Half? Half? Half? And some people wonder why there is a problem?
The article references a study that says DC has the most intense gentrification of any U.S. city. I know we have gentrification on steroids, and it's generally a good thing. Viewed broadly, DC still has an excessively high percentage of the region's low-income population. If we've learned anything over the past 50 years, it is that big concentrations of welfare populations breed trouble. That was one of the core mistakes of the Great Society wave of housing projects, which created Petri dishes for disfunction. We are still dismantling that mistake. In the DC area, more of the assisted housing population still needs to be spread to the suburbs. And yes, northwest DC needs to do more as well. Move 'em out. Anacostia is trying to gentrify as well. They've gotta go somewhere.
Spreading out the welfare population is the goal, and every area needs to step up. Housing vouchers at 175 percent of fair market rate, however, are awfully rich. I didn't know DC was doing that. The problem with that is moral hazard; welfare shouldn't pay better than an entry level job or it becomes a trap. We should have learned that lesson as well over the past half-century. But put that aside for the moment.
If the goal is to assist the welfare population in moving out of disastrous neighborhoods, fine … but don't move them and then reconcentrate them in what becomes essentially a new project, albeit one in a swankier neighborhood. That won't work. I don't have a magic percentage in mind, but if this building has 140 units, maybe five could safely be converted to voucher apartments, provided that the recipients were suitably screened (no gangbangers). But half is far too many. And subsidies of 175 percent market rate are ridiculous.
It looks to me like this building's owners are badly mismanaging their property. There is a hint in the article about excessively generous vouchers being used to bust the cap on rent stabilization, which may be the real game here. I'll have to wait for more information on that.
“As of February, tenants with city-issued housing vouchers had filled nearly half of the building’s roughly 140 units.”
The remaining units will soon be available as those tenants escape the newly created shithole.
It's probably a form of "blockbusting", clever in that the investors have figured out how to trick the taxpayers into paying for it.
This depends on the culture. Unintended pregnancy and maternal mortality rates are significantly higher in Washington, DC than in the rest of the US. According to research from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published in 2014, maternal mortality rates in DC are nearly twice the US average, at 41 deaths per 100,000 births. And that is from https://www.plannedparenthood.org/planned-parenthood-metropolitan-washington-dc/blog/access-to-abortion-and-dc-statehood-are-the-same-fight
DC Has Highest Percentage of Food Stamp Recipients - https://www.newsmax.com/us/washington-dc-highest-food-stamp/2015/01/17/id/619202/
DC Has a Bigger Welfare State than Any European Country besides Denmark - https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/dc-has-bigger-welfare-state-any-european-country-besides-denmark
In fiscal 2015, the District of Columbia sent the fewest people into the military, - https://www.washingtonpost.com/apps/g/page/lifestyle/where-do-military-recruits-come-from-not-the-district/2229/
If the goal is to assist the welfare population in moving out of disastrous neighborhoods, fine … but don't move them and then reconcentrate them in what becomes essentially a new project, albeit one in a swankier neighborhood. That won't work.
Liberals are at war with God and His word, and thus reject that man is sinful by nature, and go about indoctrinating a culture with their victim-entitlement mentality, which excludes mercy and grace towards true victims, with its incentive of gratitude toward betterment, and instead it makes welfare a "right," as a form of justice with liberals being the self-proclaimed saviors of those oppressed by those to earned benefits by obedience to God's principles.
Thus these liberals think that changing things like housing will not change those within the culture that they have fostered, and sinful man often chooses.
I know we have gentrification on steroids, and it's generally a good thing.
Economically gentrification can offer improvement, but socially it does not in my experience in a populous section of Central Americans (mostly: I am one of the few who are not). You have a friendly humble people, who are receptive to the gospel of Christ, and who love children and get along very well overall as a social (but not social warrior) community, and you lure in a culture of young people (who used to be called "Yuppies") that overall do not even try to interact with the rest of neighbor, and have dogs instead of kids, and often will display indifference or animosity toward the gospel message (this tells a lot about a culture), and tend to be overall far more intolerant and conceited. But if the friendly "live and let live" Central Americans were raised as the Yuppies were in their culture than they would be like them. And actually can become like them as they become established (this is MA, not MI).