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Voters Wonder, 'Whose City Is It Going to Be?'
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In a ceremony solemn and meticulously scripted, the candidates are asked whether they will support WIN's specific goals of about $1 billion invested in affordable housing, neighborhood improvements and youth programs. By the end of the evening, that scorecard will record yes to everything.
There's nothing in the program to allow questions from the audience, although the people in the pews have plenty. But in a sense, they are all variations of the question the Rev. Joseph W. Daniels of Emory United Methodist Church posed to start the evening:
"Whose city is it going to be?''
* * *
That's something that Tracy Warren thinks about. Warren, 45, has lived in the city for 15 years and owns a home in Brookland. "I want to make sure the prosperity of the city is shared by all residents," she says, pacing the back of the church with a restless toddler.
"I'm looking for somebody who can speak to the common good. I'm very concerned that longtime residents are being forced out."
She might be speaking for Amanda Giron, 69, of Ward 1, part of the contingent from Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Columbia Heights, a native of Guatemala who has lived here for 33 years, working now in food services at the gleaming new Bell Multicultural High School.
"When I came to this country, it was very cheap to live," she says. "Now it is very expensive. It is very hard to live in Washington if you don't have much money."
Kimberly Taylor, 40, a nurse who lives in Ward 1 with her truck driver husband and three kids, knows about that.
"I see the new buildings going up at 14th and Park Road, and I see the people who live in buildings that are being converted to condos," she says. "You have to buy or get out. I don't think they are going to be there for those grand openings."
Up in the horseshoe-shaped balcony is Suzanne Snyder, 50, of Ward 6 who, when asked what she wants from the candidates, answers, "I want an awful lot."
Her biggest concern is "affordable housing for people I see getting pushed out and living on the street. It's distressing for them and distressing for the people who walk by. My little boy used to ask, 'What are all those blankets over there, Mommy?' I would say those aren't blankets, it's someone's home."
