Telling Columbia Heights’ Full Economic Story

Columbia Heights is often treated as a neighborhood that has already received enough investment. But visible investment is not the same thing as shared benefit. Columbia Heights has seen real investment, and the benefits have not been evenly shared: more of a gilded gentrification, the shiny version of neighborhood change that looks successful from the outside while masking the fact that too many people who helped build this neighborhood are still asking whether that success includes them.

The tract's poverty rate is now 36.41 percent, higher than the average across the District's originally selected Opportunity Zone tracts, and median family income is $56,116. That poverty burden has grown sharply since 2015, with especially severe increases for children, Latino residents, and women. Unemployment has worsened overall, with Black and Hispanic or Latino unemployment rising sharply while white unemployment has declined, and commercial-facing business-license activity has dropped.

Columbia Heights was left out of the first round of Opportunity Zone designations because it was seen as a place that had already received significant investment. But a busy commercial corridor does not mean small businesses are stable, and a transit-rich neighborhood does not mean residents are protected from displacement. That is why I am asking that Census Tract 28.02 be reconsidered for Opportunity Zone 2.0, with clear guardrails: affordable housing and commercial space, support for small and legacy businesses, vendors as microentrepreneurs, workforce development and local hiring, housing stability and anti-displacement protections, and public reporting.

Residents see new development and rising costs, and worry that growth is happening to the neighborhood rather than for it. A neighborhood can look successful while families are still struggling to stay, attract national retailers while losing the small businesses that give it character, and show rising property values while many residents, workers, vendors, seniors, and immigrant neighbors continue to face economic insecurity.