Police officers and social workers have become a regular sight in the lobby of Sedgwick Gardens, a landmark apartment building in affluent Cleveland Park where many tenants now receive rental subsidies. By Peter Jamison Peter Jamison Reporter covering D.C.
At Sedgwick Gardens, the effort met with wild success. As of February, tenants with city-issued housing vouchers had filled nearly half of the building’s roughly 140 units. Some tenants with vouchers say they have been made to feel unwelcome by their new neighbors, a dynamic that has unavoidable undertones of race and class in a largely white neighborhood.
Starkes, who is black, said some of her fellow tenants with vouchers were not properly screened by city officials before moving in. Now, she said, those residents have overwhelmed her new home and “are trying to turn it into a ghetto.” “I think the reason the issues at Sedgwick Gardens came to a head is that there were a couple of residents that were causing a problem. That could have been true whether they had a voucher or not,” said D.C. Council member Brianne K. Nadeau , who chairs the council’s Committee on Human Services. “I want us to be careful not to demonize everyone who finds stable housing through a subsidy because not everybody who needs a subsidy is a criminal.
Tenants with vouchers pay 30 percent of whatever income they have toward rent, with the city subsidizing the rest. She likened the dynamic to “The People Under the Stairs,” a 1991 kitsch horror movie in which a well-to-do couple live above a cellar filled with mistreated children.“It would be, like, the smallest thing that they would call the police on,” Simkins said. She said the more established tenants “feel uneasy, but if they would just reach out and talk, they would see that are human beings, too.”
“It was away from the violence and the foolishness, man, that’s the main thing,” he said, smoking a cigarette on a recent evening in the building’s parking lot, which adjoins a vibrant patch of World War II victory gardens still tended by community members. “And then the violence and the foolishness came up here.”
A police tactical team filed through the historic carriage porch and across the limestone-and-marble lobby and set up a perimeter outside Gingell’s apartment, where he holed up until the next morning. Although no gun was found, Gingell was arrested. He was released — and then arrested again at Sedgwick Gardens two days later, accused of striking another tenant in the head with a flashlight.
it's totally depressing, but there seems to be something built in to many - or most - humans that we don't appriciate what we didn't work for.
You have to be naive or just plain stupid to think this was going to work. Not everyone shares the same values or ethics and is going to think ' Now with this opportunity I can get back on my feet'. Like welfare, you just can't hand out checks and people will do the right thing
Not surprising! That's the problem with doing 'feel good' things rather than actually working at resolving the root of the problem which is mental health problems & drugs!
The incentive structure needs to be in place. You don't deserve to live in this place on subsidies unless you're sober and attempting to integrate back into society. It feels harsh, but that's the structure that homeless people struggling with issues need. We have to be honest
Government run project disaster? Shocker!!
Nothing is a failure when they can learn what went wrong.good idea would create a stipulation for them to complete a life skills courses before moving in.
For anyone with half a brain, this initiative has gone exactly as expected. Big government, pro-welfare progressive Dems & their soulmates in the media have no sense of reality. Their world is a fantasyland utopia. Unfortunately, we have to pay for it & live with the results.
Mentally ill people should under medical care.
Course not. There is no gratitude in giving folks free stuff. Somebody paid for that. Always believed that resource is better than rescue. Surely you didn’t expect folks to take care in their new digs. No pride in free...
What a shocker.
It’s like our government is setting people up for failure. Why would you give vouchers for an apartment that’s $2,000+ a month, when they won’t be able to make enough to live there when they get off government assistance. Help these people they aren’t an experiment!
Sadly this is inevitable
Too funny!
What a crap Storm, literally.
Homelessness is caused by tragic life occurrences like the loss of loved ones, job loss, domestic violence, divorce and family disputes. Other impairments such as depression, untreated mental illness, PTSD, addictions and physical disabilities are also factors in homelessness.
Shocking. Said no one ever.
In Finland it worked probably because they drug tested ppl regularly there's an article about it just Google it
The liberal plan of throwing crap against the wall and seeing what sticks didn't work AGAIN?!?! Naw!!! Kind of like insisting that banks give home loans to people who couldn't afford to actually take care of a house didn't work, huh?
It’s beautiful building. What a shame.
Not as planned but as predicted
At least it was a Noble Effort of Good Will!!
And this is why socialism doesn’t work. The government can’t instill the virtue of personal responsibility by giving away free stuff.
Nawwwwwwwwwwwww
Surprising exactly no one.
MS13
Coming soon sanctuary city
Try some illegals...
No way.
The stench
I didn’t do it Tyrone did it
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