Drug Bust Sets Back Anacostia’s Gentrification

Anacostia is gentrifying?  Most of my young white peers never cross the Anacostia river if they can avoid it, even though roughly a quarter of Washingtonians live on the other side.  Among whites, “Anacostia” is shorthand for the entire area east of the river, but in fact it refers to one small neighborhood with business corridors along MLK and Good Hope.  And it’s a nice neighborhood, in theory, with lots of attractive middle-class houses, a riverfront park, a metro stop, views of the Capitol and the Washington Monument, plenty of available retail space, and the historic Frederick Douglass house (while the house itself is impressive, the unintentionally hilarious introductory video is reason enough to visit).  It has a small-town feel while being very accessible to downtown, and it’s easy to imagine it gentrifying.  In fact, it has been, mostly in the form of middle-class black professionals moving back into the city from Prince George’s County.

But while some professionals may be attracted to an undervalued (read: affordable), centrally located, surprisingly quaint neighborhood, businesses have been slow to follow.  Anacostia has tons of vacant storefronts, and the few businesses it has are mostly carryouts and liquor stores.  On one visit, I saw maybe a dozen men shooting craps on the floor of a Chinese takeout.  Very few people are willing to invest in the sorts of amenities that would entice more professionals to live Anacostia.  In the past two years, however, Anacostia welcomed a coffee shop, Big Chair Coffee, and a pub, Uniontown.  I’ve visited both, and while neither would be remarkable in U Street or Adams Morgan, they both contributed badly needed “third spaces” to one of DC’s most underserved areas.

Unfortunately, as the Washington Post reports, Uniontown’s proprietor has just been busted in a federal drug sting.  DEA agents searched Natasha Dasher’s office and found $1.5 million in cash in three duffel bags, as well as 65 kilos of cocaine.  Dasher and two accomplices have been charged with possession with intent to distribute.

Obviously, Dasher should not be dealing cocaine.  And obviously, she’s not a small-time dealer either.  But I still find this story infuriating.  First of all, I’m sure the federal government has better things to do than track the interstate drug trade.  Second of all, I’m sure that there are more dangerous people in DC (in Anacostia, especially) than Dasher who should be commanding more of law enforcement’s attention.  I would happily let a dozen coke-dealers free in exchange for a police force that could have prevented my house from being broken into and my laptop from being stolen, or at least apprehended the thugs who did it.

But most of all, I’m sad for what this might do to Anacostia.  Residents across the river celebrated the arrival of a legit bar, and now it turns out to be a drug front.  There’s no word yet on whether Uniontown is closing, but this bodes ill.  To the extent anyone is paying attention to Anacostia’s development, it sends a message that the drug culture permeates all business east of the river.

This strikes me as terribly unfair.  First of all, it’s not as if there aren’t bars in affluent white neighborhoods where this happens, yet somehow people keep opening more bars in those neighborhoods.  Second of all, given Anacostia’s terrible investment climate, given its staggering unemployment rate (which suggests that drug trafficking employs a large percent of the population), how else is anyone supposed to get enough money to run a small business?  Just because Dasher sells coke to support her bar (or uses her bar to cover for her lucrative coke business, take your pick) doesn’t mean Anacostia lacks respectable clientele who deserve a respectable bar.  Maybe if someone other than drug dealers were to invest in Anacostia, they would see that.

Greater Greater Washington is also concerned.