime, which leads to more abandoned houses. When children leave a school system, the buildings that held them remain, leaving surplus property that still needs to be maintained, sucking funds away from students who do stay. And it’s a failing school system that starts the most destructive downward spiral of them all, the one that kills the middle class.Of course, crime is tumbling in D.C., and abandoned houses are being rehabbed by the thousand. What's more, the D.C. Council has authorized the spending of over a billion dollars to eliminate old school facilities and modernize those that remain open. While school enrollment is certainly down in the District, Census data shows that between 1990 and 2000, children increased as a percentage of the population in every Ward but the first and second. The shift to childless adult families living in condos is a prominent one in portions of the city, but around the periphery, in the thousands of townhomes and single-family houses that dot the District, that change is largely absent.
One might suspect that rising real estate costs are driving these families into the suburbs. That's likely true to some extent, as location has its premium, but Washington home prices are not increasing in a vacuum. Ask families in Fairfax or Montgomery County whether rising housing costs have affected their finances and the answer will likely be yes. When new rowhouses lining I-95 in Lorton sell for $700,000, one can be sure that the expense of city living is not solely a District problem.
But, it does seem clear that the City Paper is truly concerned about the loss of the middle-class families in this city. Consider, however, this anecdote, one of the many subsections in the sprawling cover piece. It's the tale of the Maroneys, a family of four that made their home in the District for almost ten years until, in 2003, they decided to pull up stakes and move to Rockville. The City Paper holds this up as a definitive example of District policy-making gone wrong, but in fact, it's just the opposite.
The Maroney family ultimately left D.C. because they had a special-needs child. In other words, this family of four was happy to stay in Washington for nine years, while crime levels came down and property values increased until they determined that one of their children might be better served by one of the best counties for special-needs students in the country. Sadly, D.C., in this situation, lost out to Montgomery County. But for the nine years before that, Montgomery County lost out to D.C., for many reasons that the Maroneys are happy to mention and which the City Paper article records. Far from spelling D.C.'s doom, the case of the Maroneys offers a clear example of how, with some exceptions, the District has many clear advantages over the suburbs.
And that, ultimately, is where the City Paper story goes wrong. The District is not alone. It is the dense hub of a massive metropolitan region that houses the Federal Government and the many public and private institutions that trail in its wake. It faces constraints unlike any that confront our suburban neighbors, close-in or far-flung, and it is absurd to think that we can or should compete with the suburbs as the absolute best location for large families. Ultimately, D.C. will retain many families because of its uniqueness and the unrivalled amenities contained within its borders, and the city should absolutely continue investing in its public infrastructure to better serve its residents, childless or otherwise. It is, I suppose, sad to say that the days when thousands of large families walk to the independent grocer at the corner for their shopping are gone. It is wrong, however, to confuse that change with the impending doom of our city and its families.
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"I should have pointed out that it really doesn't matter whether or not we lose a few thousand people each year. Not the way we're growing."
No. You really shouldn't have.
Good piece. The CP article was a bit puzzling -- none of the indicators of decline are rooted in statistical evidence other than the specious Census results. Overall crime is down in the District (despite concerns about a slight uptick). Choosing the best available school options for families is often a complicated process. Lower cost/tax exurbs struggle to accomodate the schooling demands of new residents as much as DC struggles to maintain its base.
Aside from interviewing such a narrow DC expat sample, they also touch on a key problem with education in DC -- special ed students drain an inordinate percentage of overal DCPS budget (through no fault of the students or their families). Not to sound callous, but it sounds like win-win for such families to move to communities where they are better served.
Ryan, kudos on a well-written post. I'm often frustrated when I read articles, such as the recent City Paper piece, that are based on limited analysis. I tend to agree that population change in DC has stabilized, and is probably moving toward the positive.
Quick reaction to two things you touched upon - 1) lack of developable land, and 2) middle-class families fleeing the District. The largest redevelopment sites in DC today, excluding SE and SW waterfronts, are found in locations well-suited for moderate-density townhouse development. The McMillan Sand Filtration site and the Armed Forces Retirement Home are two that come to mind.
