Results of a brief internet search of the wealth of, or compensation to, just three of DC’s re-developers:
- From Thrive Global: The CEO of EDENS, who arranged for Bowser to travel by private jet to and from the Masters Open and who accompanied her (information that, according to NBC4, never appeared on the Mayor’s public calendar) “has been responsible for development, redevelopment, acquisition and disposition of more than $12 billion in retail assets.” (Among EDENS’s projects in the DMV are Union Market, La Cosecha, and Mosaic District.)
- From the website of DC developer Dantes Partners/Damas Collective: We have “successfully financed, developed, and acquired over 8000 units (described as “affordable luxury”) with a combined financial and investment value exceeding $2.86 billion.”
- From ProPublica: Annual compensation (2023) to the CEO of the NHP Foundation, a nonprofit real-estate corporation working in DC that, according to WaPo and the Washington Socialist, received low rankings from evaluators and gave campaign contributions to Bowser–$717,657.
Meanwhile, the 2024 point-in-time count of unhoused people (who almost invariably own nothing) in the DMV was 9,774, which is, I feel certain, an under-count, perhaps gross, as the count’s done in January, one of the months that homeless people who don’t sleep in the open or inside designated shelters find their own meager shelter or, as three homeless men have said to me, “hiding places.”
Meanwhile as well, according to 2023 Census data, 14.5 percent of DC residents–and 25.5 percent of DC’s children (a percentage approximately twice the national average)–are living below the federal poverty level.
Re-developers and governments don’t seem to be doing much, if anything, for these populations; and these discrepancies between the wealth of re-developers/governments and the poor are, among anyone who contemplates these realities and whose defense-mechanisms are weak, insufferable.
From: Margaret Bright
To: The Chevy Chase Listserve, January 19, 2025
View/Reply Online (#330680)
View/Reply Online (#330680)
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