Around the City

Urban affairs, neighborhoods, subways and the people who are affected by them all.

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June 1, 2011 | 2:55 PM | By

Addressing Food Deserts Without Chain Stores

Flickr: Marie In Shaw

Formerly known as Timor Bodega, Field to City market in Bloomingdale offers organic produce, dairy and meat.

“Community-owned assets, not big-box stores, will solve the ‘food desert’ problem” according to Grist, an environmental blog.

A USDA report [PDF] to Congress in 2009 suggested that the average food in such big-box grocery stores (as Safeway, Alberston’s, Winn-Dixie, or Walmart) is priced 10 percent lower than its counterparts in independently owned corner stores, roadside stands, or farmers markets. What’s more, the USDA claimed that “full service” big-box stores offer more affordable access to food diversity than do other venues…

The fatal flaw of the Obama strategy to reduce hunger, food insecurity, and obesity in America is that it risks bringing more big-box stores both to poor urban neighborhoods and to rural communities. It categorically ignores the fact that independently owned groceries, corner markets in ethnic neighborhoods, farmers markets, CSAs, and roadside stands are the real sources of affordable food diversity in America. But in its 2009 report to Congress, the USDA conceded that “a complete assessment of these diverse food environments would be such an enormous task” that it decided not to survey independently owned food purveyors. Therefore, it decided to ignore their beneficial roles and focus on the grocery-store chains that now capture three-quarters of all current foods sales in the U.S.

In today’s Washington Post, food writer Tim Carman notes that an innovative concept is coming to D.C.’s food deserts: a mobile farmers market, housed in a converted bus. According to its successful Kickstarter fundraising page, the Arcadia Mobile Market could be “the most visible and direct way to navigate a number of urban spaces to get much-needed fresh food to people in the nation’s capital.”

FILED UNDER: Around the City, Food, Food Deserts, Hunger, Race and Class
June 1, 2011 | 12:49 PM | By

Why are Housing Prices Rising in D.C. But Dropping Everywhere Else?

Scott Olson/Getty Images

Home prices are falling in cities like Chicago, but not in D.C.

D.C. is the only city on the Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller Home Price Index in which housing prices rose over the past year and in the first quarter. UPI reports that high employment and “legacy issues” that help avoid problems such as speculation and oversupply are to thank.

But D.C. has also been attracting highly-skilled workers from across the country, UPI reports:

One of Washington’s secrets is that it is a great relocation market, and the relo market is coming to life as employers offer relocation benefits to entice talented workers to the region. “Employers are paying benefits including closing costs,” said [housing expert John Heithaus of Metropolitan Regional Information System] .

While some workers are being recruited to relocate to D.C., there are sizable communities of Washingtonians without work altogether; the Ward 7 unemployment rate, for instance, was about 20 percent in April. So although the District may appear to be a beacon of economic recovery to those across the country, that’s certainly not the experience for all city residents.

FILED UNDER: Around the City, Housing
May 31, 2011 | 4:25 PM | By

A College Degree Doesn’t Mean You’ll Get a Job, Especially if You’re Black

The jobless rate for black men ages 16 to 19 is 45 percent. The Washington Post chronicles the job hunt of one black male teen, Kenneth Roberson of Memphis. The recent Booker T. Washington High school graduate was a top-ranked student at his school, which was described by President Barrack Obama as one of the nation’s most inspiring.

For Roberson, the implications of 45 percent are more immediate and more personal. It means a 45 percent chance he will have to borrow money for school or risk forgoing his partial scholarship to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga; a 45 percent chance that he will be stuck without a car in a house with his mother and four siblings, sleeping on a futon in the room he shares with his brother; a 45 percent chance that he will go “crazy or something,” he said, “because I hate sitting in the house and having that feeling of just waiting around and being worthless.”

Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty

President Obama greets Christopher Dean during Booker T. Washington High School's May 2011 graduation ceremony. Obama called the school one of the country's most inspiring.

Roberson and his peers face an uphill battle in trying to find jobs to help pay for school. But what if he was a little older and already had his college degree — would finding a job be more difficult for him than for a white college graduate?

Colorlines has posted a number of illuminating graphics that indicate, yes: Jobless rates are much higher for black and Latino college graduates than their white peers. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the jobless rate for black college graduates under 25 was 19 percent in 2010. For whites, it was 8.4 percent. Colorlines reports:

Even among those who’ve made the right choices—be it finishing high school or loading up debt to get a college degree—jobless rates are shocking. And the longstanding racial disparity among college graduates has grown markedly worse in the course of the downturn.

In D.C. as a whole, the unemployment rate was 9.6 percent in April, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. But in predominately black Wards 7 and 8, it’s as high as 20 percent. And teens looking for work may be out of luck this summer, as the city’s summer jobs program faces funding cuts and will be accepting 8,000 fewer youth than last year.

FILED UNDER: Education, The People, Race, Unemployment
May 31, 2011 | 2:20 PM | By

Housing Prices Drop in Major U.S. Cities, Except in D.C.

Flickr: Andrew Bossi

D.C. homes are just getting more expensive.

