Holding Their Ground in Columbia Heights

Long before Columbia Heights became one of the hottest development sites, before its Metro station opened and before D.C. officials announced a $149 million plan to build a neighborhood mall with a Target and other big-box stores, Maria Zuniga lived at 1458 Columbia Road NW.

So did Maria Salgado and Maria Rivas and Maria Guevara and Maria Gavidia and Maria Herrera and Maria Amaya.

They and about 40 other immigrant households were residing in a building that a District housing inspector labeled in January 1999 "a danger to the health and safety of persons in or about the premises." There were roaches and rodents, and cold water flowed from the hot-water tap.

The tenants also faced threats from a landlord and manager trying to empty the building to convert it to condominiums. But the residents -- urban pioneers from villages in El Salvador, Honduras, Bolivia and Ecuador -- had another plan. With an army of volunteers, they wrote a new ending to the gentrification story: 1458 Columbia Road did indeed go condo, but these low-income tenants managed to buy their building. In a neighborhood of $450,000 condos, they found a way to provide homes for families earning $24,000 to $40,000 a year.

It took a lot of hands to make that happen.

The Washington Lawyers Committee on Civil Rights and Urban Affairs and Louise Howells, a University of the District of Columbia law professor, and her students worked for free on legal issues. The Central American Resource Center (CARECEN) and nuns with the Carmelite Sisters of Charity helped organize the tenants. Charlie Rinker, a development consultant who works with low-income renters trying to become homeowners, helped secure the financing.

There was even divine intervention from the Colorado-based Sisters of Mercy's Mercy Loan Fund, which supplied a last-minute bridge loan to help buy the building when a city loan stalled.

And, of course, there were the Marias.

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It's hard to catch up with the Marias these days. If they're not on their way to their first jobs, they're most likely en route to their second ones.

Maria Salgado is cleaning classrooms at American University.

Maria Guevara is making pupusas and tamales and selling them on Mount Pleasant street corners.