01/29/2021
A recent Washington Post article describes the unique success of the Mount Pleasant neighborhood in resisting the powerful forces of gentrification that have swept through the City.
For 6 years IBF Development worked as a consultant to NHT Communities and with the tenant association to rebuild what became the Monseñor Romero Apartments.
Every year we would gather with the displaced residents and their neighborhood supporters - Yasmin, Jose, Mayra, Miriam and so many others - in front of the burned down building to rededicate ourselves to the task of creating new, high-quality homes that would actually be affordable to all the residents who had been displaced.
We are proud that another 6 years after the resurrection of the apartments was completed it continues to serve as a key component in maintaining Mount Pleasant a a vibrant, mixed-income, racially and ethnically diverse community.
As written in the article:
"The biggest achievement was one of the neighborhood’s largest apartment buildings, the Deauville. The 85-unit building went up in flames in 2008, the city’s first five-alarm fire in nearly 30 years. After the flames were doused, the tenants sought to take control of the building, which allegedly had been mismanaged for years. Under Mayor Fenty, the city bought the building and turned it over to the residents. Again, the National Housing Trust supplied financing and legal help...
..the building was reopened under a new name, Monsenor Romero Apartments, in honor of Salvadoran archbishop Óscar Romero, a tribune of the poor whose assassination in 1980 marked the beginning of the Salvadoran civil war. All 63 apartments in the Romero are rented at below-market prices."
Mount Pleasant has maintained a degree of diversity and an attractive sense of community in a city that, swamped by gentrification, seems to be losing both.
