By Nancy Trejos
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, June 9, 2007

When Delmy Diaz decided to buy a home, she first looked in Columbia Heights. That's where her friends and relatives and favorite stores were.

But with a $26,000 annual salary from the Gap, she could not afford the one-bedroom condominiums there, which had price tags above $200,000.

Then someone at the Latino Economic Development Corp., a nonprofit group that helps Latinos start businesses and buy homes, encouraged her to look in a place she never would have thought of on her own: east of the Anacostia River. In December, Diaz bought a two-bedroom condo on Brandywine Street SE in Washington Highlands for $147,000.

Since 2000, Latinos have accounted for a larger percentage of home purchases in the District, going from 4 percent to 7 percent. But with traditionally Hispanic D.C. enclaves out of reach to many because of inflated prices, many Latinos who want to buy homes in the District are searching in neighborhoods they once shunned. One result is a migration to the largely African American neighborhoods east of the Anacostia River. Though small, the Latino presence is sprinkling diversity over some parts of Southeast Washington, residents and housing officials said.

"East of the river is becoming a more diverse community overall, from what we are seeing," said Marian Siegel, executive director of Housing Counseling Services, a nonprofit organization that offers counseling to low- and moderate-income renters and home buyers.

Once known for high crime, poor schools and dilapidated buildings, the area stretching from south of the 11th Street Bridge to Bolling Air Force Base has had a renaissance in recent years, with thousands of new housing units built or planned. Restaurants and shops are also on the horizon.

"When I started working in this area, Southeast was another country in the Latino community," said Fernando Lemos, executive director of Mi Casa, a nonprofit developer of affordable housing.

Traditionally, many local Latinos who have wanted to buy homes have moved to Montgomery, Prince George's and Prince William counties. But housing in those areas has also gotten expensive. Although the majority of Latino homeowners are still in the suburbs, those who want to remain in the District but have modest incomes have increasingly opted to buy homes outside of the wards where they have already established footholds.

Latinos make up 10 to 12 percent of the District's population, said George Escobar, director of the mayor's Office on Latino Affairs. The areas with the highest concentrations of Latinos are Adams Morgan, Columbia Heights and Mount Pleasant in Ward 1; Shaw and Logan Circle in Ward 2; and Petworth and 16th Street Heights in Ward 4.

When the housing boom began in 2000, Latinos hoping to achieve the dream of homeownership began to disperse. The number of Latino homeowners increased in Ward 5, which includes Trinidad and Brookland, and Ward 6, encompassing Capitol Hill and the Southwest waterfront.

In 2000, there was just one Latino home purchaser in each of the two wards east of the river. In 2005, the most recent year for which data are available, there were 59 Latino home buyers in Ward 7 and 21 in Ward 8, according to NeighborhoodInfo DC, a partnership between the Urban Institute and the Local Initiatives Support Corp.

Officials at agencies that help Latinos buy homes said that since 2005, they have noticed more Latinos opting to buy east of the river, often at their urging.

"There's no other choice because the affordability is in that side of the city," said Erick Gutierrez, director of housing at the Latino Economic Development Corp. "What we are trying to do is educate our clients to think about moving away from Columbia Road, Columbia Heights and see this as an opportunity to achieve homeownership."

Of the 30 families Gutierrez's group has worked with in the past eight months, 12 have purchased homes east of the river through the District's Home Purchase Assistance Program for low- to moderate-income people. Those eligible for the program can get up to $70,000 toward the down payment.

Diaz, 48, was one of them. She had been a renter since moving from El Salvador in 1981. Most recently, she had been paying $595 for a one-bedroom apartment in Columbia Heights. It was affordable, but she thought she was wasting her money, she said.

"I'm not for paying rent," she said in Spanish while sitting on her overstuffed couch watching a Spanish-language soap opera. "At the end of the year, that place is not yours."

Because she lived alone, she decided that a one-bedroom condo would do. But she could not find an affordable one in Columbia Heights.

