Six and a half hours after New Year’s Day in 1957, Fred Wilkins, a 57-year-old janitor at Ft. Belvoir, was killed after a southbound Route 1 automobile struck him in Gum Springs. Three years later, Gum Springs resident Giles Roster, who was 38 at the time, had his right leg amputated after he was run over by a car while trying to cross Route 1 in Gum Springs. This ritual of carnage continued apace until one spring afternoon in 1967, when more than 100 Gum Spring residents, led by Alexandria mortician Nelson Greene and my father, dragged two caskets onto Route 1, stopped traffic and finally forced the Commonwealth of Virginia to reckon with its historical neglect of highway safety in the Gum Springs community.

Shortly after the protest, the state installed a traffic signal at Route 1 and Sherwood Hall Lane.

Yet more than a half century later, the Commonwealth of Virginia again appears to be on the verge of resurrecting Route 1’s reputation as an alleyway of death. Forty-five years after a Fairfax County study found that “a person is 3 times as liable to be killed and 41/2 times as liable to have an accident along the Route 1 corridor strip as one who is traveling” the adjacent Henry G. Shirley Memorial Highway (now Interstate highway 395) to the west,” the Virginia Department of Transportation has proposed a highway configuration in Gum Springs that is likely to increase that grizzly disparity: Within one mile, VDOT is proposing that Route 1 go from 12-lanes at Buckman Road to 11-lanes at Ladson Lane then to 13-lanes at Sherwood Hall Lane. The lanes then appear to revert to 11-lanes at Boswell. As my colleague Queenie Cox, president of the Gum Spring Civic Association has said: “How can such disjointed and fluctuating lane changes be safe.”

Where Route 1 traverses Gum Springs, the east side of the highway is largely populated by residential housing and the west side is mostly retail and other commercial establishments. And yet, there is currently no viable solution to permit residents on the east side of the highway to cross safely to the west side to purchase goods and services. The proposal to expand to 13 lanes and adding a difficult-to-surveil underground pedestrian tunnel, is a recipe for accidents and crime. From my office window view of Richmond Highway across from the Costco big box store I witness everyday that crossing the current seven lanes of traffic is already unsafe. And residents would likely recoil at walking through the proposed underground tunnel that would be difficult to find and a magnet for crime under the best of circumstances. Instead, they would likely continue to risk crossing multiple lanes of high speed traffic above ground on foot. Therefore, the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors should delay action on the VDOT BRT’s flawed plan and allow state officials to re-think their plan with an eye toward downsizing highway lanes and building something other than a underground pedestrian tunnel so that residents can cross the highway safely.

I have expressed these concerns in a letter to the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors and urge like-minded community residents to do the same.

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Sometime this year, the federal Centers for Disease Control will likely end the rental eviction moratorium that has enabled millions of tenants to remain in their homes while the nation struggles with the economic fallout caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

The moratorium was scheduled to expire last month but was extended until June 30.

It is unclear how much rental debt is saddling the nearly one in five households that the U.S. Census Bureau says are behind on their payments.

However, the Los Angeles Times newspaper recently cited a study by Moody’s Analytics and the Urban Institute that estimated that 9.4 million U.S. households owe $5,586 each in back rent, utilities and related fees as of January 2021, amounting to a total potential liability of $52.6 billion.

Unraveling the moratorium will likely pose a huge political challenge for President Joseph Biden and federal housing officials, who are undoubtedly wary of the specter of millions of tenants cast out on the streets by landlords because they cannot pay back rent.

Under CDC rules, renters having trouble paying, have to apply for assistance and meet eligibility guidelines. They must provide their landlords with a declaration that they tried to obtain government housing assistance, that they don’t earn more than $99,000 a year and that they are unable to pay their rent due to loss of income, among other requirements. Tenants can still get evicted for lease violations other than non-payment of rent.

According to the CDC, federal, state and local eviction bans led to a million fewer evictions in 2020 than the previous year. There were about 131,000 eviction hearings in Virginia in 2020, a 30 percent decrease from the 186,000 evictions in 2019. 

