Ninth Street Vacant Property Survey

A previous map I made of vacant property owned by a neighborhood church in my D.C. neighborhood has proven a popular and controversial post, attracting views and comments months after it was first published. Although the church does own a number of vacant buildings in the neighborhood, I have often thought they are singled out for criticism for what is a broader problem: vacant property in the District.

In order to broaden the discussion, I completed a vacant property survey on 9th Street from Rhode Island Avenue to K Street at Mount Vernon Square. I recorded vacant buildings (shown below in red) and vacant lots (shown in pink). There are a number of parking lots that I decided to leave off the map.

Collecting this type of data from the sidewalk on a hot summer day and then trying to make sense of it using city-provided map data is tricky business. While I have done my best to ensure accuracy, these maps should not be considered definitive. Any reader who knows of inaccuracies is invited to post a comment below.

Rhode Island Avenue to O Street NW

818 Rhode Island Avenue - Michael D. Sendar, Potomac, MD (Commercial)
819-821 Q Street - Michael D. Sendar, Potomac, MD (Commercial)
1557 - (No record in city GIS data, a building has been proposed)
1555 - Sun D. Qiang, Fairfax, VA (Residential)
1544 - M. Carter, Washington, DC (Commercial)
1542 - U.S.A.
1540 - U.S.A.
1538 - U.S.A.
1536 - Shiloh Baptist Church Trustees, Washington, DC (Vacant)
1534 - Shiloh Baptist Church Trustees, Washington, DC (Vacant)
1532 - Shiloh Baptist Church Trustees, Washington, DC (Vacant)
1528 - Shiloh Baptist Church Trustees, Washington, DC (Vacant)
1526 - Shiloh Baptist Church Trustees, Washington, DC (Vacant)
1510 - Shiloh Baptist Church Trustees, Washington, DC (Commercial))
1505 - Anita Chopra, Washington, DC (Vacant)
1416 - Hirut Amenu, Washington, DC (Commercial)
1414 - Nigist Asfaha, Overland Park, KS (Residential)
1410 - Fessha Mollalign, Gaithersburg, MD (Commercial)
1400 - Huang H. Qing, Flushing, NY (Vacant)

O Street NW to M Street NW

1320 - The International Realty Hi-Tech Investors Group LTD Unit 426, McLean, VA (Vacant)
1316 - 1316 9th Street LLC, College Park, MD (Commercial)
1314 - 1314 1/2 INC, Arlington, VA (Commercial)
1304 - Winmax LLC, Washington, DC (Vacant)
1244 - 1250 Nineth Street LLC (Commercial)
1234 - Arts Are Magic LLC, Washington, DC (Commercial)
1226 - Shaw Centre LLC, Bethesda, MD (Residential, Commercial)
1218 - Shaw Centre LLC C/O Albert Ceccone, Washington, DC (Commercial)
1216 - Shaw Centre LLC C/O Albert Ceccone, Washington, DC (Residential)

M Street NW to K Street NW

1126 - Joseph Gorman, Washington, DC (Commercial)
1124 - 1124 9th Street LLC, Washington, DC (Commercial)

1116, 1112, 1110 - Square 369 Hotel Associates LLC C/O International Headquarters, 1 Marriott Dr, Washington, DC (Commercial)
1114, 1108, 1106, 911 L St. NW, 913 L St. NW - Square 369 Hotel Associates LLC C/O International Headquarters, 1 Marriott Dr, Washington, DC (Vacant)
1024 - V. Ehrlich, Silver Spring, MD (Commercial)

I counted 34 vacant buildings and 5 vacant lots. Six of the buildings are owned by Shiloh Baptist Church, or roughly 18% of the total number of vacant buildings on these blocks. Unless otherwise noted, the numbers below are addresses on 9th Street NW. The owners were retrieved from the city’s public property tax assessment database, which includes the mailing addresses of all property owners.

