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The Truth behind Closed Doors

A few years ago a young boy was shot in this building. The gunman was able to get in the building because the front door did not lock. Jim Graham asked for an inspection of the building where the young man was shot. But the question is, was it ever inspected? If it was, it would've been shut down or at least remodeled. They have mice, cockroaches, and the building is weak because the ceiling is falling down. I know a lady whose bathroom ceiling fell in on her. This building is important to me because I have loved ones who live in there, and because there are little kids in there that live there. They shouldn't be living in those conditions. One of the girls I know who lives there, when she comes by with her friends she'll point to the building across the street and say, 'I live there.' I think the city should take action and keep their promises by inspecting that building so that we can see the outcome.

Photographer:

Pamela

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Where Would You Go?

Caption by Leticia, Age 20. At 14th and Irving streets, there was a homeless shelter called La Casa. It was shut down about a year ago. Now condos are being built. They claim that a piece of the space was reserved for the homeless shelter to get built again. [I worry that] it’s not going to be built because what $700,000 condo is going to want a homeless shelter next to it? From the looks of it, it doesn’t look like it’s happening. So where are the homeless going to go now? This is a result of gentrification on the society. They start with the homeless and next it’s us. All the people moving around here... My [neighborhood’s] property tax is going to go up too, and I’m gonna have to move out too.

Photographer:

Shalom

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Untitled

This is a sidewalk where they are doing construction [on a new condo building] in Columbia Heights.

Photographer:

Leticia

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Right beside Each Other

I took this photo because it uses juxtaposition to compare the way people live. Even though they’re right beside each other, completely different people live on both sides. That one there with all the lights, that looks all fancy. People that can afford luxury stuff probably live in there. The other one is dark, and you can all the stuff on the windows. It’s rusty, there are cracks in the wall. The people who live there probably barely get by paying for that on paychecks. I grew up in Northwest, in Brightwood. One similarity I see between Columbia Heights and Brightwood is new people are moving in and basically taking over what was there and making it expensive. People that used to live there can't afford it no more so they have to move out.

Photographer:

Paul

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Moving Out

We used to live at 1423 Newton St., NW. I was raised down here. I came at the age of 3, and we had to move out of here by the time I was turning 16. We had to move because developers remodeled the whole inside of my building, fixed the parking lot, fixed the outside. At first they were telling people that they had to move out but then they started offering money to people to leave. They were trying to raise rents. I think my family used to pay $800 for two bedrooms. They only started fixing the building because the building next door was fixed. That building had Hispanics and Blacks and by the time it got remodeled it was all white. From my kitchen window you could see inside their windows, and that building was looking good -- they had updated microwaves and stoves attached to the wall. They gave everybody money to move out. We stayed there the longest. We ended up living in Maryland, P.G. County, because that's where we found a house. It gets me mad because I was a person who always was in a dance group after school. And they had the nerve to build the Dance Institute of D.C. across the street from where I used to live. I could've been across the street and then I could've come home. They started building everything else after that. They started remodeling everything, changing everything. Back then people needed stuff too. Now it's all here.

Photographer:

Pamela

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