Even if Congress passes President Biden’s recently unveiled $2 trillion infrastructure plan, which includes $213 billion for low and middle income housing assistance, the proposal will likely come too late for the more than 9 million tenants that are behind on their rent. And cities and states, too, are short on the resources needed to address the rental crisis since tax revenue from landlords and many other businesses, such as restaurants, theaters and sports venues, have fallen the wake of the pandemic.

In view of these challenges, it is important that state and federal officials come up with a plan that protects both landlords and tenants as the transition to the end of the moratorium looms. Meanwhile, Virginia tenants and landlords needing financial support can visit the state’s Rental Relief Program or the similar help available at Fairfax County’s online rental support portal.

Four years ago, at the urging of my good friend Richard Prince, I joined more than a dozen other speakers at an Alexandria public hearing to support the removal of Confederate memorials in the city. I pointed out that even Europe undertook a similar act of reconciliation by banishing Adolf Hitler’s name from the more than 80 streets in the continent that bore the name of the Nazi Party leader before 1950.

Appomattox statute

But despite a substantial number of voices in Alexandria supporting removal of confederate memorials in the city, the wheels of change were slow to turn. Alexandria’s Ad Hoc Advisory Group on Confederate Memorials recommended that the Appomattox statute of a lone Confederate soldier facing south with his arms crossed, remain in place on South Washington Street. Their only caveat was to recommend that the city make efforts to add context to the story of the statue, which has stood in Alexandria for 131 years.

The statute, according to the Washington Post newspaper, commemorates the mustering at the start of the Civil War of Alexandria citizens who marched south to join the Confederate forces. However, the city’s black residents have long viewed the towering memorial as an affront and a painful reminder that Alexandria sided with those who supported slavery. Defenders, several of whom spoke at the city’s public hearing in 2016, countered that the statute was an important reminder of the city’s southern heritage.

Six months after that hearing, the Alexandria City Council voted unanimously to change the name of Jefferson Davis Highway to Richmond Highway and seek permission from the Virginia General Assembly to move the Appomattox statute. But the Virginia legislature was unable to pass a measure supporting removal of confederate statues in the state until this year. Thus, the memorial stood in the city’s downtown until June 2, when the United Daughters of the Confederacy, which owns the statue, opted to allow the city to remove the memorial a month ahead of schedule.

What changed?

The United Daughters of the Confederacy have not said publicly why they accelerated, by a month, the statue’s removal from the city’s main thoroughfare. But I would venture that the sight of thousands of demonstrators around the nation, protesting police brutality against African Americans, weighed heavily on their minds.

Jube Shiver Sr.

I have written previously in this blog about the importance of voting to bring about change. But when it comes to matters of race, the nationwide protests over police brutality this spring have underscored how politics and elections have failed to substantially diminish the twin scourges of racism and white supremacy in this country. In fact, many commentators have remarked that—in terms of police violence and economic inequities engulfing the nation’s black communities—progress has been painful and incremental since the civil rights protests of the 1960s.

Nelson E. Greene Sr.

Indeed, 53 years ago, former Alexandria City Councilman Nelson E. Greene Sr., my father and more than 100 other demonstrators dragged two caskets onto Route 1 in Hybla Valley near Spring Garden Apartments to protest the state’s refusal to install a traffic signal on a part of the busy highway corridor that ran through the historically black Gum Springs community. At least five people were killed in traffic accidents in the late 1950s and early 1960s on that highway, including Fred Wilkins, a 57-year-old janitor at Ft. Belvoir who was killed after a southbound Route 1 automobile struck him in Gum Springs at 6:30 a.m. on New Year’s Day in 1957.

The protest was not widely covered by the media. But news of it soon percolated its way up to Virginia transportation officials, who had drawn up engineering plans as early as  July 1965 for a stop light in Gum Springs but never got around to installing it. But soon after news of the highway protest spread, a traffic signal was installed just above the pavement that the caskets and protesters had occupied just a few months earlier that spring.

