Where We Live
A Knotty Growth Spurt for Ivy City
The Home Again Initiative is investing in Ivy City, turning over 38 properties to three charities and a developer.
(By Mara Lee -- For The Washington Post)
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Saturday, March 22, 2008
Ivy City is changing.
The neighborhood of rowhouses and small apartment buildings tucked behind the old Hecht's warehouse off New York Avenue NE has a contractor remodeling or building on nearly every block.
"Slowly things are being built or renovated," said Jeannette Swanson, who has lived in Ivy City for 33 years. The neighborhood "has changed, up and down, up and down" during her years there.
The 1990s was one of the down times, she said, with shootings and drugs -- "Some white folks came up here looking for it," she said of the drug trade.
Now she has white neighbors for the first time. "They just renovated that last year," she said. "So that's nice."
Eight years ago, census researchers found 50 owner-occupied houses, 225 rental houses and apartments, and 163 vacant apartments and houses in Ivy City. In recent years, some of those vacant apartments have become condominiums and some of those vacant houses have become livable again.
Down the block, Edward Johnson isn't as pleased as Swanson about the changes. He grew up in Ivy City, living there since 1979. He rents an efficiency apartment, and his father owns a house in the neighborhood.
"They [are] trying to get rid of the people in the neighborhood," he said, adding that there have been police harassment and "ridiculous fines about their back yards."
Johnson said rent for his efficiency started at $650 in 2003 and reached $850 in January.
He said that's outrageous for an apartment so small that you could "fall in the bathroom, bust your head in the living room."
He said: "When developers start building up, they ain't really looking out for the people who have been here. It just disturbs me to even talk about it."
Matthew Spicer, a real estate agent who has a rowhouse listing in the neighborhood, said most houses are two-bedrooms with no basement, though some that have three bedrooms. The two-bedroom house he is listing was bought last year and renovated by an investor, who dropped the price from close to $270,000 to a little less than $250,000 in the first month on the market.
