Forgotten Lessons From a 1970s Fight Against Gentrification

The Adams Morgan neighborhood in Washington, D.C., gets pretty crowded on weekends. If you walk down 18th Street at night, you have to dodge hordes of drunken 20-somethings between their second and third bar of the night. My friends from grad school lived on Calvert Street last year, in the top floor apartment of a beautiful row house—that is, until their landlord raised the rent and they couldn't afford it.

That wasn't a surprise. While pockets of Adams Morgan used to be known for crime, the area is now a fairly well-heeled part of town, with a median income of more than $61,000—too high even to be "eligible for gentrification," according to a recent Census tract analysis. The rents, as my grad school friends sadly know, reflect the changing times.