When a counselor at the Latino Economic Development Corp. encouraged her to look at the Highland View Condominiums in Southeast, she said, she resisted, thinking none of her friends or relatives would go that far to visit her. She has a son and a brother in Columbia Heights and a cousin in Northeast D.C. Plus, she doesn't have a car, so she figured getting to Georgetown for work would be difficult. But she relented.

At Highland View, the condos were brand-new and big. Her transportation worries were eased when she saw a bus stop right outside that would take her to the Archives-Navy Memorial-Penn Quarter Metro station, where she could get a bus to her job. "That was something I liked," she said.

She immediately put down a $500 deposit on a two-bedroom unit. Now she pays $731 a month for the mortgage and the monthly maintenance fee.

On a recent day, she showed off her walk-in closet and another smaller closet, both packed with dresses and blouses. They were among the condo's most attractive features, she said.

The kitchen is a bit small, but she said she likes the wood cabinet doors and the new appliances. And there is enough space for a dining room table, which is important because she wants to entertain. A large bowl of fake fruit sits in the center of the table.

"I'm so happy I achieved my dream of owning my own home," she said. "This is the beginning. Ten years here, and then I'll buy a house."

She has been encouraging her friends and relatives to stop renting and buy homes near her. "I'd like to have more Hispanics here," she said. "I hope in the future they move here."

But she admits that it might take a while. "They're afraid," she said.

Housing advocates concede that there is almost always an initial reluctance among Latinos to move east because they worry about crime and discrimination. There are also few social services geared to them east of the river -- most of the agencies that serve Latinos are in Ward 1. And there are few shops that sell their traditional foods, or any foods for that matter.

"They think, 'I've never even been there and I don't know anybody else who lives there, and will I be welcome there?' " Siegel said. "It was just a mystery to them."

Interaction between Latinos and their African American neighbors has been limited largely because of the language barrier. But some African American residents said they encourage diversity as a sign that the neighborhood is evolving.

"The more diverse it gets, the more the property values go up," said Darius Reed, who lives at Highland View. "It kind of makes you realize what's happening in D.C. is changing drastically."

German and Elsy Ramos, originally from El Salvador, bought a $265,000, three-bedroom house on Chester Street SE in November after renting a basement apartment in Fort Totten. They don't talk much to their neighbors because they speak little English.

"We haven't had any problems with the neighbors," Elsy Ramos said in Spanish. "We're inside. They do their thing; we don't get involved with them. You have to get along with your neighbors, but you don't have to interfere in their lives."

It's been an adjustment for the couple and their two children. They spent many years in New Jersey, where it was not necessary to have a car or speak English.

They said their son Edmundo is the only Latino at nearby Ketcham Elementary School. They have decided to transfer him back to his former school in Fort Totten.

Like many of the families who move out of the neighborhoods with large concentrations of Latinos, the Ramoses return to Mount Pleasant and Columbia Heights to shop and go to church. For one thing, their local bank doesn't have a Spanish-speaking teller. For another, they can't find their favorite foods.

On a recent day, Elsy Ramos, 48, left her English-language class in Mount Pleasant and walked to the Best Way grocery store. As salsa tunes blared from El Zol radio station, she walked around studying the prices before picking out Salvadoran cheese, Salvadoran sausage and yellow mangoes, among other things.

Then she boarded a bus to take her to 18th Street NW so she could get on another bus to take her home. As she started her journey, she was one of several Latinos on the bus. But 45 minutes later, as she was ending her trip, she was the only one. As she walked the two blocks to her home, she spoke to none of her neighbors sitting outside their homes.

But Ramos said she can't complain much. The family squeezed into a one-bedroom apartment for years. They scrounged to buy their home on her husband's $33,000 annual salary for cleaning offices at a government building. They do not have a car or cellphones, and they save their pennies, literally. In fact, they filled an entire water cooler with pennies -- $800 worth, which they used toward buying their house.

"I wanted a house so each of my kids could have their own room and I could have my own room," Elsy Ramos said. "Our dream became a reality."