I have also included in parentheses the tax class of the properties. The city taxes vacant property at a higher rate — $5 per $100 of assessed value — to discourage speculation. However, a city website on the issue explains property owners can receive exceptions from the higher rate if they meet certain criteria. The laws regulating the registration and taxation of vacant property are governed by DC ST § 42-3131.05-15 of the DC Code, which reads in part:

(b) A vacant building shall not be subject to the registration and fee requirements if it is:

(1) Owned by the government of the United States or its instrumentalities;

(2) Owned by a foreign government or its instrumentalities;

(3) Under construction or undergoing rehabilitation, renovation, or repair, and if there is a valid building permit that was issued within 60 days of the required registration date; provided, that the scope of the permit is not limited to electrical or plumbing work; provided further, that this exemption shall not exceed one year from the date of issuance of the first building permit for rehabilitation, renovation or repair;

(4) In compliance with the requirements of § 42-3131.12 and the housing regulations of the District of Columbia and the owner or his agent has been actively seeking to rent or sell it; provided, that the time period for sale or rent shall not exceed one year from the initial listing, offer, or advertisement of sale, or 90 days from the initial listing, offer, or advertisement to rent; or

(5) Exempted by the Mayor, in his or her sole discretion, for good cause.

Part 13 of that section also reads “The Mayor may cause to be affixed to the property containing a vacant building required to be registered under this chapter a sign setting forth the name of the owner of each unit and any other pertinent information that the Mayor may require to protect the public health and welfare.” I’m not aware of any such signs going up around town.

What’s Needed: Community Vacant Property Database

Like many U.S. cities, vacant properties are a stubborn problem that continues to plague the District. The city’s official list has over 2,000 properties listed, and it seems likely the actual number is much higher.

An article in today’s Examiner describes how these properties can impact neighborhoods. Despite high demand for both housing and retail, a collection of vacant properties can result in a Catch-22: too many speculators can inhibit investment in a neighborhood meaning few owners make money. Without tenants, the properties decay, attract illegal dumping, are easy targets for graffiti, and a host of other problems.

The city has tackled the problem in various ways. The city’s innovative Home Again initiative has created new affordible housing in some D.C. neighborhoods, but most of the vacant properties are owned by owners waiting to sell out and the project has not met the ambitious goals set by former mayor Anthony Williams. Properties officially registered as vacant with the city are supposed to be subject to higher tax rates to discourage speculation, however the implementation of this law seems to be spotty. (In 1998 city officials complained to the Washington Business Journal the program was an administrative “nightmare.”) Recently the administration of the list was moved between city agencies, but regardless of how it’s run, keeping the list updated is a huge task.

Community frustration has resulted in some attention by city government, but nobody seems to be able to break the deadlock in neighborhoods like Shaw and H Street NE, where commercial corridors are lined with vacant buildings despite a broader revitalization taking place around them.

The Problem

In my view, solving the problem is fundamentally about information. City officials struggle to keep track of the thousands of properties across the city. Neighbors have little access to information about owns them, and whether they’re being taxed at the proper rate. (Searching the city’s tax database is difficult and hard to interpret). Although citizens lodge complaints with the city about vacant properties, there’s no public record of the complaints and what has been done for each property. Finally, buyers interested in rehabilitating these properties don’t have an easy place to find the owners. Communities are frustrated, owners can evade accountability, and the rats have plenty of places to call home.

No mechanism exists to coordinate they city’s response and leverage political pressure on owners to rehabilitate their properties.

Up to this point, community efforts to catalog the properties and encourage rehabilitation have been local in nature. A blog has popped up dedicated to the topic, one neighborhood association has completed a survey of their neighborhood, and someone made an interactive map. After I posted a map of vacant properties owned by Shiloh Baptist Church on this website, the post has received hundreds of hits and the map has even been used by church members seeking internal reforms. Clearly, there is a huge demand for accurate information, however all these efforts are fundamentally piecemeal.

