Marion Barry gives his view of demographic change:
“We’re going to stop this trend — gentrification,” said D.C. Council member Marion Barry (D-Ward 8). “We can’t displace old-time Washingtonians.”
“The key to keeping this city black is jobs, jobs, jobs for black people so they can have a better quality of life in neighborhoods in the city,” he added. “I believe in integration, but I don’t believe in the apartheid we have in Ward 8. You don’t see corner stores in Ward 3. You don’t see the liquor stores.”
This is, I think, a mistake. The labor market in the Washington, DC Metropolitan Statistical Area is among the strongest in the entire country. Obviously more employment opportunities would be welcome, but lack of employment opportunities isn’t really a characteristic of this city. The issue, it seems to me, is that while DC is a relatively good place to be an unemployed person since you can get around without a car and we have relatively generous means-tested welfare programs it’s not a very attractive place to move up the economic ladder. If you get a job and your income goes up to the point where you lose benefit eligibility, then suddenly DC is just a place with bad public schools and expensive houses. The natural thing to do is to migrate to someplace else in the metro area where housing costs are lower. Better schools would be a good thing, but would only further escalate housing costs.
For the city to become a more attractive place for working class people to live, the housing stock needs to expand at a much more rapid pace. You do, in fact, sees liquor stores in Ward 3. What you don’t see is a level of residential density that rises with growing demand for housing.
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