SE neighborhood's violent past clouds new residents' future
Violence, lack of promised amenities anger owners of houses that replaced 2 SE projects

By Theola Labbé-DeBose and Clarence Williams
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, December 14, 2009; B01

Janice Gore wanted a back yard to host family barbecues. Gary Jones wanted a lawn where he could toss the football with his son. And Chiquisha Robinson just wanted to put down roots in a community where her home purchase could make a difference.

Their dreams brought them and dozens of others to Henson Ridge, a new development of townhouses in one of the poorest areas of Southeast Washington. The neighborhood of manicured lawns and new siding is a phoenix among the ashes of carry-out food joints and check-cashing places on a stretch of Alabama Avenue SE. Conceived and constructed as an antidote to the surrounding urban blight, the planned community replaced razed public housing projects in 2003.

But then cars were stolen. Homes were burglarized. And when stray bullets crashed through windows and walls, residents could no longer deny that the neighborhood's violent past had resurfaced like a stubborn ghost.

"When you pay market rate, you expect certain things in return, and it's just not happening," said Robinson, whose $306,000, three-bedroom home was pierced by bullets last year.

The violence has been a jarring wake-up call for newcomers, whose first-home down payments were a deposit on a dream. And the fear and uncertainty are déja vu for the returning residents of the notorious former Frederick Douglass and Stanton Dwellings public housing projects.

"I'm afraid at night when they said they were breaking into these glass doors," said Gore, 56, referring to the double porch doors she loved because they gave her home a suburban feel. Gore, a grandmother, once lived in the housing projects and returned to the area in 2007, hoping to host barbecues for family, including the 12-year-old grandson she is helping to raise.

"It ain't no better [than the project days]. It seems like they put the same people back in here. I'm sorry I moved back in," she said.

Neighbors old and new are so fed up with the increasing crime that they wrote letters to Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) and Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier and solicited money for a Segway that they donated to the 7th Police District. Lanier formally accepted the donation at a ceremony in August and pledged more patrols, and Fenty praised the residents' organizing efforts.

But resources to fight crime were not in the plan when developers tore down the public housing, part of decades-old federal HOPE VI program that has transformed communities across the country.

A squalid past

Assistant D.C. Police Chief Winston Robinson, former commander of the 7th Police District, said good people were living in squalid conditions. The buildings and courtyards were infested with rats and roaches and besieged by drugs and criminals so bold they'd fight the police.

"It was not a place you wanted to send officers if they didn't know the community," Robinson said. "It was terrible."

Robinson said he attended monthly meetings for two years to advocate for the HOPE VI grant and to show that D.C. police would support the new development.

The city Housing Authority received $29.9 million in HOPE money to revitalize the former projects into Henson Ridge. Named for a former slave, Tobias Henson, who bought his freedom and became one of the largest landowners east of the Anacostia River, Henson Ridge replaced 650 apartment units with 600 townhouses -- 320 for purchase and 280 for rent, some at market rate, others subsidized.

The plan brought together public and private groups, including developers. The federal grant spurred an additional $100 million in private development for the project. Along with new housing, there were to be support programs, recreation and other services to make it a full-fledged community.

So far, 254 homes have been sold and all the rental units are full, according to the D.C. Housing Authority. But residents say that because 80 percent of the houses have not been sold, the community lacks a homeowners association that can collectively address their problems.

"There are multiple groups with good intentions but not enough support for anyone to make serious change," said Benjamin Davis, a D.C. teacher who owns his home and helped organize the residents into making the Segway donation.

Vicki Davis, president of Urban Atlantic, part of the development team and owners of the rental properties, said management has been coordinating with homeowners for the past five years to address security issues. The conversations have led to a neighborhood watch program, the installation of speed humps to slow traffic and discourage joy riding, and private surveillance measures.

Davis acknowledges that Henson Ridge suffers from crime, including burglaries, but she said the recent incidents have heightened scrutiny because of the hopes people had for the development. "What's changed is expectations," she said. "You have people with really high expectations for this area. It's a good thing for everybody. We are doing the things that you would expect in any good community. We are working with our public officials. We are working hand-in-hand with our residents."

Policing strategies

But community frustration boiled over at a meeting this fall that drew Lanier, Assistant Chief Diane Groomes and officers assigned to the neighborhood. Some neighbors said they don't see police nearly enough, especially before a 14-year-old girl sitting in her bedroom this summer was hit by a stray bullet.

Lanier told about 50 residents that 95 percent of the crime is caused by juveniles. She urged neighbors to stand together and with police to keep the neighborhood from sliding into former crime patterns by looking out for each other's cars and homes.

"There are a lot of good people in this community and a few troublemakers," Lanier said. "You can't take a beautiful community like this and let a few people convince you that this is going to be like a project. We're not going to let that happen."

Lanier said police officials are using a variety of strategies, including rotating vice units from other parts of the city and the citywide gun recovery unit to beef up the contingent of regular patrol shifts.

Detective Sgt. Brad Wagner, of the 7th Police District, said that detectives recently arrested a teen suspected in a rash of burglaries and that police are watching up to 15 of his friends believed to be involved in the crimes.

"Just because we've made an arrest, we're not going to stop there," Wagner said.

Joel Maupin, commander of the 7th District, said beat officers didn't know some of the teen residents as well because they did their patrols in a car. Maupin said he was planning to have his officers walk more and ride bikes and get to know the residents so there is no confusion about who belongs in the neighborhood and who might be coming in from the outside to cause trouble.

"It's part of getting officers over there who know the community," Maupin said.

Working for change

For those now living their Henson Ridge dreams, reality has made the experience seem more like a nightmare.

Five-year resident Jones, 41, said his van and trash cans have been stolen, someone threw a rock through his front window and his son was chased home by two guys who threatened to beat him. "I just wanted a neighborhood, not a hood," Jones said.

Chiquisha Robinson, a 29-year-old lawyer originally from Roxbury, Mass., said friends and colleagues tried to dissuade her when she told them she was looking at Henson Ridge.

"They said, "Don't buy in Southeast.' I heard the negativity, but I didn't want to believe it. I wanted to be part of the change," she said.

She remembers the moment she told herself she had to live there. She went to a friend of a friend's party in Henson Ridge, walked into the house and saw a spiral staircase. The home was large and airy, everything new, and laughter and good conversation among the mostly black, middle-class professionals stretched late into the night.

"It felt like, 'Yes, I've made it, and I'm going to invest in this community that's like where I'm from, and we as a group are going to single-handedly change Southeast,' " Robinson said.

There were signs, she said. When she arrived for the final walk-through of her home, the front window was broken. She almost canceled the purchase, but she was too much in love with her home.

"It was like a relationship. When you want it to work so bad that you ignore the signs," she said.

She plowed ahead, putting in hardwood floors and updating the kitchen shelves. She wants to paint the bedroom walls and use an unfinished basement room as a home office. Then last summer, a bullet passed through her bay window in the living room and landed in the side of her neighbor's home. She started e-mailing the developers and the management company to ask why their promises of a new recreation center and elementary school and job training for residents, which was part of their sales pitch, hadn't come to fruition.

"They gave us this beautiful development, but it's a glorified project and everything else remains the same," Robinson said. "Had all the community initiatives been implemented and put into place, we'd be better off."

From the living room window where a bullet pierced through last summer, Robinson can see linden and zelkova trees that dot the development, their young trunks so thin they resemble branches. The newly planted trees of Henson Ridge have just started to take root.