For more than a decade, D.C. officials have celebrated the city’s economic renaissance, touting reinvigorated neighborhoods and glittering new attractions as evidence of Washington’s emergence as a world-class metropolis.
But a new federal lawsuit alleges that the policies that officials initiated to attract younger, more affluent professionals discriminated against poor and working-class African Americans who have lived here for generations.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court by lawyer Aristotle Theresa on behalf of several African American residents, claims that the new residential buildings that have sprung up across the city — many of them with studio and one-bedroom apartments — catered to what urban theorist Richard Florida famously identified as the “creative class” and ignored the needs of poor and working-class families.
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From Shaw to Bloomingdale to the H Street corridor, developers and business owners descended on neighborhoods, constructing apartment towers, renovating rowhouses and opening restaurants, coffee houses and bars that catered to new Washingtonians, younger and more affluent than previous generations.
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As evidence, Theresa cites census statistics for several gentrifying neighborhoods, including Bloomingdale, which adjoins North Capitol Street, where the overall population grew by 1,000 from 2009 to 2016 but the number of African Americans fell. The population along the U Street corridor grew from 6,700 to 9,400 over a decade, as the number of whites increased by 1,300 and the African American population declined by nearly 400, the lawsuit claims.
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