The cost to build one townhouse is signficantly cheaper than the cost to build a high-rise codo. In theory, this suggests that the sale price of a townhouse should be lower than that of a high-rise condo, assuming a developer targets similar profit margins for both product types. If priced appropriately, this type of moderate-density housing could help retain some of the middle-class out-migration to the outer burbs.
I liked the way the CP piece focused on the (bad) decision to emphasize condos over families.
Here is a fun game I've been playing for years. Get together a group of friends and each one of you pick out one of the sources quoted in the City Paper cover story. For the next few weeks watch the CP's letters to the editor. If your source is the one that writes in and says what a hack job the CP did, misquoting them or taking what they said out of context, you win!! A winner guaranteed every week.
The CP is solely out for the splashy article and will skew their writing accordingly. If you don't believe me, ask a few folks who write for them (or used to).
"D.C. will retain many families because of its uniqueness and the unrivalled amenities contained within its borders"
What unrivalled amenities? The schools are still way, way, worse than those in MD and VA (and a school modernization is not going to change that that much). Recreational facilities in the District are far fewer and way worse than those offered by the surrounding counties. DC's social services are hardly unrivalled by VA and MD. Many of the great features of DC (museums, culture, etc.) are available to VA and MD residents.
What does DC offer a family that VA and MD cannot? I'll grant that city living is more appealing to many, and shorter commutes are obviously nice, but when you stack up all that you get with 500k in VA and MD, versus what you get in the District, especially when you have kids, it's difficult to say DC offers its families "unrivalled amenities".
There's a reason why few even well off people stay in DC once they start having kids. It's still way more expensive than VA and MD. Especially if you think that sending your kids to DCPS is not an option, as most people think.
What, a negative story in the CP about DC that ignores things like factual reporting? A CP writer who tries to mask a gloating attitude with feigned civic concern? Jeez, those things *never* happen at the CP...
"Me fail journalism? That's unpossible." (Apologies to Ralph Wiggum.)
FWIW -- Last week the city completed its first ever formal challenge to the Census. Once submitted (later this week or early next week)it is highly likely that the US Census DC population estimate will be revised substantially upward -- probably showing DC's first sustained period of population growth since the 1940s (with -- it is important to note -- strongly superior demos). The real significance here is that the city has at long last managed to get its act together to challenge the obvious flaws of the interdecenial estimate.
the sale price of a townhouse should be lower than that of a high-rise condo
For the whole building, yes, but on a per-unit basis, the condo is likely to be cheaper. High-rises are an efficient way to fit a lot of housing into a limited area, that's why developers like them; the marginal cost of adding an extra story is nothing compared to what they can sell the additional units for.
Now, if you zone the land so that high-rises aren't allowed, then townhouses suitable for families could be more easily built. But I don't this will happen automatically.
Matt F's right. The land cost at McMillan (et al) will be the highest factor. That land cost will not be low, even if the city owns it. It will be judged as a market value asset.
Reid's right. The city continues to bleed families: Lack of acceptable schools, relatively unsafe neighborhoods, and, where schools are good and neighborhoods are safe(r), the cost of living greatly exceeds that in Lorton, and it is rising at a rate faster than Lorton.
DCist is right: The census didn't at all capture the population uptick, let alone the baby boomlet, in my Dupont neighborhood. Patterson knows this, thank heavens.
Matt F - I referenced McMillan and Armed Forces Retirement Home for a reason, these sites are located in parts of the District that zoned for moderate density, therefore making the land basis much cheaper than anywhere downtown where high-rise is as-of-right. Perhaps I wasn't clear enough when I made those references. But, yeah, you're right, developers build high-rise so they can pack them studios and 1BRs that have high PSF yields. At the end of the day, you can't build affordable high-rise for families (3+ people).
