DCentric

Good morning, DCentric readers! Here are your slightly soggy links:

GOP-Style Democrats Slash DC Budget: Homeless Moms Already Given Bus Tokens, Not Shelter “(Eric) Sheptock has a stark, up-close perspective on the DC government’s new War on the Poor (as opposed to LBJ’s War on Poverty): ‘To make a long story short, they want to push the poor out of the city,’ he says. ‘They don’t want a place where the poor and homeless can come’” He adds, ‘They won’t want to wait to end the culture of dependence: they just want poor people to get out of town. They’re defunding affordable housing, they’re decreasing housing production, they’re shutting down shelters, breaking down encampments. You don’t prevent homelessness, you don’t cure it, you don’t want to shelter them.’” (Huffington Post)

Tangents: On Cornel, Obama and Identity “I also find myself repeatedly troubled when I read about how biracial or multiracial people (where one of those “pieces” is black) talk about their experiences as if they are so far removed from those of someone who, like me, goes by “just black…”… I guess I am saying that it would be nice if these conversations about social binaries recognized the fact that since race is socially constructed, then deciding “how we are going to be in the world” is an issue for all blacks or part-blacks regardless of how much “black” each of us has in our “blood”.” (Jay Smooth/Ill Doctrine)

Metro Chief Taborn Talks About Crime “(Chief Michael)Taborn spent nearly two hours answering questions, providing details, offering statistics and giving examples of how the agency is reaching out to compare WMATA’s issues with other public transportation agencies. ‘You are a lot safer in the Metro system than you are walking the streets of any jurisdiction in the national capitol region,’ he said. Overall, the number of assaults, car thefts, and electronic device thefts is on the rise from this time last year but the number of violent crimes like robbery and rape are actually down.” (WUSA Washington, DC)

Increasing heights is not a simple proposition in Ward 7 “Ward 7 is one part of Washington where the federal Height Act is not the main limit on the ability to add density to the urban fabric. More relevant constraints are the community’s desire to preserve their neighborhoods’ qualities and the lack of land suitable for high-density development. The Height Act bases maximum heights on the widths of adjacent streets, to a maximum of 110 feet at the largest streets except for 130 on Pennsylvania Avenue downtown. (It has nothing to do with the height of the Capitol Dome, contrary to popular belief).” (Greater Greater Washington)

How D.C.’s Majority Black Police Force Helps the City “MPD is shedding about 15 officers a month through attrition, and a large number of its officers will be retiring in the next few years. Many of those retiring cops joined the force during the Barry administration, more than 20 years ago—when the department made a concerted effort to hire D.C. natives so no one would mistake it for an occupying army anymore. As the city faces change brought on by gentrification, Washingtonians will need to address the question of how the transition should be managed, even though it’s easier to invoke the feel-good ideology summed up in the phrase, ‘It’s not about race.’” (Washington City Paper)