Buying a home may be getting cheaper elsewhere, but not in D.C. The District is the only city on the Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller Home Price Index, which measures the value of real estate for 20 major cities, in which housing prices increased in March and over the past year.

According to the data released Tuesday, home prices rose by 4.3 percent between March 2010 and March 2011 in D.C. Compare that to New York City, where they dropped by 3.4 percent [PDF].

Increased home values can be good for longtime residents, so long as they own their homes and can afford increased property tax bills. But increased real estate values also means there’s increased incentive for landlords to convert more affordable rental units into pricier apartments and condos. And that can lead to low-income renters being priced out. Renters constitute 55 percent of the city’s population, and rents citywide are expected to increase by about 5.4 percent this year.

FILED UNDER: Around the City, Housing
May 27, 2011 | 1:16 PM | By

Fishing in the Anacostia a Dangerous Alternative for the Hungry

Courtesy of: Jessica Gould

Bobby Jones spends most of his days reeling in river catfish from the Anacostia River.

Exactly how many people are fishing in the Anacostia River’s polluted water is not yet known, but Anacostia Watershed Society advocacy director Brent Bolin tells us that he’s seen a large increase in the number of fishermen since the recession began.

WAMU’s Jessica Gould reports that starting in June, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will be sponsoring a survey to find out who is fishing in the river and why.

Many of the fishermen Bolin sees have coolers used to store caught fish, which leads him to believe they are likely taking them home for food.

Gould spoke with one such fisherman, Bobby Jones.The District resident has been out of work for about five years, and Gould reports that catfish from the Anacostia constitute “a big part of his diet.”

But Anacostia Riverkeeper Dottie Yunger, who advocates for clean water, says eating catfish can be dangerous. She says studies show many of the brown bullheaded catfish in the Anacostia have contaminants in their tissues and cancerous lesions on their bodies.

“Will you get immediately sick from eating a fish from the river that might be contaminated? Probably not,” she says. “You may not feel any effect. But there are effects that are happening at the cellular level, at the molecular level. It’s affecting brain development, it’s affecting memory. It’s affecting cognitive skills.”

Despite the danger in eating the river’s fish, Bolin says fishing is quite common off of the Maryland and District shores of the Anacostia River.

“There are a few spots in which you almost always see someone out there. I think it’s pretty prevalent and it’s growing,” he says. “One of the problems is the warnings about how many fish you can eat. For one thing, they’re grossly out of date. And in D.C., you get the notice when you get your fishing license. Well, how many people do that? Especially someone with a language barrier?”

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FILED UNDER: The People, Anacostia River, Hunger
May 26, 2011 | 4:45 PM | By

Examining Class Disparities in D.C.’s Growing Indian Population

The Asian American population in the D.C.-area increased dramatically over the past decade, The Washington Post reports:

Indians are the latest wave of Asians transforming the region, having leapfrogged over Koreans a decade ago. For the first time, they make up the biggest group of Asians in Virginia, largely because they have moved to the Washington suburbs.

Their increasing presence reflects the growth of information-technology jobs in the region. Most came for jobs, having attended school elsewhere in the United States or in India, said Qian Cai, head of demographics at the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service.

With their high levels of education and income, Indians are pushing up those averages for the entire region.

“The ability to attract the Asian Indian community here helps to increase the knowledge base of our metro area,” said William H. Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution. “These are the cream of the crop, in terms of people who have high skills. Their kids are going to our schools and improving the schools in the process.”

While many Asians in the D.C.-area have high levels of education and income, and particularly those settling in wealthier counties such as Loudoun and Fairfax in Virginia, there are Asian Americans who don’t fit the mold.

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FILED UNDER: The People, Census, South Asians
May 25, 2011 | 1:38 PM | By

Five Ways To Be a Good Gentrifier

Flickr: Daquella Manera

Does this street art make you feel guilty?

Are you a middle or high-income earner, who is probably white (but not necessarily!) and has moved into a predominantly black or Latino low-income neighborhood? And is that neighborhood rapidly changing, as longtime residents move to less expensive suburbs because they can’t afford to live in the neighborhood’s revamped, much pricier apartments? Check off a bingo card if you must: you live amongst hip coffee shops, with white people where white people never dared to go before and patronize yoga studios that were once corner stores. Face it: you’re a gentrifier.

For the self-aware and well-meaning among the gentry, the guilt can be almost akin to white guilt — your very existence can make you feel bad. But if you’ve moved into a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood, there are ways you can be a good neighbor. Here are five things to get you started, and feel free to suggest more in the comments section:

1. Get involved, but first listen and learn.

    Diane Levy, a senior researcher for the Urban Institute who studies neighborhood changes, suggests getting involved in neighborhood organizations and civic associations in an effort to get to know the community. And that’s something that makes sense when moving into any community, gentrifying or not.

“Not everything in a community is easily knowable, but try to get to know the community before coming in and pointing out, as the new person, what needs to be done differently,” she says. “In the case of gentrifying areas, it’s easy for somebody to come in with a certain view of what makes for a good neighborhood and focus on what they see as negative without trying to understand what makes the neighborhood what it is.”