Ah, never mind then, didn't know that about those areas.
The major attraction for the city over suburbs for me has to be the ability to get by without a car - allowing me to see the diversity of people on the sidewalks and get exercise while enjoying the shade of the abundant DC trees (thanks Lady Bird), or bike through Rock Creek Park and forget I'm even in the city. How much this would affect the calculations of a family I don't know, but I have seen parents accompanying their children to school on the buses - it can be done. That said, I agree the city should do more to be family friendly and continue to improve the public schools.
Hi, I'm Mike. I co-wrote the City Paper article.
Couple points to make:
I'm rather agnostic on what's going to happen with the count in the end. I don't think the Census Bureau's dim estimates/projections are absolutely right, just that they might be more right than the District would like to admit.
Ryan's analysis here skips over one of the main points I made in the article, which is that the District's household size has been shrinking for years and is not expected to increase until the end of the decade. Even then, the District's top demographer told me that the only reason they have to expect household sizes to increase is blind faith that the school system will improve.
That means that the District will need tens of thousands of new, occupied housing units just to compensate for the smaller households. I believe the city estimates that 7,000 new housing units have been built since 2000--that's a start. Certainly you can add in a few thousand rehabbed units, but there's still going to be a massive need for housing if the city wants 100,000 new residents. (Check a Brookings Institution report released last month on that point.)
The passage that Ryan quotes is more illustrative what happened in the District from the '70s into the mid-'90s, not so much what is happening today, but the consequences of that cycle are certainly what still plague the District's schools and makes families reticent to settle here today. Don't read too much into the rising percentages of children; that has as much to do with death rates as births. Keep your eye on net increases in the child population. And those still doesn't mean much if parents move out once those kids are middle-school age, which is a fairly common occurance. (Let alone what's happening "around the periphery, in the thousands of townhomes and single-family houses that dot the District," where black flight continues apace, with *no* DINK and SINK households to replace them.)
And I don't quite see the silver lining in the Maroneys' tale. Very few families are willing to put up with what they did. I have to agree with the commenter who points out that D.C.'s amenities are far from unrivalled when it comes to raising a family in the city. I love cities, I love the District, but it doesn't do any good to sugarcoat reality. I don't quite follow whether you're arguing that the District doesn't need families or what, but if the city is going to grow its population like it wants to, it does need them. And it has done very little to bring them or keep them here. That's what this story was about.
I agree that the most important factor to look at is household size. While the building boom has brought in a lot of 1br and 2br homes, and accompanying professionals, that has only slightly counterbalanced the wider decades-long family-flight. Even if the boom has done so much that it has stopped the aggregate population drain or even turned it around slightly, that only masks and actually accelerates, in my opinion, the longer trend departure of families (especially black families).
If the average households size continues to decline, I don't see the population numbers turning around significantly. I predict they'll stagnate.
I agree with Mike, that the city does need to attract families in order to reach its population goals.
The demographics in DC are interesting, to say the least. The metro area is growing, but it's increasingly difficult for most families to purchase property anywhere near D.C., let alone inside the city. Maybe my wife and I could afford a $350,000 1BR condo in the District... but who wants to raise a family in a tiny, expensive apartment. Sure, we could go into the real estate business, buy a condo and rent it, eventually selling it. But where do you live in the meantime? Yeah, out in the exburbs. Unless you have a helluva awesome job in the area, why stay more than a few years?
That's the big problem, isn't it? I'm not an expert on D.C. demographics, but I'd be interested to see some figures on how many people stay in the District for a significant period of time... Has this figure remained the same over time, decreased? I'd think it hasn't increased... but I don't know.
