Making up the difference Watching more diverse populations move into Shaw, Mount Vernon and Chinatown reminds Lillian Gordon of the city before white flight in the '50s and '60s. Gordon has lived on the 400 block of Q Street NW, down the street from the wax museum site, for 50 years. The wax museum site should, she says, have more than 20 percent affordable housing. But people that have good sense welcome unity rather than dissension. Even 15 percent affordable housing in new developments is considered, to some, a progressive step, says Marc Weiss, a scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center in D.C. and former senior adviser in D.C.'s Department of Housing and Community Development.
Developers take a loss with affordable housing but make it up with the price of market-rate units.
Requiring more than 20 percent affordable housing is a dream unless the project is heavily subsidized, Weiss says. Thirty percent is way off the charts in terms of anything I've ever seen. He does not, however, want the ethnic makeup and racial mix of the neighborhoods washed away with every new condo or apartment building. Displacement fuels resentment, he says. This is an issue of the rich vs. the poor and minorities vs. whites, he says.