The Solution

The city needs a comprehensive, interactive community database of all vacant properties in the District. The database should contain government data, but need not be administered by government officials. It would be seeded by the “official” lists of vacant properties. Each property’s page would list the property’s address, owner’s name and address, assessment value, tax rate and payment history. Each property would have a unique page that would allow visitors to upload photos, as well as post comments reporting any information relating to the property: reports made to the city, crime, graffiti, dumping, etc. The properties could be categorized or tagged according to their status: for sale, vacant lot, suspected vacant, taxed as vacant, etc. All the properties would be displayed on a Google Map for easy searching. Regardless of the precise tools used, the system should be easy to use (easier than a wiki!) and contain large fonts and a simplistic interface.

Most importantly, the system would allow any user to report a vacant property, post a comment, or extract the entire database of property addresses as a CSV or Excel file.

The National Vacant Properties campaign specifically points out that “A successful strategy to turn vacant and abandoned properties into community assets depends on a good information system. Accurate individual property information, as well as neighborhood-level data enables effective tracking of property conditions and problem properties, and can serve as an early warning system, so that problems can be addressed while they are still manageable.” However, the tools they cite are generally sophisticated systems, and not very interactive. What is needed is a totally public Web 2.0 solution, not yet another locked-down government database.

The Way Forward

It seems to me, that a group interested in developing such a tool would have several choices. While I have pondered the possibility of using existing blog or wiki software, it seems that the problem could require a unique system. Funding could be found from any number of sources. (Perhaps here, here, or here.) While the problem is relatively modest in economically dynamic Washington, many U.S. cities struggle with thousands of vacant and abandoned properties. Should a system be developed here in Washington, the source code could be released for use in any community, or the website be designed to contain many city sites. (not unlike craigslist)

At least one person I’ve described the concept to thought the idea was flawed. Wouldn’t it invite misuse? Who would determine what was vacant? However, with dozens of individuals and groups blogging about properties and creating unofficial lists and maps, it seems a centralized system easily available to all is needed.

What do you think of the idea? Can you help? Post a comment.

> D.C. Government Pages: Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs - Vacant Property, Office of Tax and Revenue - Vacant Real Property
> D.C. Vacant Properties Blog
> Wash. Business Journal: “No teeth in D.C. tax on vacant land”
> Examiner: “Task force tries to take back H Street,” “Group asks city government to help solve vacant properties issue”
> National Vacant Properties Campaign

Shiloh Baptist Church Properties

Shiloh Baptist Church is often mentioned in discussions of the problem of vacant structures in Shaw. Using public city sources I created the map above illustrating the properties owned by the church in the Shaw neighborhood. The church owns seven vacant rowhomes and two parking lots in addition to three occupied church buildings. I have heard the church has considered using the properties for elderly housing and other uses, but they have sat vacant and empty for many years. The structures are all within the a historic district meaning any major construction would need approval from the city’s Historic Preservation Review Board.

The Carter G. Woodson home and two ajoining properties shown on the map are also vacant but owned by the National Park Service. Other vacant properties in the neighborhood, including three at the corner of 9th and Q st NW, are not shown on this map. A complete list of the properties owned by the church is shown below, please scroll to the right to view all the data.

Conduct your own property research with the city’s assessment database.

915 Rhode Island Ave. NW

Ever since I moved in basically across the street from this property, I have wondered about it. The high, barred windows and tightly boarded windows and doors give it an institutional and vaguely hostile feel.

A little internet snooping turned up little information on the property. DC city government’s online property sale database (which includes all sales from 1999 to the present) doesn’t contain a record for the address. The property assessment database lists its owner as Howard University and its value for 2007 as $631,750, with the existing structure contributing $159,820 to the total. The database also includes tax payment information since January 2005, and lists several payments to the city by Howard.

A Google search gives the impression the address has housed a physician’s office, insurance agent, and perhaps even a place of worship. All of this has made me begin to wonder how many other unused properties Howard owns. Sandwiched between a residential YWCA facility and Shaw Junior high just two blocks from the Metro, I have no doubt the property could interest a developer, or be better utilized by Howard University.