Some interesting questions to ponder, and while the real estate boom is making a lot of people wealthy, it's going to make it impossible for more people to move to the District and make it their home (for good).
reid:
thanks for reminding us how the residents of mass ave heights and georgetown live in utter squalor. i feel sorry for those families whenever i walk or drive through those neighborhoods.
anyway on a more serious note its pretty ridiculous to say that "few well off people stay" because of the school system; alot of these families put their children in private schools anyway. Also I don't know about other people, but when I was growing up I went to the museums ALOT more than my friends from VA or MD just because its alot easier to walk 5 min to the metro and then take a 10 metro ride downtown than it is to drive 15 min to the metro, find parking, and get on the metro for half an hour. Furthermore I feel like DC has far more offer culture wise with much easier accessibility. But I guess that's just me. That being said, I'm not arguing that you can get more with 500k in DC than you can in the suburbs, but for some families the city life will be more appealing.
This study and the subsequent results from DC's challange of these results will basically just affirm my belief that demographers, especially the government ones, are way off in their population estimates for DC. I feel like if you really want to see who is moving in and out of this city and get a real grip on the population you should talk to realtors. Anyway I could rant about this for awhile but in the interest of everyone's sanity I'll stop.
also almost all the people on my block have lived there for at least 10 years. Not sure how idicative of DC as a whole, but I thought I'd throw it out there....
also almost all the people on my block have lived there for at least 10 years. Not sure how idicative that is of DC as a whole, but I thought I'd throw it out there....
My sense as someone who watches the real estate market (In that, I'm just as qualified as the next homeowner) is that in NW DC (and Capital Hill), prices range from $600-$700 dollars per square foot for a very desirable neighborhood, to $250 per square foot for a violent-crime hotspot. That means that a 1200 sf dwelling in an "affordable" neighborhood (where most of us would not want to raise children) is now about $300,000. DC's AMI is something like $50K, while the area AMI is about $80K, right?
Let's run some rough numbers: $50K/yr, after taxes, equals something like $2,500/month. A 280K loan at 7% costs about $1900/month to service the principle and interest. Add in taxes and insurance, and you've left less than $500/month for food, medical, transportation- and everything else. This is what's driving out the less-affluent. People talk about gentrification as a black/white issue- it's not. It's a money and comparative value thing.
Mark, I'm not sure what you consider to be a very desirable neighborhood, but those numbers you're quoting reflect, for the most part, the highest end of new luxury high-rise construction. You can find plenty of relatively affordable new and rehab product in neighborhoods such as Columbia Heights, U Street Corridor, and a number of very stable neighborhoods in Northeast DC (Brookland, Michigan Park, etc.) Most of these neighborhoods offer units priced in the high $200 PSF to low $400 PSF range. Everyone seems to fixate on Logan Circle, Penn Quarter, etc. when talking about affordability. Wake up! There are four quadrants in this city!
As for the $50K/yr analysis, according to BLS data, the average wage for a DC police officer and middle school teacher is $55k and $51K, respectfully. Assume that these two form a happy union, all the sudden you have a couple that can easily support a mortgage, taxes and condo fees on a unit priced at $350,000.
Right you are, Raw. I was considering spaces of a size that a family could fit and remain in (a smallish 1200sf), and trying to set a wide price bracket. The specific areas I had in mind when I chose the numbers are Kalorama/Dupont and Pleasant Plains, aka Columbia Heights East. I chose these because both are family neighborhoods, and they reflect the price and income poles of the city.
I'll admit I didn't consider other quadrants of the city. I didn't do so for the very reason that you point out- the vast majority of people don't think of them. I guess I could have talked about Brookland or Takoma Park. But those who move into NE, SE, or SW still get hit with the non-housing comparative value concerns (schools, etc)
Mark, I think you hit the nail on the head. The typical family will place higher value on a quality public school system than a shorter commute, cultural amenities, or any of the positive characteristics associated with urban living. Interestingly, in my previous comment, without blinking I assumed the couple in my quick mortgage analysis to be childless.
I was struck by the comment in the article about how DC's population is declinging in part due to the flight of poorer, but larger, black families.
I thought the article should've delved into whether these families are generally more of a contributer to DC's coffers than a drain. Instead, it took the easy way out and didn't go there.
