OPINION: After living in an actual transitioning neighborhood for a few weeks, I wonder if people keep their heads in the sand to the things going on around them.
Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
My family is currently displaced from our home. A small leak in my ceiling turned into a discovery of water damage and has my family living in Airbnbs for the foreseeable future. Hopefully that “foreseeable future” gets an estimated end date soon, but for now, we’re borrowing other people’s homes. As such, my family is currently staying in a true-to-life transitioning neighborhood in the northeast area of Washington, D.C. Why do I say it’s transitioning? I’m glad you asked. For starters, by transitioning, I mean there’s gentrification happening over here. The home prices are insane; a block away from the house where I’m staying is a home currently listed at nearly $1.4 million. It is a rowhouse — an end-unit rowhouse, but a rowhouse nonetheless. At the same time, there are what look like lower-priced apartment buildings surrounding this neighborhood.
The point here is that the mix of people is quite interesting. I see folks who have clearly spent a lot of money on their renovated and updated homes next to homes that have seen better days next to apartments that seem … unloved by their property owners. The neighborhood abuts a few major streets in the area that have seen some significant investment on the part of the city; there are new-ish grocery stores and luxury apartments and restaurants near a McDonald’s I wouldn’t go to even if my life depended on it, which it feels like it would if I were to go to it. Funny how that happens.
The home I’m in is very lovely; it’s been a wonderful space for my family. We were here over Halloween this year, and we took the kids trick-or-treating in the neighborhood. So it’s been fine for us, but I’ve definitely observed some things about the area while here. For instance, since we’ve been in this house, I’ve seen the police in my immediate vicinity every single day. Now, I live in D.C.’s poorest ward so seeing the police isn’t off-putting or anything, but the way it’s been happening in this neighborhood is quite interesting.
For instance, a few days ago, I got caught in what was apparently a police chase. I was driving up a street trying to get to the main drag when I noticed a Hyundai Elantra trying feverishly to get around another car. We have what feels like a carjacking epidemic going on in D.C. right now so, sad to say, I just assumed these kids had stolen a car and were trying to escape into the super narrow one-way streets of this neighborhood. As it turns out, I was right; a few seconds later, I see two police cars turn down this street, and they’re flying, forcing me onto the curb. I drove on and went about my business. I came home about an hour later, and there was a boatload of police cars and officers on the next street over AND THEN those same cars came speeding down my street to the end of my block. Come to find out, the car the police were following was carjacked the night before and the carjackers had shot a delivery driver. This was mostly noticeable to me because on my street, as the police were flying by, all of the residents who were outside didn’t seem to notice at all. I noticed because I was looking at them expecting to see a shaking head or some kind of “not again” type of acknowledgment. Nope. The residents just kept it moving.
A few days BEFORE this, there was a shooting in the apartment buildings about 1,000 feet from the house I’m in, and it seemed to have brought out all of the city’s police officers. The schools in the neighborhood were put on lockdown. Again, it was just another day on the block around here. Considering the number of news alerts I get about things happening in the vicinity, I just expect some calamity to start or end out here. Keep in mind that it’s peaceful enough; it just seems like there’s always something going on in the blocks surrounding me.
Now as somebody who doesn’t live in a transitioning neighborhood, even if the city wants to pretend it is, all of the crime and crime-related happenings, while not exciting, aren’t really a surprise to me. I know where I bought my house, and my hope is that it will eventually calm down. But I also didn’t pay $800K-plus to live in a neighborhood where multiple stolen cars have been abandoned this week. That would be a lot even for my neighborhood. I wonder what that’s like. Are the people sticking their heads in the sand and hoping that if they don’t point it out, it didn’t happen? Do people move into neighborhoods and think, in five years if it isn’t safer, we move? On the outside looking in, if you took a picture of a random morning on one of the blocks, it looked like what America purports to be: a mix of different types of people — living, working and experiencing the city together. But that also seems to be a facade because, again, the high police presence I see around here suggests otherwise.
While I don’t have sympathy, necessarily, for folks who pay exorbitantly to live in neighborhoods they hope will turn into what they want, I do wonder what that feels like in real time. The number of times I’ve said to my wife that I can’t wait to leave this neighborhood is telling. While my neighborhood isn’t perfect, it’s mine and I’m up on its rhythms, meanwhile, I’m tired of seeing the police in this neighborhood that doesn’t belong to me. But what if it is your home? That has to be rough sometimes.
Now excuse me — and I’m not joking — let me poke my head outside and see what the cops are outside for now.
Panama Jackson is a columnist at theGrio. He writes very Black things, drinks very brown liquors, and is pretty fly for a light guy. His biggest accomplishment to date coincides with his Blackest accomplishment to date in that he received a phone call from Oprah Winfrey after she read one of his pieces (biggest), but he didn’t answer the phone because the caller ID said: “Unknown” (Blackest).
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