210 P Street NW- Back to the land of the living

I'll make this quick. I wrote about this property back in 2016.
It was as you see it, a vacant DC rowhouse.
Now it is back in the land of the living, and for sale, with lots and lots of space. It has been broken up into 4 units and the 1st unit is, rounded up a million dollars.
I reviewed the open house on my other blog and you can see my opinions of it. I've been through a few million dollar Truxton Circle houses and condos. Unfortunately, it doesn't hit the million dollar mark with features, but has million dollar space.
If you take a look at the image on the right, it looks like the developers kept the turret (yay!) and used the space to the side to expand to the property line on the other side and ate the house next door to make a huge building. But not as huge as the monstrosity a few doors down. 

Langston- A failure of DC Govenment

I'm cross posting this with the InShaw blog.

There is no point to using an updated photograph of the Langston School. It was rotting away 10 years ago when the picture was taken in 2007, it is still rotting away now and the way things are going, it may be another 10 years before the city actually brings this property back to the land of the living and legit.
This property is a vacant school in the DC government inventory. It was a school from 1902 til the mid-1990s. In 1997 it was a homeless shelter. By the time I moved here in the 00s, it was a vacant husk and only a homeless shelter when the homeless and others broke in. In 2013 it got on the National Register for Historic Places, so there is that. Around 2012 Langston was offered to charters, who have 1st dibs, and nobody wanted it. No charter wants it because it is an unmaintained structure with a rotted roof that is in need of a serious rehab work. Even Mundo Verde Charter School, across the street, which took over the still functioning Cook School building and built an addition, hasn't seriously pursued it. Langston is too far gone as a building to be of any use to a school.
Another complication is in the Slater School, another building that shares a playground with Langston. It is A.R.E. ARE is a social service organization and a daycare and it looks like they are also getting in on the Pre-K thing too. Slater is a poorly maintained building, but the tenant ARE holds on tight to its location. I strongly suspect ARE has powerful friends that are protecting ARE to the detriment of the Langston building. I suspect this because for at least a decade now, when residents bring up the nuisance property that is Langston to city councilmen or the council staff or city staff who show up to the local meetings, they seem to have no idea it exists and fail to get back to residents with a satisfactory answer.
The civic association for the area BACA, has recently formed a committee to try to figure out what could be done with Langston.
This is DC Government property. It is the Government of the District of Columbia's responsibility. Any demolition by neglect would be purely the fault of the local government. The DC government has failed the residents of the unit blocks of P and Bates.  But then again, the DC government is a crappy property manager.
Previous blog post about Langston- http://dcvacantproperties.blogspot.com/2014/07/langston-school-vacant-forever.html
Langston School Registration form- https://www.nps.gov/nr/feature/places/pdfs/13000143.pdf
Ward 5 Councilman Kenyon McDuffie- http://dccouncil.us/council/kenyan-mcduffie and http://www.kenyanmcduffie.com/

210 P St NW

I could have sworn I've written about this property.
Anyway 210 P St NW is vacant. It's got a yellow sticker vacant.
According to the DC property tax database an LLC (read developer) bought it this year for $200,000, a bargain possibly in April. However, DC PIVS still seems to think that Ali Zolfajhar, who gained ownership in 2007, is still the owner. *Shrug*
You see permits in the window, I have no idea when those are from. I guess I could have walked into the yard, but no. According to PIVS there is a permit for 2009, 2010, 2011, 2013, two for 2014, and one for 2015. The one for 2013 is a doozy, noted by the BACA blog that it was to turn the building into a 4 unit. Maybe do the monster building thing several doors down?

Langston and Slater DC Government's Demolition by neglect

Scott Roberts of Bloomingdale has on the BACA blog part of an article from the Washington Business Journal mentioning these two buildings.

Langston has been closed for like, ever.

Slater. Slater had/has some children's care inside that crumbly building. I'd shift some of the responsibility to the tenants on its state.

There are several other buildings throughout the city that are in good locations where the city lets the buildings rot. Giving them a historic designation did zero in making them functional. It just makes them more expensive to repair.

End of 2014- A few Happy Endings

As the year comes to a close I would like to remark on a few properties that have moved from the vacant list to the occupied and soon-to-be- occupied list.

Back in January 2014 I wrote about 310 P St NW and before that in 2013. This year the property has been fixed up and brought back to the land of the living. In November it sold for $849,000. What is wonderful about this is that there are no longer any obviously vacant homes on the 300 block of P Street NW. That stretch is complete. It is whole.

403 R St NW

Nearby at 403 R St NW, it too was sold in November. It was a bit of a shell. A long term shell that didn't look that bad by the person driving by. It had no mailbox on it, so no mail piling up. There was no grass in the front yard, the windows had drapes and the front was kept tidy. What a passerby never saw was the hole in the roof, or the damage it was causing for the home attached to it. This property got a write up in May 2014. At this moment there are workmen in the house and fixing the property up. The brick has been recently repointed, something I did not know it needed. As one can see from this old photo, the neat appearance hid the faults quite well.

