Many of you do not realize I lived in one of the most crime ridden areas of Washington, DC back from 2002-3. I realized, only after I had moved in that I was a pawn in my landlord's gentrification scheme for the Mount Vernon Square neighborhood. I was mere blocks from the infamous Sursum Corda Public Housing Complex. "Sursum Corda" means "lift up your arms" in Latin, or as we say nowadays, "stick 'em up."I lived in the yellow house in the middle of the row. The house to the right, now divided into six(!) units, was abandoned and closed up when I lived there. The first floor windows were bricked up, so we climbed out that second floor window and through the window of the abandoned house. Inside was a wasteland of abandoned bottles and packaging, remnants of squatters who had lived in there before the barricades went up.
The amazing apartment building across New Jersey Avenue was a bordello when I lived in the neighborhood. I remember coming home one night the winter I lived there to find ten police cars surrounding the building, arresting pimps and evicting the squatters who lived in what turned out to be a District owned building.
It is now being renovated into luxury condos, as can be seen in this picture.
The Hoagie House was already defunct when we lived there, and I am curious as to what will happen to this building in the future. Nothing right now, it seems.
See the area from the air here. Vernon Davis, a former student of mine and now playing for the San Francisco 49er's, went to high school across the street from my house.
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