A half century later, our society is still blind to the carnage taking place among black Americans in our communities. Too many streets, in city after divided city, look eerily similar to the way they looked during the riots of the 1960s.

A riot is the language of the unheard,” Martin Luther King Jr said in a 1967 speech that is currently echoing through newscasts and social media as if the words had just emerged from Dr. King’s lips yesterday. But more than a half century later, it seems America still won’t receive and act on that message.

JSblogA recent spate of winter storms reminded me how desperately the county—and indeed the region and nation—need to get on board with installing electric and communications utility lines, below ground.

Weather and falling tree branches cause 40 percent of power outages in the United States, according to Erich Gunther, a fellow at the Institute of Electrical And Electronics Engineers. Another 10 to 35 percent are caused by animals—mostly squirrels—and traffic accidents involving utility poles. During last month’s storms, over 100,000 people in Fairfax County were left without power.

The electric grid consists of thousands of fuses, junction boxes and other electro-mechanical parts. Like your cellphone, these systems work best when exposed to the middle of the temperature and moisture range they were designed for.  However, even the best designed above ground utility transmission systems rarely survive being struck by high winds or vehicular traffic. Systems that pass through forested areas or heavily traveled roadways, like Richmond Highway, are especially vulnerable.

So it was with great interest that I recently read that legislation introduced by Virginia state Senator Scott Surovell would provide a funding mechanism to finance the installation of underground utility lines.  Surovell’s bill, SB1759, would enable Fairfax County to levy a tax of not more than $1 per month on electric bills throughout the county to help pay for placing electric distribution lines underground alongside roads with transit-oriented development.

It can cost as much as 10 times as much to bury power wires instead of stringing them overhead, according to some industry estimates. So paying for buried power lines is not inconsequential. What’s more, not every typography, such as areas prone to frequent flooding, can accept buried lines.

Still, much of Europe is powered by underground utilities as is Wall Street and the federal district of our Nation’s capital. As a result, power outages in these areas are rare. In addition to the improvements in the reliability of power transmission, installing power lines underground helps prevent electrocution deaths and keep the public and utility workers safer.

Surovell’s bill passed both houses of the General Assembly last month and is awaiting the Governor’s signature.

I encourage you to urge Gov. Ralph Northam to sign this sorely needed legislation. I also urge you to keep pressure on law makers and regulators to require that utility power lines be buried as a part of any major infrastructure project, such as the widening of the Richmond Highway corridor.

JSblog
I‘ve been absent from these pages these past few months because much of my time has been consumed by activities involving, not housing and property management, but my former profession: journalism.

  • In July I attended the closing of the Los Angeles Times newspaper’s historic headquarters.
  • In August, I spoke at the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication conference in Washington, D.C. on the occasion of the 50th year anniversary of the Urban Journalism Workshop program for young minority journalists
  • And in September, I held a book party for a former newspaper colleague who authored a new book on racism, and injustice in American law enforcement.
  • Today, as a consumer rather than a producer of daily journalism, I had almost forgotten the powerful and necessary ways in which the press carries out what Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black said, is its essential role in our democracy to “to serve the governed, not the governors” and “expose deception in government.”

    JSblog

    The three events I participated in this past summer reminded me how much the journalism mandate Justice Black described can shape and impact our lives on issues as disparate as politics, technology and climate change. (The picture at left shows the 2018 class of UJW students and mentors).

    In recent years, the power of the press has sometimes extended even to social media and blogs like this one, which, over the years, has focused attention on digital red lining, subsidized housing injustice and homelessness.

    Martin Baron, my former editor at the Los Angeles Times, who is now editor of the Washington Post, told me last year that “these are exhausting but energizing” times for journalists. Indeed, in addition to journalism’s traditional bread and butter of crime coverage, politics, business and sports news—journalists must now grapple with the seemingly intractable rise in political gridlock and social division, as well as an escalation in mass shootings and skyrocketing opiate drug abuse.

    So I wanted to take time in our last post of the year, to reaffirm my appreciation for the men and women (and the generation to come) whose tireless search for the truth and support for the free exchange of ideas will, hopefully, help our democracy navigate these increasingly turbulent waters.

