At the Sursum Corda Housing Project, a Standoff Awaits the Mayor-Elect

By Marc Fisher
Tuesday, November 14, 2006

In the concrete cul-de-sac where, for too many years, parents disappeared into a stupor, children sold themselves for a quick high and dealers proved how cheap life could be, there is an eerie peace on the street. The war has moved into the conference rooms.

Sursum Corda, the downtown Washington housing project that could barely have been better designed for crime, sits at the intersection of a dangerous past and a risky future. Here, a "Hail Mary" pass away from gleaming office buildings and a top-shelf prep school, gentrification and social engineering are banging up against each other.

In "the cut," where drug dealers once freely preyed on residents, bow-tied guards from the Nation of Islam's security business are on patrol. And in apartments where police all too often had to respond to reports of physical violence, the battles now are often about politics and finance, about the high hopes and low blows that attend plans for a new community.

The District government has proposed a $556 million, 1,600-unit redevelopment scheme for the Sursum Corda neighborhood just west of Union Station. But the cooperative that runs the 199-unit project at the center of the redevelopment area is playing hard to get: Backed by the resources of a big developer, KSI Services, which has paid for repairs and the new security force, the project's management is promising residents a big payoff if they steer clear of the city's plan.

At the dawn of a new city administration, the result is a standoff that will give Adrian Fenty one of his first and most bracing reality checks. Some Sursum Corda residents say they are being harassed because they won't go along with their management's plan. Sursum Corda's manager, meanwhile, claims the city is trying to force out poor people so it can funnel an expected avalanche of dollars to favored developers.

Sursum Corda today "is a controlled, dictatorial environment where people who express views contrary to management are subject to harassment," says Deputy Mayor Stanley Jackson. He says his staffers have been barred from the project and have seen meetings scheduled with Sursum Corda managers get canceled repeatedly.

"Yes, I asked them to go," says David Chestnut, who was hired by the project's resident board to manage Sursum Corda. City officials "were coming here to say that we are unfairly raising rents, inciting rather than informing. They want this population scattered to the winds. But these 167 families living here now are in control. They own this piece of land, and they demand more than the city is offering."

In a place where more than a third of residents somehow survive below the poverty line, rumors about a near-doubling of the rents at Sursum Corda have frightened some people to the point of desperation, even though city law protects most residents from rent increases. "They want us out," says Pinetta Fletcher, a D.C. schools bus driver who has lived in the project since 1978, speaking of the project's management. "They tell us, 'You ought to be glad you got somewhere to live.' "

But in the project's third-floor computer lab, residents talk about a level of safety and optimism unimaginable a couple of years ago and about the prospect of $200,000 payoffs to residents who stick it out. "The property is clean; you don't see drug activity," Chestnut says. "We're coming to a point where you won't see any advantages to being in Adams Morgan over living here."

Chestnut has requested an 80 percent increase in some rents, but the federal government, which must approve rent levels because so many Sursum Corda residents receive subsidies, has not approved the hike. The increase would apply only to the 49 units rented at market rates. City law limits increases for existing residents to 5 percent a year.

A couple of weeks ago, two of Sursum Corda's worst actors were convicted of killing a seventh-grader who had been out at 3 a.m. doing whatever it took to score drugs. The murder of Princess Hansen in 2004 focused attention on the netherworld of this Jesuit-built housing cooperative. Shamed into action, the city devised a plan to wipe the slate clean, not only at Sursum Corda but for several blocks around it.

This would be one of the transformative, crowning achievements of Mayor Tony Williams's tenure. It bore the signature characteristics of a Williams initiative: It was bold, big, equitable, fair and politically naive.

As Williams had in other parts of the city, he proposed to bring the benefits of gentrification to those who are often left out. He would erase a deeply dysfunctional place; rather than accede to the ravenous forces of the marketplace, he would rebuild Sursum Corda as a mixed community, with housing divided equally among swells paying market rate, middle-income families in affordable units and the existing poor residents, who would be guaranteed a return to their rebuilt homes.

Now, as Williams and his social engineers slide off the stage, the Sursum Corda project is in limbo. Jackson says the city is ready to start building the first phase come spring, but it's not clear what Fenty plans for this holdover initiative.

Chestnut is encouraged that the mayor-elect assigned his friend and most controversial campaign worker, Sinclair Skinner, to look at the Sursum Corda situation. Skinner has a history of racially divisive street work; after Skinner portrayed D.C. Council member Jim Graham as a racist in a Georgia Avenue NW neighborhood broadside, Graham withheld his endorsement of Fenty. The mayor-elect told me during the campaign that if Skinner were given any job in the new administration, it would be a "minor, street-level" position, with "no policy role."

Fenty repeated that assurance yesterday, saying Skinner will "be working on political issues outside of government" and "won't be working with my administration immediately."

Immediately? "That's not to preclude some role at some other time."

Fenty said decisions about Sursum Corda will be made by newly appointed Deputy Mayor Neil Albert.

Will Fenty turn away from the Williams plan, which involves invoking eminent domain to take Sursum Corda if no deal can be reached with the project's directors?

"The residents of Sursum Corda have lived in an unfit housing project for too long," Fenty said. "We're going to make sure we change that." The council has authorized the use of eminent domain, but Fenty said he hasn't decided whether to force out the project's current management.

For now, the Williams administration is taking a harder stance: "We will use all tools available to us," Jackson said. "In an area that's gentrifying immensely quickly, this is our opportunity to build a new, mixed-income community. You're going to have to see me now or see me later."

Chestnut rejects the notion that Sursum Corda is cornered and sees the departures of Williams, Linda Cropp and Robert Bobb from city government as a sign from on high. "This is a praying community," he says. "God has just removed the mayor, the city council chair and the city administrator. I think He's tilled the ground for something different."

The new mayor hasn't even been issued a desk yet, and he's got himself a defining situation.

E-mail:marcfisher@washpost.com