THE WASHINGTON POST:
The SWAT team, the overdose, the complaints of pot smoke in the air and feces in the stairwell – it would be hard to pinpoint a moment when things took a turn for the worse at Sedgwick Gardens, a stately apartment building in northwest Washington.
But the Art Deco complex, which overlooks Rock Creek Park and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is today the troubled locus of a debate on housing policy in a city struggling with the twin crises of homelessness and gentrification.
Located in affluent Cleveland Park and designed by Mihran Mesrobian – the pre-war architect behind such Washington landmarks as the Hay-Adams Hotel – Sedgwick Gardens was once out of reach for low-income District residents.
That changed two years ago, when District of Columbia housing officials dramatically increased the value of rental subsidies. The goal was to give tenants who had previously clustered in impoverished, high-crime areas east of the Anacostia River a shot at living in more desirable neighborhoods.
At Sedgwick Gardens, the effort met with wild success. As of February, tenants with city-issued housing vouchers had filled nearly half of the building’s roughly 140 units.
Mixed-income developments aren’t rare in Washington, where officials often require that new buildings preserve some space for working-class residents.
But the situation at Sedgwick Gardens is different: Many of the new tenants are homeless men and women who came directly from shelters or the streets, some still struggling with severe behavioral problems.
The result has been a kind of high-stakes social experiment that so far has left few of its subjects happy. Police visits to the building have nearly quadrupled since 2016. Some tenants have fled. In February, responding to complaints, the city began staffing the building with social workers at night to deal with problems that arise.
