Fairwood: A thriving community in the wake of crisis

By Sheldon Smith, Communications Committee

EDITOR'S NOTE: The Washington Post published a letter to the editor from Steve titled, Fairwood residents have bounced back from the housing crisis. 

This week, we've seen two segments of a Washington Post series titled “Broken by the bubble: In the Fairwood subdivision, dreams of black wealth were dashed by the housing crisis.” Many of our residents share the opinion that this three-part series does not reflect the present state of Fairwood – recovering and thriving. One such resident, Steve Brigham, wrote a response to the Post reporting, which I want to provide below in its entirety.

Kimbriell, John, and Steven,

I want to commend you on your article, “Broken by the Bubble,” one that is honestly long overdue in getting reported by The Washington Post. It highlights effectively a core inequity in the housing bubble – in which African-Americans, Africans, and citizens and residents of Caribbean descent, were coaxed at a much higher percentage into signing predatory sub-prime loans.

However, I write both to express a concern and to question some of the data and assertions used in the article.

As a 10-year Fairwood resident, it concerns me that we have become front page/above the fold news twice in the same week over a story that had its epicenter between 2006 and 2010. Why is that a concern? As I reread the article, it makes it sound like this is a major problem still facing the community today. And although you clearly found residents who are underwater with their mortgages, and I’m sure there are more, I don’t believe at all that this comes close to representing the vast majority of our community’s current residents. Our community is not currently in crisis. I wish you had made that much clearer in what was written.

Trust me, my Fairwood neighbors and I saw the national crisis at its worst right on our own streets. I actually live in the Promise neighborhood featured in this article, and on our block alone between 2007 and 2010, half of the 16 houses on our block had either short sales, foreclosures, and/or evictions. It was wrenching to see neighbors we had grown close to, have their lives turned upside down by deceitful and destructive bank practices that were clearly epidemic in scope. In the fall of 2007, we took a family in for five weeks that had nowhere else to go.

But 5+ years later, this is not the story of the Promise nor of Fairwood. Our block is fully occupied and the vast majority of vacant houses from a half-decade ago are filled up across the community. We survived and now we are watching the community bounce back at many levels. This is the untold story in your series that needs to be told.

I also don’t believe your article was fully accurate in saying several things:

1. “On some blocks, nearly every house went under.” This sounds like a stretch. Which streets are you referring to? The only example you give is Burke’s Promise where 20 out of 34 succumbed; this is clearly way too many but it is also not “nearly every house.” Do you have data that indicate blocks having a percentage of 80 or 90% that went under? If so, I’d love to see it
2. “Of the 1441 loans made in Fairwood between 2006 and 2007, 416 were subprime.” The number 1441 appears to be a mis-print. By 2006 and 2007, there were probably only 600 or 700 homes that had been built; many of those built between 2002 and 2005. In fact in early 2015, I believe we only have about 1400 or so households in the community with about 350 to go. So I’m not clear how 1441 loans could have been made in that two year period. And, frankly, by publishing a number so large it inaccurately magnifies the scale of what actually occurred.
3. “In Fairwood, houses once valued at $700,000 are going for $350,000.” I am quite sure you can find houses still selling for $350,000 in Fairwood and I’m sure if they are, they are through short sales. However, if you look at sales throughout the community over the past 3 years, which I do regularly, there are many houses selling for over $400,000 and not an insignificant amount selling or over $500,000. New houses now selling in the new section start in the $500s. Yes, all of our homes have lost significant value; but in the past few years there has also been a significant bounce-back in the value of our homes that is not at all depicted in this article. In 2010, we had our house, which we bought for $550,000 in 2005, appraised at $325,000. A year ago, when we were taking out an SBA loan for a new business, we had to get it reappraised, it was at just below $400,000. A year later, as prices continue to climb, I am quite sure that the value is north of $400,000. The point here is that your article makes it sound like everyone’s house is selling for 50% (another part of your article indicates that houses are selling “for a fraction of their original price”) of what it was bought at, which is patently untrue.

Why does this all matter? Because as grateful as my neighbors and I (this is the main topic of conversation on our Fairwood social media site) are that you have exposed the crookedness of what occurred during the housing crisis and the severe impact it has had on good people, it paints a sorry picture of the current state of our community. And the fact is, several thousand of us lived through it, stayed, helped those we could, and now that we’re on the other side of the crisis, we have proven our resiliency and remain one of the best communities, I believe, not just in the county but in the Washington region.

Through your fine series, Fairwood has become the focus of unfortunate regional publicity in a way that doesn’t come close to telling the full and inspiring story of the Fairwood of 2015. I do hope that sometime in the near future, you can revisit Fairwood and tell the other side of this important story.

Thanks for listening to my perspective.

Best regards,

Steve Brigham

The Promise, Fairwood