Ten Blocks from the White House

Dear Slum Fans:

Every generation that preceded ours lacked the wisdom that ours possesses. That is why our generation is free to repeat and recreate the mistakes that previous generations made. Earlier generations in Washington were appalled by the unsanitary living conditions in the alley dwellings, the small, cramped stables that had been converted into housing for humans in the narrow, sunless alleys of DC. Progressive reformers and social workers spent a half century from the 1890’s through the 1940’s to try to improve living conditions in the city and to eradicate the deplorable housing in which poor people were forced to live. Before "ten blocks from the White House" became the catch phrase to describe the 1968 riots in DC, it described the nearness of the alley-dwelling slums to the seats of power in our city.

We, of course, in our more perfect understanding, know that the progressive reformers and the liberal redevelopers were not really motivated by concern over the living conditions of people who were forced to live in alley dwellings. In our retelling of their efforts, the progressives and liberals were motivated by racism, fear, ignorance, and snobbery over the people who lived in those conditions. They didn’t really want to improve how the poor, black and white, lived in slums. If they had, they would have preserved the slums as they were, perhaps with a new coat of paint.

Because we have nothing to learn from history and are superior in our knowledge and ability to previous social reformers, we are free to recreate the conditions that they found so appalling. As younger people in the city decide that they can get to every place they want to go by walking and bicycling, they will become "car free," and not need their garages anymore. Just like the stables that were converted into alley dwellings, the garages can now be converted into affordable housing. And the younger generation, being less materialistic and more concerned about preserving the earth, will want ever-smaller living spaces. The garages will be the perfect size for their dwellings and, where garages don’t exist, new alley dwellings can be built.

See, for example, the Washington Post’s photo essay on "Big Plans for ‘Tiny Houses,’" http://tinyurl.com/c7fu3wq: "Several ‘tiny houses’ are being built in an alley lot in Northeast Washington. A group called Boneyard Studios is building the houses to showcase a possible option for affordable housing in the District." The sheds, which have one hundred fifty to two hundred square feet of living space, are built to sell for twenty thousand to fifty thousand dollars, and are meant to be placed along alleys. The photographs in the layout show how cramped and unattractive they are. It won’t take long for them to recreate the slum conditions of the alley dwellings that those misguided progressives and liberal reformers of the past didn’t appreciate. Imagine a row of them in an alley after two or three decades. Examine the photo archives of the DC Alley Dwelling Authority for a forecast of the glories ahead of us, after we rebuild the slums.

Please also see, on other subjects: Jonetta Rose Barras, "DC Democrat’s Wrecking Ball," http://tinyurl.com/btexcyq; and "Accident Rates Rise at Intersections with Red-Light Cameras, NJ Study Shows," http://tinyurl.com/c9s6ugo.

Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com

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Higher Skyline
Clyde Howard, ceohoward@hotmail.com

Once again the greed of the developers are at work to ruin what has been in place for the last one hundred years. If it is not bicycles, it’s the height of the buildings. Those that want to increase the building height can go live in New York City or Philadelphia. The height of the buildings have been a delight to the residents of this city. Skyscrapers are not our cup of tea. DC does not have the support of transportation to support the increase in population that will be caused by the extra office space. All we have is a cattle mover that passes itself off as a subway; we do not have an adequate mode of transportation that provide the riders with express service, we only have local service, which essentially makes the subway a cattle mover from work centers to work centers. The same archetypal thinking has been turned loose on the planning of the streetcar lines where the so called planners do not know how and where to place the streetcar lines or the streetcar barns. These planners of DDOT and the Office of Planning will not rest until they have turn this city into a experiment that has gone bad.

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A Response to Imhoff’s Anti-DC Screed
Charles McMillion, cwmcmillion@gmail.com

I’m a very longtime DC resident but new to themail so forgive me if this is over-plowed ground on this blog. But is Gary Imhoff serious with his screed [themail, November 25] against the city’s modest, long-overdue effort to value residents and taxpayers rather than only the half-million commuters who pour in every morning and take their paychecks and taxes to the suburbs every evening? Imhoff suggests that he doesn’t like DC residents, but if we must live here we should be happy to pay for police, fire, street maintenance, and all the other services provided to those who come here every day for the region’s highest-paying jobs while saving their own tax dollars to support some of the world’s best golf courses, schools, and other amenities in the country’s richest suburbs in Virginia and Maryland.

