Everything Matters
Making Space for the Old and the New
By Patrice Gaines
Thursday, April 24, 2008

It’s been three years since I moved away from D.C. I see the passage of time in chic restaurants or expensive condos with rooftop terraces. Generally, these new buildings stand on property where a landmark of my youth has been leveled. This week during a visit, I sat in the popular Bus Boys & Poets Restaurant & Bar on 14th Street, one of the newer landmarks that I adore. I was talking to friends and eating too much when one of my friends, Sandra Butler-Truesdale, pointed out a concern she has for this new city.

“There’s a story to be told about the aging population and gentrification,” she said. “There are not enough assisted living facilities in the District.”

Those of us at the table who were over the age of 50 - which was all of us - leaned in to pay attention. Ever concerned about our future, we listen whenever the talk turns to aging and housing, or aging and anything for that matter. Butler-Truesdale, a former vice president of the D.C. Board of Education, is chair of the resident association at Campbell Heights, one of the buildings designated by the city as housing for elderly people who can live independently.
  
“Campbell Heights is 30-years-old and sits on the site of the historical Dunbar Hotel,” she notes. “It’s one of the oldest independent living facilities in the city.”
   
She is a native Washingtonian, a keeper of the history of her home town, particularly of its Black community. As owner of Emma Mae Gallery, located at 2000 14th St. NW, she maintains a collection of black and white photos of this history, which includes pictures of many of the well-known musicians who have performed in it. Even as we sit at Bus Boys & Poets, we are surrounded by some of her photos hanging on the walls of the restaurant.
  
Campbell Heights, the building she essentially helps to manage, sits smack in the center of gentrification at a convenient location, 2001 15th Street NW. For a short while Butler-Truesdale lived in the building herself, but this meant she was on call 24 hours and the aging tenants had needs that nearly overwhelmed her. Many of the tenants, Butler-Truesdale says, should be in assisted living facilities rather than in an independent living building. But while the city is bustling with commercial development, she said the number of independent living facilities has remained nearly the same.
  
Butler-Truesdale is afraid the city is not including enough special housing for the elderly in its plans for the future, and she says she doesn’t think the tenants of her building will be able to depend on the owner of the building, a German bank, to have as much concern for the residents as it might have for the value of the property.

What she is certain of is what she has witnessed since she started working at the building five years ago.
  
“You walk the halls now and you smell urine. You smell people burning up food. The ambulance is always coming in and out of the building. There are scores of people who come in at night who don’t live there. They’re squatters. They leave in the morning. At one point they took away all of the security in the building. We had to threaten to sue to get security. Now there’s security from 4 p.m. to 7 a.m., but during the day there’s none.
   
“The elevators were down for two weeks over the Christmas holidays. There are 10 floors in the building. A woman got sick and EMS had to take a gurney up the stairs and bring her down the same way. If a tenant wanted to get out, they had to walk down those stairs—and not everyone could do that.”
  
“The resident association monitors the situation, which is something management should do. There seems to be a formula to let the building deteriorate. When it’s run down, the owners will condemn it.”
  
Butler-Truesdale, who is old enough to be eligible to live in the building, said it is difficult to be around the chaos and illness if you are a healthy senior. So she moved out of Campbell Heights and bought herself a condo in Southwest.
  
“I felt I would get sick if I stayed there. I moved, but I know that not everyone can do that.”
  
So now Butler-Truesdale is counting on the city she loves to come through for some of its most fragile residents, to treat the aging with respect and dignity while still honoring all things shiny and new. 

Patrice Gaines is an author and the co-founder of The Brown Angel Center, a program in Charlotte, N.C. that helps formerly incarcerated women become financially independent. www.patricegaines.com.