P.S. DAVID YOU ROCK!!! KEEP UP THE EXCELLENT WORK!!! Both as a friend, fellow blogger, Ward 8 resident and community advocate you are the best! I am so proud to have met you and I know everyone in our community feels the same way.

If it wasn’t for David starting the blog And Now, Anacostia a lot of folks (myself included) wouldn’t have known what a great place Ward 8 is to to live. I am very happy I stumbled across David’s blog – it was a factor in my decision to buy a home in Congress Heights and was the inspiration for all of us River East bloggers starting blogs and getting the word out about our communities that for too long have been underserved, overlooked and misunderstood.

Kudos David and I look forward to seeing the progress on your “Flip’t” – I know how hard you have been working on this and I know its going to turn out great!

-The Advoc8te

At the end of the day people such as David who are residents, neighbors, supporters and advocates for our community are the ones putting their butts on the line and their money where their mouth is. Anyone who has anything negative to say about David or who make this quite frankly ridiculous assumptions about someone they know nothing about is ignorant – especailly if they don’t live here and aren’t aware first hand of all the benefits and challenges of living in River East (what some of us call Wards 7 and 8).

We need more people like David Garber in our community and I am happy to say that there is this really great movement among Ward 8 and Ward 8 residents NEW and OLD to improve our community, one house, one block, one street and one neighborhood at a time.

One thing about living in Ward 8/River East you learn quick. There are a lot of naysayers – both from within and outside of the area who would much rather discourage someone from doing sometihng positive rather than just doing some research or making recommendations so that it can work.

In terms of Voice of Reason – everyone is entitled to their opinion but I can tell by your rather narrow minded comments that it’s clear YOU DON’T LIVE HERE!!! Until you do stop pointing fingers, making accusations and generally making an ass our of yourself. If you had even the slightest clue what you were talking about in relation to Ward 8 and David you would know that David is beyond reproach, his heart is in the right place and he is a WONDERFUL person who has earned the appreciation and respect of his neighbors – both new and live long.

Lastly, by a landslide most Ward 8 (and I am sure Ward 7) residents NEW and OLD want to see theiri communities improve. They want to see a removal of the blighted, vacant buildings that have been allowed to spread throughout their community because for far too long “east of the river” was marginalizedand overlooked for economic development. We want options for services and retail within our own community so we don’t have to keep goign outside of our community to spend our money – which we do spend.

So if “gentrification” means that Ward 8 can have more than one sit down restaurant (which we just got last year), a new library (which just opened last month), a grocery store (which just opened 18 months ago) and boarded up and vacant houses being renovated into quality (and affordable) housing options then please sign us up!!!!

Yours Truly,

The Advoc8te
Proud Ward 8 Resident
http://www.congressheightsontherise.com

Like most people, I’m against those blood suckers who come into the neighborhood thinking they’re going to make a quick profit by doing a shitty job with some paint and cheap carpet.

Better is when they do a decent job like here.

But probably Worse than the worse “Flipper” is a SLUM LANDLORD! These bastards come in and offen buy cheap flipped houses, and rent them out to poor souls that pay relatively high rent as they watch the place fall back into disrepair.

Often these Slum Landlords are ignorant fools who watch those paid programing – “get rich quick” TV shows on channel 20 at 3 am. They think they’ll get rich off the rent of the poor and any repairs lower their profit, so…. guess what – no repairs!

These crapheads are the people to look out for!

If a flipper is going to sell the place to someone who wants to live in it – great, but forget these bloodsucking “invester” landlords!

Step one to doing a major house renovation is deciding what you want to do and getting a contractor to come out and give you an astronomical price for what you want to do. Then you go and estimate the material cost..by making measurements and actually finding out what stuff costs. Then you need to go to DCRA with a drawing of what you want to do and have them tell you all the things you did wrong. Then you go back with the corrections and you hopefully get your permit and get started. Typically a contractor will charge you 50-75% of the material cost + additional labor as their ‘fee’. That covers the 25-ish% they have to pay in overhead (taxes, accountants, sales people). Sometimes you find out that a contractor was screwing you, sometimes you get done digging a hole in your backyard and it would have been worth the cost.

Sadly, people like VoR would rather keep people down and see them remain low-income and rely on government hand outs than to encourge people to be self-sufficient and motivated to have a better quality of life. This is the only way he can bring himself up and feel relevent.

Back in my day, working hard to save money and buy a home was something to be proud, not ashamed, of.

In the case of this house, what VOR would like is not even on the table. The gov’t is not going to purchase this house, and with huge budget deficits now, they’re even less likely to be restoring old houses for some public/charitable use. The choice here is a stark one: (A)the house sits vacant and dilapidated until it falls down, or (B) it is purchased by a private individual or company at market rate, and renovated. Period. Which would he prefer, A or B?