It is difficult to say what is up with 1617 New Jersey Ave NW, so it will remain on the list until work is done. This property could see a happy ending in 2015. The property was sold in October and there is a permit for work. Unfortunately this house has a history of work being done, and work torn out of it.

Lastly, I'm going to remove 4334 Klingle Street, NW from the list. Though it had Tyvek in May 2014 instead of the black tar paper it had in 2008, it was sold in 2013 and is now taxed at the residential rate. Looking at the tax payments since 2010, there was a period of tens of thousands of dollars paid and now the current amount seems sort of in line with the neighborhood. It's a lot, but them again the house is assessed at being worth about $926K.

There are still vacant properties in the District. Some are privately owned by individuals, some owned by the city, some owned by LLCs and other deep pocketed groups. In the case of residential buildings, those places don't need to be vacant. There is a huge demand for housing in the District, more so in NW DC. There is a need for affordable housing, so the shells that stand, could stand to be rehabbed by motivated people for properties to house people.

Happy New Year. Happy 2015.

Bunch of occupied properties that were once vacant

These are all properties reported on the DC Vacant Properties blog that are now all occupied. I just want to take them off the list.

 1227 1st St NW- It was featured on the InShaw blog on December 20, 2007. Where it was reported that an owner acquired the property in 2007 for an unknown amount. Work was done in 2009 resulting in a stop work order or two. This was prior to the current owner who is receiving a homestead deduction, buying the property that same year. There is no record in the DC PIVS of a certificate of occupancy, though it appears occupied enough.

312 P St NW- This was also featured on the the InShaw blog in 2008 with the title "Crap House 1/2 Off". There was some minor drama about a private lender dying and the work couldn't be completed, blah, blah, blah. There were several permits issued for work late 2009 and in 2010, about the time when the current owner bought the property. It looks occupied.

219 P St NW- Is from a December 15th 2007 InShaw post. It was a mess, broken windows, and plywood doors. Now it is a occupied two unit residence. I guessed that from the young lady on the stairs on the phone. It was a nice evening to be out. When the 12/17/07 post was written the first permit was only a few months old, followed by a second permit for electrical work. There is no occupancy permit, not a big deal for the other P St house (which doesn't have one per PIVS) and the 1st St property, 'cause when it is your house and you're living in it forget the CofO dammit. But these are two units, rental units I gather from the owner living in Dun Loring. Just a little thing the owner may want to fix, this being a super tenant friendly (landlord hostile) city and all.

226 N St NW- The Mt. Vernon Square Neighborhood Association post for this is no longer, but it's 7/11/2008 title was "Hole for Sale." It is occupied. The permits are interesting. There are a few for 2003-2005, then three for February 2010. If I were to guess, work was done between 2003-2005, then undone afterwards, leaving a hole in the ground in 2008, work was done creating a new building in 2010, then sold as 2 condos in 2011. There is an old post on Greater Greater Washington with a before picture of 226 N St, showing it as a vacant lot surrounded by jersey walls.

310 P St NW

300 blk of P St NW, a photo by In Shaw on Flickr.

This is a blighted property.
It has been a blighted property for as long as I can remember. But notice the pop up on the left. It was a vacant shell at one point. Now it is a residence. I don't remember the story for the pop up on the left.
The story here is for Jan 2014 the owner Allison Bennett of Largo, MD owes $185,204.39 in real property taxes, a little less for sewer and trash. Blighted properties are charged $10 for every $100 of value. The land it sits on is valued at about $200K. Ms. Bennett came to the property in 2006. According to Redfin, she purchased it for $180K, according to the DC government, it was $380K.
I've blogged about this property before,  here (and the neighboring house here  and here) and not much has changed.

310 P St NW

Crossposted with the InShaw Blog.
I am confused as to why this is not charged at the vacant or blighted rate for 2013. This property, owned by Allision Bennett of Largo, MD since 2006, has been a vacant shell for many, many, many years. According to the Tax office, it was charged at the blighted rate for the past three years, add to the other years the total owed to the city is $187,499.31. The city hasn't collected anything from the owner since 2009. Maybe the City has decided they are not going to see the money, so what's the point?
Looking at DCRA'a PIVS system there is something about it being Market. Does that mean it is up for sale, somewhere, maybe in an alternative universe? Or maybe it is explaining how the owner came to 310 P St NW.There hasn't been a permit issued since 2006, and that was to demolish the interior, which yes, there is no interior. If you look at the photo you can see right through to the alley. The last time the City looked in on this was in July, by what I can gather is the Board for Condemnation of Insanitary Buildings. Yep, still vacant, still a shell.