Don't get me wrong. I believe strongly in affordable housing and diversity and all that. And I certainly don't mean to denigrate the lower income folks. I dislike how the article sniffed at the concept that cities need money to run on and that single yuppies bring in more of it than lower income people do.
I guess I thought the author had an unrealistic or ultra-leftist view of things. If you think about it, just calling white, educated, professional people "yuppie" is pretty derogatory.
Delrayder
http://delradius.blogspot.com/
I agree it'd be nice to have good schools and the accompanying families with kids in DC. But I disagree with the premise that DC is doomed to failure without them.
I've seen a marked improvement in neighborhood amenities in places like Capitol Hill and U Street, since moving here ten years ago. And all of these improvements have come even though we aren't really gaining a lot of school-age children or families.
The measure of a city's success is more than a mere numbers count. It's about quality of life. And that quality of life is certainly more than just a question of whether the schools suck or not.
It's a given that DC schools are going to suck. But that doesn't mean that the rest of the city does.
DC is light years better than it was 10 years ago, even though the population hasn't exploded upwards.
I second the comments from Delrayder. I too would love to see affordable housing for working class families. But, then, the answer to affordable housing is quite simple: make the literally acres of affordable housing in NE and east of the river reasonably safe (using, in part, the tax revenue of the much-maligned yuppies).
But let's face reality. A city can't survive on the income from liquor stores and parking tickets. It takes real income earners to support a city.
You can call them yuppies if it makes you feel superior. But yuppies pay for city services. And, to be perfectly blunt, a welfare mom with five kids does not. In fact, in economic terms she and her family are a burden on the city. And, statistically speaking, at least one of her children will most likely end up being part of the very expensive crime problem in DC. It takes the income of the much-hated yuppies to make up for the city services that she is consuming, and will in all likelihood continue to consume for as long as she lives in DC.
That's not to say all poor people suck and are leeches on society. Far from it. I was raised in what most people would think was abject poverty. And I know my family was a drain on the local economy for a brief period. But we worked our way out of that and went on to become productive taxpayers.
Sadly, many in DC have no such goals. When you see three generations of a family of welfare recipients in the same public housing complex in DC you realize that this sort of mentality and reality is simply unsupportable, from a basic economic standpoint.
A city populated primarily by poor people that contribute little or nothing to the city is simply unsustainable. Period.
The City Paper ran a fascinating article a year or so ago. It detailed the fire and ambulance runs that had to be done on a daily basis to deal with the drunks and panhandlers on H Street NE. The cost to the city was staggering. Some repeat 'falling out' drunks cost the city literally tens of thousands of dollars a year.
I'm not sorry at all to see these folks pack up and move anywhere else they want to go, as long as I don't have to support them.
H Street NE is improving literally by the day. The much-hated yuppies are moving in. And it's the much-hated yuppies that will turn the huge financial drain that is H Street NE into a profitable tax-generator for the city. In addition, we'll get a terrific neighborhood resource, with actual restaurants and shops that don't suck and that you don't risk life and limb to get to.
If YUPPIE stands for "young urban professional", it's hard to see how applying that to a (white) "educated, professional" person is degrading, as Delrayder (and Hillman) seem to think.
I think the discussion we need isn't about the "leeches on society" (of all stripes), it's about how to keep the 50K/yr family of 4 (AMI for DC), or soon even the 80K/yr AMI for the metro area people in DC. Cost of living in this city is rising at a pace many times the increase in wages, and will (and has been for a while now) drive out those without disposable income. Whether people don't have disposable income because they don't earn much to begin with, or because they have many financial obligations (like kids) is irrelevant. Dupont used to be a boho community of artists, peace corps types, and students. Where is that segment now?
"Yuppie" is almost always used in a derogatory manner, and is usually shorthand slang for someone with no soul, someone who is greedy and self-absorbed above all else.
In stories about gentrification it's almost always used that way.
