Home values rise but black residents are priced out Influx of whites alters Central District

GENE JOHNSON, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Originally published November 6, 2001

SEATTLE -- From her street corner beauty salon, DeCharlene Williams has seen the Central District change.

Once, syringes littered sidewalks. Prostitutes propositioned her clients' husbands in broad daylight. Burglars repeatedly shattered her shop windows.

Now, there are nicer businesses and pricey condos. Property values soar. And there are a lot more white people.

In fact, the city's black neighborhood is no longer mostly black.

"That's what everybody now is crying about: They've been taxed out of their neighborhoods," says Williams, 58. "I've been on this corner 34 years, and if I can't pay my taxes, I'm out."

The story of Seattle's Central District is the story of many urban areas across the country. The good economy of the '90s and the deliberate efforts of residents like Williams, who founded the Central Area Chamber of Commerce, helped eradicate crime. Businesses like Starbucks moved in, and many blacks -- once corralled into the Central District by racist red-lining policies of banks, insurance companies and real-estate firms -- found themselves moving out.

Whites, many drawn to Seattle during the tech boom, found in the Central District tree-lined streets, a great location with easy access to Interstate 90 and software companies on the east side of Lake Washington, and homes that, once renovated, would do nicely.

Now, the median price of a home in the Central District is $275,000, about $10,000 more than the median price for a home in all of King County, according to the Northwest Multiple Listing Service. Next to the neighborhood's only Starbucks, which opened about four years ago, a new condominium complex offers units ranging from $125,000 to $300,000. One-fourth of the 43 units sold so far have gone to blacks, a Windermere Real Estate agent estimated.

Residents have mixed emotions about the phenomenon. They are pleased with the economic development in the area east of downtown. But many also feel bitter about the gentrification, about the lower test scores their children earn and about what they perceive as unfair treatment at the hands of the police department, the city and others.

"I've seen my neighborhood go from black to checkerboard," says Jerome Wilson, 39, who has tried to establish a black heritage museum in the area. "It's a good thing, the economic development. But you have to do it in a way that preserves the neighborhood, or people won't be able to afford to live here anymore."

Williams and others say the best way to preserve the neighborhood's character is to build more mixed-income housing -- something the Central District has little of.

George E. Noble, a broker with Green Stone Properties, says it pleases him to see longtime residents of the area sell homes they bought at $18,000 or $19,000 many years ago for $300,000. Older residents use that profit to finance their retirement, and Noble sees it as a sort of compensation for the unofficial segregation they once suffered.

But, he says, there is a flip side. Some residents have essentially been forced from their homes by soaring taxes. And Noble says he can't remember the last time he sold a house in the Central District to a black family.

"Here's a question I ask now: Where is the African-American community?" he says. "It's not Renton, not Kent, not the Rainier Valley. You used to be able to say without a doubt that it's the Central Area, or the Rainier Valley. You can't anymore. So where is the African-American community?"

A recent Seattle Times analysis of census data showed that the area is now home to fewer blacks than at any other time in the past 30 years, a slide from 16,000 to 9,400. Of the 26,000 people who live in the area, 43 percent are white, 32 percent black, 10 percent Asian or Pacific Islander, and 8 percent Hispanic.

The Olympian Copyright 2001

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