A few months ago I noticed a number of these signs going up at abandoned houses around the neighborhood, promising greening thanks to federal stimulus dollars, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. It wasn’t clear what greening was, nothing seemed to be happening with them, and there wasn’t much on it around the web or on DC’s website. PoP posted a reader question about it but didn’t get much back.
Now, however, at least something is happening. I noticed workers on one of the houses with the signs on Irving Street between 13th and 14th undoing the boards that covered up the windows. It’s still unclear what’s going on, and they went inside before I could talk to them, but at least something is happening.
Unfortunately he Recovery.gov site has no results for “greening initiative,” the DC Housing Authority‘s website seems to be down, and the only thing I can find sort of similar is in Baltimore where they’re greening public housing, as in putting in plants and trees and gardens. Maybe that means the city is taking over these abandoned houses and will make them subsidized houses, plus fix up their yards. We’ll see.