The 50 k a year family can still live in DC. They just can't afford to buy a house on Capitol Hill proper, in Georgetown, Dupont, etc. They can probably rent in many areas of the city, albeit probably not as easily as years past.
Cost of living in DC is not uniformly rising. The cost of owning property in DC has skyrocketed up from the artificially low basement levels we had primarily because of our crack-smoking mayor, his policies, and the international joke our city became.
Actually rents have not been rising nearly like housing sale prices have. In fact, in some areas rents are actually decreasing over, say, three years ago.
And I hate to be a hard-ass, but if a couple only makes $50,000 a year then they need to realize that living in any major city downtown area isn't going to be possible if they have two or more kids. It's just an economic reality, and that's nothing new. There are a number of suburbs where 2 BR apartments that are affordable for a family in that income group. And as several posters have accurately pointed out, the 'burbs have a lot of amenities for families that DC doesn't really have.
No, the financial obligations of having kids is not irrelevant. Part of the decision to have kids has to be economic. And, yes, it probably means leaving the inner city, for many people. It's been that way for decades, probably longer.
But that is not the death knell for the city.
As for Dupont being a bohemian community, that's a good point, but peace corps types, artists, and students don't fund a city. People with actual sizeable salaries do.
hey hillman,
I live in that part of town where the lady with 5 kids on welfare lives and what I want to tell you is.....is.....is....DAMN, youre exactly right!
I too wrote a (very long) response to the City Paper article. It doesn't get into the issues as much that Mike D highlights in his response above, although I intend to cover that in another blog entry. However, you will see that something I wrote in 2003, published in themail at www.dcwatch.com, discusses all those issues and many more--it's included in this blog entry:
http://urbanplacesandspaces.blogspot.com/2006/05/its-demography-reaction-to-city-paper.html
As I mentioned in the entry, it would have been far more helpful to those of us who raised (and raise) these concerns all long, for the City Paper to have done such an article 3 years ago, rather than today.
Furthermore, and I say this as a quite faithful City Paper reader (although much less so today) for the almost 19 years I've lived in DC, the City Paper doesn't cover DC issues that well, at least not in comparison to how the Baltimore City Paper, the Philadelphia City Paper, and the Philadelphia Weekly cover their respective cities.
This is but one more example. You go for the cute, somewhat smart ass headline, and a pretty glib coverage of the issues, etc. (Not that I expect you to write an academic-like exegesis the way I do...)
You don't think that advocates know how important it is to rebuild the city's insitutions and quality of life? We do, and we don't seem to be getting the kind of traction we need to make it happen. More thoughtful articles in your paper would help. (Bring back Mark Jenkins' "Streetscapes" column!)
E.g., this is from an op-ed piece I wrote comparing DC to Philadelphia, which ran in the Philadelphia Daily News in 2003:
"Sure, you need to improve municipal services and public safety. But in Washington, our crime rate is going up, our public schools aren't great, and the improvement of most city services seems to have stalled. Even so, demand for housing in the center city is strong - thousands of new units are being constructed, houses vacant for years are being renovated, and our neighborhood commercial districts are beginning to turn around."
Do you think I am happy about that? And what kinds of cover stories ran in the City Paper from the time this op-ed ran in late October 2003 to today?
Hillman: thanks for saying many of the things I wanted to!
Children, unemployed people, homeless, etc… do not pay taxes and do not contribute to the growth of the city (liberals – please don’t go nuts because I actually used the word “homeless”). There is an optimal (or maximum) number of people that we can afford to support and provide services for. Market forces are the only way we will ever reach equilibrium (if we allow it).
I do not live in Beverly Hills or Palm Beach because I can’t afford to. Should those cities be concerned that high income DINKS can’t afford to live there? We live in Logan Circle (as opposed to Georgetown) because housing costs were more reasonable and left us more disposable income. Low-income individuals/families have to make the same kind of calculations. What is wrong with that?
I'm responding to Mark's comments.
