Anacostia’s Gentry and Improving Your Neighborhood

When the topic of DC gentrification starts to bubble up around the city, I try to sit on the virtual sidelines. Gentrification is complicated and I am not sure that I am ready to admit that Anacostia is experiencing gentrification. I selfishly want for Anacostia services that make me want to feel good about coming home to Southeast. Clean streets, great schools, fitness centers, healthy food, aesthetically beautiful buildings, culture and caring neighbors. Must these things come from outside of the community? Instead of placing our energy on preventing people from moving in, let us focus on ways to improve the current lot of those who do live in Southeast and want to stay. We don’t need to move new faces in to pick up trash off the streets. We don’t need to settle for dusty expired canned goods at our grocery stores. We can mobilize, petition and place pressure on all the corner stores to sell fresh vegetables and food that that we will pay for, and eat. We can set up civic pride educational workshops on keeping your yard, apartment and walkways pleasant and manicured. This is my idealism speaking, but that’s what I believe makes a community progressive.

What does a improved urban economically-mixed neighborhood look like for existing residents and new residents. New folks moving into a neighborhood does not mean old residents have to leave. One identity does not need to obliterate the identity of the previous in order to have a thriving community. A single mother of 4 receiving housing assistance can amicably live next door to a single male who earns $90k. But both must appreciate the culture and perspective of the other.

As a homeowner in Southeast, I can identify with the frustrations of urban living which means parties that last until 4am, police sirens and worse threats from my neighbors because I shamelessly called the police. However, I also have compassion for the challenges of living in Southeast DC.

Anacostia’s eclipse will depend on improving the blatant imbalances in transportation services, development of basic health rights, re-evalating public services and most importantly the health of the individual.

I think the argument of gentrification is a waste of energy, time and resources. Nothing stays the same. So why not argue about how to make the inevitable changes work on a scale not yet attempted in DC. Let Anacostia be proof that a mixed-income community can work serving as a model urban renewal across America’s forgotten hoods.

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