    Darius In the wake of the nationwide affordable housing shortage, the federal government has proposed tripling rents for the poorest tenants receiving federal housing assistance and encouraging some 4.5 million households enrolled in federal voucher and public housing programs to shorten their stays in order to make way for new tenants.

    The plan put forth this spring by Ben Carson, secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, has been criticized by experts who say it will do little to create more affordable housing at a time when stagnating wages make it hard for the poor to pay rising rents and the construction of affordable rental apartments lags far behind the need.

    Under Carson’s plan, maximum rents paid by the poorest households in public housing would triple from $50 to $150.

    A report released last year by the National Multifamily Housing Council (NMHC) and National Apartment Association (NAA) projected that 4.6 million new housing units will be needed to meet the demand in 2030. Yet land use rules have become more restrictive over the years, choking off the development of affordable housing, the study noted.

    For every 100 extremely low-income households in need of an affordable dwelling, only 29 units are available, according to the Urban Institute, a Washington D.C.-based think tank that studies U.S. economic and social policy.

    In addition, as we have previously pointed out in this blog, some of HUD’s own rules can prevent the poor from qualifying for affordable housing.

    So instead of adding yet another rule that could, effectively, make affordable housing more costly and less accessible, I spent the last few days scouring the Internet for more practical and creative solutions to the affordable housing crisis. These are some of the ideas I found:

    Clean up and promote Low-Income Housing Tax Credits. Dubbed the most successful social program that nobody’s ever heard of, by Health Affairs, the federal LIHTC program has financed the construction of nearly three million rental units for low-income Americans since 1986.

    Lower affordable housing construction costs by streamlining building regulations, using vacant government property like closed schools and utilizing off-site construction techniques to reduce construction time and lower material costs.

    Offer density bonuses, like the City of Alexandria, in return for providing affordable homes.

    Give credits or tax breaks to encourage homeowners to rent or sell a livable portion of their home like a basement or carriage house as Accessory Dwelling Units.

    In order to provide more affordable housing policy-makers must think outside of the box and utilize innovative solutions to address the problem without dramatically raising rents or forcing landlords to kick poor people out of their homes.

    If you have any ideas or resourceful information, comment and share your thoughts below.

    Darius Sleep tight and don’t let the bed bugs bite is a phrase many of us heard during childhood and, later, paid little attention to once we became adults. But according to Orkin – the Atlanta-based pest control company – there are more people affected by bed bugs in the United States now than ever before.

    That’s especially true in our area. According to the latest Orkin list of the Top 50 Bed Bug Cities Baltimore and Washington D.C. ranked No. 1 No. 2, respectively, among cities metro areas where the company performed the most bed bug treatments from December 1, 2015 – November 30, 2016.

    For those lucky enough to have never encountered bed bugs, they’re flat, reddish brown tiny pest that feed on blood (humans are their favorite). Don’t let the name fool you. Bed bugs are not limited to only beds. They can be found within the crevices of furniture, headboards, electrical outlet sockets, luggage & even in unsuspecting places such as bathroom vents & public transportation seats.

    Despite how awful the thought of having bed bugs appears, treating these bugs are more of an inconvenience then a serious health concern. Yes, when they feed, bed bugs do leave behind itchy welts on their victims. However, there is no substantial research indicating that bed bugs transmit diseases.

    One of the main reasons people hate bed bugs is that treatments in most cases require throwing away the infested items, such as mattresses, sheets, clothes and other costly household items.

    The treatments in itself are not expensive but costs can mount if repeated treatments are required.

    Under the Virginia Residential Landlord and Tenant Act, landlords are held accountable for keeping an apartment unit safe and habitable. As a result, apartment owners find themselves spending and budgeting more money for pest control treatments annd bed bug mattress covers due to the huge increase of bed bug sightings.

    In April 2012, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) issued Notice H 2012-5, which addresses pest infestations. With help from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), HUD encouraged Landlords to develop an Integrated Pest Management Plan (IPM), which serves as a guideline to prevent & control infestations.

