Sedgwick Gardens as a Microcosm of Liberalized America

Since the only difference between the poor and the rich is that the poor have been dealt a lousy hand by capitalism through no fault of their own, why not house the homeless in fancy luxury apartments? That will turn them into rich people. Or maybe not — as even WaPo admits:

The SWAT team, the overdose, the complaints of pot smoke in the air and feces in the stairwell — it would be hard to pinpoint a moment when things took a turn for the worse at Sedgwick Gardens, a stately apartment building in Northwest Washington.

Actually, the moment is not so hard to pinpoint:

In late 2016, the board of the D.C. Housing Authority — which sets payment standards for vouchers issued in the city — increased the maximum value of vouchers to 175 percent of fair market rent, as set by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

That meant vouchers could be used for one-bedroom apartments renting at up to $2,648 a month, according to Housing Authority documents.

Tenants are supposed to contribute 30% of their income toward rent, with the city covering the rest. Since panhandling, mugging, petty theft, prostitution, and drug-dealing are the primary sources of income in this sector of the population, the taxpayer share probably rounds off to 100%.

This was meant to address what WaPo calls “the twin crises of homelessness and gentrification.” Social engineers managed to fill nearly half the building with freeloaders.

Many of the new tenants are previously homeless men and women who came directly from shelters or the streets, some still struggling with severe behavioral problems.

In the name of liberal ideology, the high-class apartment building has been transformed into “a dumping ground for people unprepared to live on their own.” Paying tenants have been bailing out to escape the chaos.

How tragic to work hard to be able to afford a nice place to live and then have moonbats import a ghetto into your building. But don’t waste your tears on the residents of Sedgwick Gardens, which is located in the hoity-toity Cleveland Park part of DC.

Cleveland Park is a bastion of urbane liberalism where just 1 in 20 voters supported President Trump in the 2016 election. Yet from the beginning, [former Sedgwick Gardens property manager Naimah] Simkins said, it was clear that some of the building’s older residents were discomfited by the new basement dwellers.

Discomfiting aspects of this adventure in egalitarianism include feces on the stairwell landing, pot smoke in the air, panhandling, SWAT team visits, and a woman who “moans and screams incomprehensibly for long stretches of the day and night.”

Don’t blame the owners.

A spokeswoman for Daro, which owns and manages Sedgwick Gardens, said the company had not taken steps either “to solicit or discourage voucher holders from applying” and noted that it was illegal for landlords to discriminate against tenants receiving government rental subsidies.

As we have come to expect, Big Government steps forward to fix the problem it caused through ham-fisted coercion with more ham-fisted coercion:

A majority of the D.C. Council is backing a bill, introduced by [Councilmember Brianne K.] Nadeau, that would require buildings with at least 20 units and 30 percent or more of them occupied by tenants receiving housing assistance to offer on-site access to social services such as health care, nutrition counseling and child care.

No wonder cities ruled by moonbats so often have housing shortages. Who would want to be a landlord in a place like Seattle, Portland, or DC?

If moonbats could turn Sedgwick Gardens into a slum, they can do the same for the USA as a whole. Don’t believe me? Elect Bernie Sanders and find out for yourself.

The post Sedgwick Gardens as a Microcosm of Liberalized America appeared first on Moonbattery.