I hear that neighborhood blogs are good places to get to know a community, no? Sure, Levy says, but be careful of what you write, even if it’s an anonymous comment.

“Some of the comments people will post, it’s anonymous and people think they can say anything and no damage done. But write things you would be willing to say directly to somebody’s face,” Levy says. “Because even though it’s a virtual space, it’s real. It can have an impact.”

The impact cuts both ways — negative comments perpetuate stereotypes of the neighborhood, but they can also perpetuate the stereotype that all gentrifiers share the same negative feelings.

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FILED UNDER: Culture, The People, Gentrification, Urban Institute
May 25, 2011 | 10:40 AM | By

Five Ways Hunger Affects the Latino Community

Flickr: Walmart Stores

Last week, Latino leaders from across the country gathered in D.C. for the No Mas Hambre – “No More Hunger” – conference to raise awareness about food insecurity in their community. Here are five ways hunger, which is defined as “physical, emotional and psychological distress arising from lack of access to adequate, nutritious food” affects this rapidly growing group of Americans:

1) More than a quarter of Latinos struggle with hunger — compared to 14.6 percent of the general population, according to Bread for the World, a D.C.-based non-profit that works to end hunger in America and abroad.

2) Latino children are more likely to go hungry than their peers. While one in four American children is hungry, “child hunger is even more prevalent among Latino households — one in three Latino children is food insecure”, according to Vicki Escarra, president of Feeding America, a non-profit working to help America’s hungry through a national network of food banks.

3) Nearly 60 percent of Hispanic families with young children receive food from a program called Women with Infants and Children (WIC), according to the National Hispanic Leadership agenda, a nonpartisan association of major Hispanic national organizations and leaders. WIC provides low-income women and their young children access to nutritious foods, education and other resources.

4) A third of Latino kids use emergency food service programs. The 2010 Hunger in America study conducted by Feeding America found that one out of every three Hispanic children received services from their national network of emergency food providers or food banks.

5) Almost half of all eligible Latinos do not receive food stamps, according to the National Council of La Raza, the largest national Latino civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States.That may be because applying for food stamps, formally called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, can be complicated, according to a brief from the Urban Institute; “it is possible that Hispanic families more often than others find SNAP inconvenient because they are more likely to be working, as many SNAP offices are open only during regular work hours”.

FILED UNDER: The People, Children, Food, Hunger, Immigrants
May 24, 2011 | 3:43 PM | By

Capital Bikeshare Expansion: Who Should Get New Stations?

Flickr: Rudi Riet

Greater Greater Washington has mapped out Capital Bikeshare usage ahead of Wednesday night’s public meeting on the system’s expansion.

The District Department of Transportation is poised to expand Capital Bikeshare by 25 new stations this summer, choosing from a list of 55 candidates. Of those 55, five are east of the Anacostia River, in the District’s poorest wards.

The least-used of the existing stations are almost all located east of the Anacostia:

Of course we’d expect the stations in the middle to be used the most. Likewise is true of Metro. That doesn’t mean that the peripheral bikeshare stations or Metro stations aren’t useful.

And it makes sense that peripheral stations would be used less given that bikeshare works best when stations are clustered together — the fewer the stations nearby, the less the usage. Adding more east of the river could be one way to increase usage of the existing stations, although doing so doesn’t address the other obstacles that prevent lower-income residents from using the bikes.

Given the documented low usage of the existing stations some fear calls to abandon the program altogether in parts of Wards 7 and 8. Groups such as the Washington Area Bicyclist Association are actively working to encourage bicycling among Ward 7 and 8 residents, and DDOT has no plans of giving up in those neighborhoods. But whether they’ll be able to expand there when there is so much demand elsewhere is another matter.

Wednesday’s meeting will be held from 6 to 8 p.m., at 441 4th St., NW, Room 1107.

FILED UNDER: Around the City, Public Transportation, Capital Bikeshare, East of the River
May 23, 2011 | 12:34 PM | By

Luring Wegmans with Walter Reed

Flickr: christine592

Wegmans may finally be coming to D.C. according to the Examiner. The family-owned mid-Atlantic chain was named the best grocery store in the nation for “overall satisfaction” according to the most recent rankings by Consumer Reports in 2009.

D.C. officials are hoping that the massive Walter Reed Army Medical Center’s planned redevelopment in Northwest will finally give them the bait they need to lure the District’s first Wegmans grocery store.

The highly sought-after grocer has two scheduled meetings this week with Mayor Vincent Gray and council members at a retail development conference in Las Vegas that historically has been the breeding ground for major real estate deals in the District.

That conference, the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC), is where almost half of all retail leases are signed every year. As for Walmart, the other chain with its eye on D.C.– Consumer Reports placed it near the bottom of those 2009 rankings.

Charles Fields, a spokesperson for Consumer Reports said that while Walmart is a price leader, it earns low scores on service, the quality of its meat and vegetables and store cleanliness.

FILED UNDER: Around the City, Food, Real Estate