    Some key principles from the plan include, raising awareness through education, encouraging tenants to reduce the clutter that attracts bugs and to take precautions when brining in luggage, coats and other items that may have come in contact with bed bugs outside the home.

    JSblog
    Election observers have long lamented the fact that only roughly half of registered voters cast ballots in presidential elections, and even fewer vote in other races.

    A 2008 study by Stanford University researchers Joshua Harder and Jon A. Krosnick found that “an individual citizen’s turnout behavior is a joint function of his or her social location, his or her psychological dispositions, the procedures involved in voting, and events that occur at the time of each election.”

    Translation: citizens with lower incomes and education are less likely to vote; married couples and people who participate in civic organizations are more likely to vote; convenient voter registration and polling site locations mean higher turnout and, lastly, significant events—like the 2008 recession—can affect turnout.

    But up until today’s gubernatorial election in Virginia, my motivation was much simpler: I voted because of my mom.

    My mother, Mildred L. Shiver, was a poll watcher for Fairfax County for more than 40 years.

    When I graduated from high school, she insisted that I register to vote; when I was away in college in Syracuse, New York, she arranged to send me absentee ballots; and, after I returned to northern Virginia, she served as a poll watcher at various Mount Vernon District polling sites for every off-year and presidential election since Jimmy Carter.

    The last time I cast my ballot in the presence of my mom was in June 2017, when I took her to vote in the Virginia primary election. Too sick to walk, she filled out a ballot from the passenger seat of my car while I went inside to vote. She died less than two months later.

    I often encounter people in my travels who say they don’t vote because it doesn’t matter. “It’s all rigged; there’s no difference whether there’s a Democrat or Republican in office” one store clerk in Atlanta, Georgia recently told me, after he lamented the state of the area’s economy.

    Indeed, few Americans trust the integrity of their elections.

    A Gallup poll conducted two weeks before Election Day last year found that only 35 percent of Americans were “very confident” that their vote would be counted accurately, according to an article in the Washington Post written by Pippa Norris, Holly Ann Garnett and Max Grömping. That sentiment helped rank the United States 90th out of 112 countries, when people around the world were asked how confident they were in the honesty of their elections.

    I’m not sure what fuels this sentiment. I know that my vote has made a difference. And I thank my mom for motivating me, all these years, to vote in every election. It’s a motivation I’m passing along to my two sons. I hope you encourage someone to vote today, and in every future election, as well.

    Darius It is great to be back, after suspending our blog several months ago to complete our office move to a new location in Alexandria.
    And as we settle in to welcome in a new year, we are thankful for the continued support of our tenant community as well as the contributions we have been able to make to affordable housing in Northern Virginia.
    But to be honest, our social media skills grew, ahem, a little rusty during our off time. But that’s OK. To make up for it, we had a great new office celebration in October and a Christmas party in December to get back on track and show appreciation for all the craftsmen and women who worked on our new facilities.
    Besides the building contractors, our own staff members and their families, a number of other notable folks attended the Shiver Management Group party in October including Virginia state Senator Scott A. Surovell and Mount Vernon-Lee Chamber of Commerce Executive Director, Holly Hicks Dougherty.
    We want to thank them and everyone involved in our office move as well as our Office party celebration. We asked several of the office party attendees for their observations about the new office construction and thought we would share them with you.

    Chang Soo Rhee: Office Project Architect – “The most challenging part of this project was connecting the two buildings together. I did not want to let Mr. Shiver down because you can tell the process of getting approval became frustrating.”

    Julius Washington: Retired Employee
    – “It is a lot more spacious than the previous office. Overall it turned out better than I expected”.

    Pedro Rivas: Electrical Engineer – Facilities Manager “Mark (Jackson) is a great leader; He will let you know if you mess up in a heartbeat. You need people like that when doing projects like this because there are so many aspects.”

    Tadasha Culbreath-Shiver: – “It’s great to see an idea come into fruition after months of continuous labor and planning. The overall design is professional and looks comfortable for employees.”

    MovingWe will be moving our offices over the next few weeks and hope to resume posting later this summer.