First off, Hillman is right. Yuppie is almost always used to denigrate young (typically white) kids who went to college and now have jobs, god forbid. Ironically, the people who use the term most slanderously are almost always yuppies themselves. How many non-yuppies write for the city paper? And buying your pansies at Garden District instead of Lowe's doesn't make you blue collar.
Second, who are the other "leeches on society" you refer to?
Third, Dupont gentrified and the Bohemian crowd moved to other places, like Logan Circle, Shaw, Del Ray and Clarendon, which is a good thing. Cities are living organisms, and gentrification/urban renewal is highly desirable. In fact, from what I've read, SE DC has been begging for investment, because the people want jobs. Enjoyment of crime and blight is a luxury of people who aren't stuck in it.
At the end of the day, too many people place too much emphasis on place, believing that Dupont must be bohemian or Shaw must be black. And it's not healthy or accurate to say someone is "urban" or "hip" because they live at U Street and "poor" or "ghetto" because they live in NE or "boring" or "suburban" because they live in Arlington. Cities are more complex than that, and people are too.
Delrayder
http://delradius.blogspot.com/
So many people seem to be missing the point of the CP article. The point was that the District has a stated goal of adding 100,000 new residents. It will be hard to do that if the only new households are single people or married couples with no children. Of course those single people will marry and those married will have kids but then they will move to the suburbs. They will do this because the school system is terrible.
I think the question everyone is asking here is "what makes a healthy city?" The population of a city is irrelevant; whether it can provide good schools, high quality of life and low crime while still breaking even financially is the real mark of a healthy city. I can assure you, that even if DC dropped to 400,000 people but fixed its schools and lowered the crime rate, there wouldn't be a single abandoned building in the city.
you want to fix the school system, heres a list:
1.abolish the teachers union-its a shame the government leaders put salaries and pensions of union workers above the education of the kids
2.embrace school choice-why are some parents being forced by their elected officials to keep sending their kids to these dysfunctional public schools when these same elected hypocrites send their kids to private schools
3.change the cirriculum-why are high schoolers still required to take finger painting before graduating? did you know Ballou high still has a typing class with ACTUAL TYPEWRITERS! kids should be required to learn about finance, credit, law, technology and other things that matter in todays world.
4. rebuild the schools-if we can find 700 mill for a baseball stadium (which I am still a big supporter of) then we can find money to start building new high schools first and then work are way down
5.completely disruptive kids from the school system. peer presure still exist and no one once to be the uncool nerd in class thats trying to learn while the cool (dumb) guy gets all the props for hindering everyone in clas from learning by being the class clown
Whenever I compare consolidated sales data and RE listings, I find a bit of a contradiction. Searching MLS, there is literally nothing 1BD+ below 200K in DC West of Anacostia and not super deep in NE. When I look at sales data in CP, there are some places listed as having sold for less than 200K, some for substantially less than 200K. Any idea where to look for those properies.
Sorry Eastside yuppie. I worked for over a year years with a team building a non-Union charter school before I realized they were con artists. Thankfully the city also did and rejected their plan. School Choice, of the "pay under $20k per year" variety, is meaningless. If you want real choices, pay $20k per year. Period. Charter Schools get the teachers that can't hack the public schools. That's the absolute truth of what I saw with my own eyes. We're talking fragile people who couldn't handle three dogs at once, we're talking kids with teachers aide experience, we're talking political theorists whose views rubbed me the wrong way.
However, one must also be REALISTIC about the suburbs. A house went up for sale on my parents block and I jumped for joy. Free babysitting. Maybe I'll leave the district for Maryland!
Price?
$2.2 million dollars.
On the little block I grew up on where we parked our chevy station wagon and my parents still park their 10 year old saturn and some retirees haven't painted in 5 yrs.
$2.2 million.
The district is far more affordable than the suburbs. However there are areas far outside the city that claim to be suburbs, but if you drive for an hour going home, that's not suburban.
I go to the zoo every sunday morning for coffee, how often does any suburban person go?
Don