Gentrification, With a Difference

City Hopes a Mix of High and Low Incomes Will Stamp Out Drug Havens

When Patricia Malloy heard about the New Communities program on TV, she called her council member and had Lincoln Heights added to the list. (By Gerald Martineau -- The Washington Post)

More than two years ago, the District identified 14 "hot spots," communities where open-air drug-dealing had overtaken neighborhoods.

The city was working to deter crime in those areas, but Deputy Mayor Stanley Jackson said authorities could see that crime was not the only problem. "We wanted to look at the characteristics that made these places hot," he said. "A hopelessness was pervasive."

Encroaching gentrification also was pervasive, as developers looked for new places to erect high-priced condominiums. The hot spots "were right outside the gentrification bubble," Jackson said. "We can help manage this wave of development from totally overwhelming these communities."

So hot spots became "New Communities," the city's latest effort to turn blighted areas -- densely populated, with public housing, poverty and crime -- into mixed-income communities with bustling retail and expanded amenities. Many residents are optimistic about the new life the New Communities program promises, but not everyone is convinced. Jackson said he has encountered skepticism from residents who fear the program will push poor people out in favor of wealthier residents -- if the plans become reality at all.

Jackson promises that this program will be different from others that failed, because Mayor Anthony A. Williams's commitment to generate housing for all income groups is backed by an economic boom that can be spread throughout neighborhoods.

The city has chosen four housing projects as its first New Communities: Northwest One/Sursum Corda in Northwest, Lincoln Heights in Northeast, Barry Farm in Southeast and Park Morton in Northwest. Jackson said he expects the city to invest $2 billion in the program.

The idea is to expand the footprint of each community so that each new development can hold three times the current number of housing units.

District officials would expand the boundaries associated with each housing project by adding city-owned property or acquiring more land. One-third of the housing would be built for current residents with low incomes, another third would be moderately priced units that city workers could afford, and the other third would attract people with higher incomes.

The housing also would have a significantly different look from the current military barracks-like buildings. There would be high-rises catering to single people and townhouses for families.

Mixing market-rate and low-income housing is nothing new for the city.

About five years ago, the city embarked on a similar venture through HOPE VI, a federally funded initiative to create communities of diverse incomes. The funding transformed the troubled Anacostia developments Valley Green and Skytower into a bucolic community of homeowners called Wheeler Creek.

"We already have a foundation," said Michael P. Kelly, executive director of the D.C. Housing Authority. "You have the teachers and firefighters living next to low-income folks, and from the outside, you can't tell who's who."