Here’s something you don’t hear everyday. According to CBS reporter reporter Kathy Kristof, Columbia Heights is not “underserved,” it’s a “toney area” that shouldn’t get any government money. Clearly, she has never been there.
Her source was Senator Tom Coburn from Oklahoma, who recently wrote a list of what he thinks are the biggest examples of government waste. Kristof basically posted his list word for word.
One of Coburn’s items was money for IHOP, though he didn’t use the the word “toney,” that was Kristof. Here’s her blurb:
$765,828 for pancakes: Federal funding went to the Anacostia Economic Development Corp to build an International House of Pancake franchise (and train its workers) in an “underserved community.” The underserved community, however, turned out to the a toney area of Washington D.C. – Columbia Heights, which is termed “one of Washington’s more desirable neighborhoods.”
Coburn says in his list that “The new IHOP is not located in an underserved community but a popular Washington D.C. neighborhood.” And he has a source listed for “underserved”: this Examiner article complaining about the money. The reporter also makes the argument that Columbia Heights is fancy:
The new IHOP is part of the DCUSA shopping center. Nearby are Target, Bed Bath and Beyond, Best Buy, Giant, Starbucks, Staples, FedEx Kinko’s, Five Guys, Potbelly’s, Chipotle, and Commonwealth Gastropub, just to name a few.
The nearby Heights restaurant serves a “goat cheese sun-dried tomato burger,” but you might have to wait 20 minutes for an outdoor table.A few blocks to the northeast are Meridian Pint, with an impressive selection of foreign beers that go for $7 to $8 a pint, and Room 11, where you can spend a day’s pay on microscopic portions of savory jamon Iberico, olives and Rioja wines.
Yes, there are nice places here. But there are also housing projects and murders. And clearly the reporter has never been here, or he’d know that. Plus he has clearly never been to these places. Meridian Pint only serves domestic beer, for example. I bet Coburn has never been here either.
Now I don’t want to talk about either party, but this kind of stuff makes me mad, using our neighborhood as some kind of political pawn. You could make the argument that the IHOP (which is a franchise owned by a DC minority family) shouldn’t have gotten money. But if you don’t think the area is underserved, come live here. Visit the people in Columbia Heights Village and the other subsidized housing in the area. Visit some of the recent immigrants to this country. Ask them if they think they’re toney. Ask them if they’re “extremely well-served” as the Examiner reporter says.
