Urban Essentials' owners, like most U Street merchants, black or white, believe the neighborhood is changing without displacing anyone. Tenant advocates claim otherwise, and rising rents and property taxes are clearly making it harder for some to stay. Some Urban Essentials customers have moved into housing that once belonged to the poor, but others have displaced no one. Harrison Square's site long ago housed the old Children's Hospital. The 200-condo development slated to rise across from the shop has been a parking lot for years.
Prices go up and people take advantage and sell their houses.
Schaefer and Martens committed to U Street without the aid of market studies. They just opened their eyes. People are going to need furniture. Block by block, the whole neighborhood is improving. News Jobs AP Shopping Archives Entertain.