Imhoff indicates no concern for DC kids, pedestrians, and, yes, bikers, who fear for their lives as hundreds of thousands of harried commuters rush in and out of town on our residential streets each day. Since he views concerns for our air quality as merely politically correct, I can only imagine his views on global warming. Oddly, Imhoff apparently knows no DC residents who live in the many areas of town where resident parking is virtually impossible; where when you go out to shop for "anything larger than you can carry in your arms while you walk" you must risk ticketing to double-park in traffic in order to haul it into your home. However, Imhoff does imagine many DC businesses stifled by residents’ parking and the mere two-hour limit on nonresident street parking.

It can’t be repeated enough that there are now 739,000 jobs in DC but only 330,000 employed DC residents — some with more than one job, but also some employed in the suburbs. Imhoff may be cool with the fact that DC receives no income tax revenue on the $43 billion of income received in DC every year by our half-million commuters. But I suspect the overwhelming majority of DC resident are like me in welcoming commuters to live near where they work or to share a little more of the inconvenience and financial burden they have for so long dumped on those of us who live and pay taxes in DC.

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Dwelling on the Extremes
Paul Basken, paul@basken.com

C’mon, Gary, I think you know better than that [themail, November 25]. Why do political discussions always have to dwell on the extremes, and why would you encourage that? Building more bike lanes is a simple matter of trying to get the balance better, and it doesn’t mean car drivers are being targeted for assassination or any of this other hyperventilating nonsense. Even if we doubled the number of bike lanes, the amount of pavement designed primarily for cars will still be many many many multiples of the amount of pavement designed primarily for bikes. So please just take a deep breath and think about it.

I bike in each day to work (after having very reluctantly left our house in the city, at least temporarily, because of the schools), but I also understand cars have their use. As for grocery shopping, I can make some trips on the bike, like when I pedaled out yesterday morning to the grocer for a few items for breakfast, and then use the car for larger trips. Just like many other trips. It’s not all or nothing.

And most car drivers are decent toward bicyclists. There’s a significant minority that is not, and hopefully some day, those who see no better option than their car will pause and truly reflect upon the situation and realize that encouraging more people to try bikes, and treating them more compassionately and safely when they do, might actually make their day go easier and quicker, not tougher and slower. The simple fact is that commuting downtown by bike is faster than driving on most days, and most of the traffic congestion surrounding us is due to the city having too many people driving around in cars, not due to the city having too many bikes or too many bike lanes.

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Limiting DC Parking
D. Felton, Jr., lima8kilo@juno.com

I am a disabled Vietnam veteran, who was drafted to fight in the Vietnam War at age nineteen. I have been dealing with the associated medical disabilities since being wounded in combat in 1967. I am disturbed by the numerous cavalier comments regarding the disregard of the ever shrinking handicap parking slots in the District of Columbia. I conjecture that these draconian and not fully thought out decisions are being made by our well-informed council members who have not a clue as to what it is to face each day in pain. I do not view the handicap parking slots as a recognition by the city to the reality that in many cities there are divergent groups attempting to coexist in the "New DC." Are there any veterans or severely handicapped amongst the current DC parking policy makers?

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The Other Side of Electoral Vote Math
Michael Bindner, mikeybdc@yahoo.com

Current winner- take-all strategies are about raw politics. However, the alternative is to permanently lock one party or another in power. If we continue to Gerrymander districts for partisan advantage it is likely that districts leaning Republican would always vote Republican and districts leaning Democratic would always vote Democratic. That would essentially have the swing districts decide who is president or lock one party into a permanent electoral advantage. While it may have some parties change their views to be more competitive, the likely result is a one-party state. That would be like instituting DC style government on the USA permanently. Do you really want that?