Four vacant, now-condemned properties in Shaw owned by Shiloh Baptist Church should be renovated as “fully operational townhomes,” Mayor Adrian Fenty said Friday. A church official, meanwhile, said the institution’s intent is to ready the homes for Shiloh’s senior population.
“Our hope as part of our master plan is to turn the properties into affordable senior housing,” said Shiloh Minister Thomas L. Bowen.
The D.C. Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs this week declared the homes at 1528, 1532, 1534 and 1536 Ninth Street Northwest as unsafe, unsanitary and a possible danger to the community. Shiloh, which owns the four condemned properties among others in the neighborhood, has been given 15 days to make major repairs to the roofs, the interiors and the bricks and mortar.
Fenty said the buildings, which have a combined value of more than $2 million, “should be used as they were designed.”
“Our number one priority is to make them safe and presentable and to have them redeveloped,” the mayor said. “Number two is to make sure that the community and the church are engaged as fully as possible.”
The 15-day clock started Wednesday. Failure to fix the homes in the allotted time, according to DCRA, would give the government authority to go in and do the work itself and then file liens on the properties for the cost.
Bowen said the church “hopes to comply” with the condemnation orders. Redeveloping the properties for the church’s senior congregants has long been in the plans, he said, “albeit we have not moved with all due speed.”
Shiloh’s longtime leader, the Rev. Wallace Charles Smith, has in the past argued against selling the buildings to prevent their conversion into condominiums. Bowen said the church intends to redevelop the homes itself.
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