After I posted earlier on the 9th street places, I decided to quit being a complainer on my little soapbox here and get pro-active. So I looked up each property in the DC property sales database and found the contact information for each place. Then I wrote a personal letter with photos of each place and asked if they would take care of the problems as soon as possible. (Thanks to MS Word for letter templates, as it's been years since I've created an actual letter). These were mailed on Monday morning to each contact and since then most of the issues have been cleaned up or at least started.

So, please do the same with other negligent property owners in the city. A letter might just help to get things kick-started. Obviously we know some places will require more then that - but it's a start for some of these places.

Here's the progress and the before/after photos.

[before] 1216 9th Street - Stairwell (listed as vacant)

[after] Notice the beer can already lingering there.

[before] 1226 9th Street - Unsecured Doorway

[after] Secured it with a new door and cleaned up the stairs. Still needs a bit of work.

[before] 1230 9th Street - Stairwell (listed as vacant)

[after] Much nicer. (ready to be filled up again)