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Hope Finds an SE Address
By Rudolph A. Pyatt Jr.
Monday, January 5, 1998; Page F03
"That's it," he said, beaming and pointing to what, in his words, will be part of a renaissance in Far-Southeast Washington.
The "it" in this case is Walter E. Washington Estates, a 141-town house community that's being developed by Crawford's property management company, Crawford/Edgewood Managers Inc. (CEMI) and the Ridgecrest Tenants Co-op Association.
Named after former D.C. mayor Walter E. Washington, the gated town house community will replace the infamous Ridgecrest Apartments, which were demolished last year.
"There are enclaves of success throughout this area," Crawford said, as he pointed out scattered clusters of neat and attractively landscaped town house complexes on a recent tour of the area. "That's what we're trying to complement," he said, pointing to another town house community that another developer built nearby.
The contrast is striking. Most housing units in that part of the District, east of the Anacostia River, look more like grimy run-down industrial buildings than garden apartments. Others, now in the hands of a receiver, stand vacant and boarded up.
Still, Crawford may have a point. There are indeed scattered signs of a renaissance in Far-Southeast. That is a significant development in a city that desperately needs to attract more homeowners, stabilize many of its neighborhoods and strengthen the property tax base.
By building affordable housing in those Far-Southeast neighborhoods, Crawford and a few other developers are laying the foundation for what should be the focus of a broader community development program coordinated by the D.C. government.
People are actually buying homes in Far-Southeast neighborhoods and they're not asking for tax breaks. Imagine that. They want an opportunity to buy decent, affordable housing in Far-Southeast, of all places, and not a flat tax or some other incentive to live in the District. More important, they're adding to the city's tax base.
From a broader perspective, homeowners who have elected to invest in that part of the city are planting the seeds for neighborhood development -- a vital part of any municipal economic development program.
"Changes are coming, but it's gradual," said Crawford, a former member of the D.C. Council and an assistant housing secretary in the Nixon administration. "I've always been fascinated by Southeast Washington; I've always felt that Southeast had great potential because of the topography."
The views from some of the higher elevations in that part of the city are unquestionably among the more spectacular in all of metropolitan Washington. And Crawford is not the first real estate executive to recognize the potential for quality single-family housing in that part of the city. Building it is another matter.
"Southeast was never planned for a high concentration of [poor] people," Crawford contended, recalling that many of the older garden apartments were crammed into Far-Southeast neighborhoods during and immediately after World War II. Shortsighted policies later paved the way for a glut of public housing in those communities.
But, in the 1950s and 1960s, the racial makeup and social dynamics in Far-Southeast underwent dramatic changes. A pivotal factor in those changes is recounted in "Washington at Home: An Illustrated History of Neighborhoods in the Nation's Capital," edited by author and historian Kathryn Schneider Smith.
After the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, ". . . Schools quickly resegregated after whites first protested integration and then fled the area," according to the Smith book. As a result, Far-Southeast's white population dropped from 82.4 percent in 1950 to 67.7 percent in 1960 and 14 percent in 1970, the book points out.
Far-Southeast Washington eventually became a dumping ground for poor black families, many of them displaced by urban renewal and highway construction in other areas of the city, and many of them on welfare.
In the interim, mounting social ills and years of neglect by public officials have scarred the Far-Southeast community.
"I had to make a decision: Do I move out of the city or do I stay and fight?" Crawford recalled thinking at one point.
Several of the 1,500 units that Crawford/Edgewood manages are located in Southeast. CEMI was in fact the property manager for Ridgecrest Heights Apartments, notorious as a haven for drug dealers and the site of several homicides and extensive gang activity.
"I called a meeting of my tenants [at Ridgecrest Heights] and I said, `I can show you how you can be a homeowner,' " Crawford recalled.
Several tenants agreed, as a result, to create the tenant co-op association and form a partnership with CEMI as developers of Walter E. Washington Estates. Assisted by the D.C. Housing Finance Agency in acquiring the Ridgecrest property from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the partnership also obtained a $24 million development grant from HUD.
Although most homes in the town house community will cost $120,000, at least 30 will be sold for a maximum $85,000 each. More than 70 applicants have received tentative approval as prospective buyers, according to Crawford.
Make no mistake. Crawford didn't become involved with this project because of some philanthropic motive. He's very candid in saying he enjoys making money.
"The intent is to stabilize the neighborhood," he said. "With all of this happening, it's quite possible for there to be a win-win situation for the District and residents of the area."
Love of money aside, the District needs more developers like Crawford, who recognize not only an investment opportunity but a chance to help stabilize a community and strengthen the city's economy.
© Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company
