Robert Samuels: It only took a phone call in 2005 to persuade then-D.C. Council member Vincent C. Gray to push for the inclusion of the Lincoln Heights housing project and the surrounding area in his home district as part of the city’s bold new urban renewal strategy. Nothing has been that easy since.
By now, the 440 low-income families that lived in Lincoln Heights should have moved into new replacement housing in the neighborhood. But only 32 families have been placed.
By now, almost all of the units in this aging complex of brick buildings in the Northeast community of Deanwood should have been demolished. Instead, city housing officials, who have lost confidence in the project, are refilling empty apartments with new families.
Seven years after they were adopted, the original plans for Lincoln Heights have unraveled. The plans would have replaced the aging buildings with new apartments and homes built by private developers, providing housing for low-income residents as well as more-affluent ones. But the city is still struggling to entice developers; only one has constructed a new building.
“We were supposed to get a new community,” said Patricia Malloy, a neighborhood matriarch. “But look around and it’s still the same community.”
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