[NEWS] D.C. residents fret over shelter plan, citing crime and property values

From the Washington Post: 

The people of Massachusetts Avenue Heights have long loved their neighborhood not for what it has, but what it doesn’t. Buffered by the Washington National Cathedral and the vice president’s house, this affluent community of million-dollar homes has stayed small and quiet while developers had their way with busier neighborhoods. But residents now fear that could soon change.

“Betrayed!” longtime resident Jane Loeffler wrote in an email to a neighbor, condemning a District proposal to place 38 homeless families into the neighborhood as part of a plan to close D.C. General Hospital, a former hospital that now serves as the city’s largest homeless shelter, and disperse its residents into seven shelters spread evenly across the city. The news has left the neighborhood in “utter turmoil,” said Loeffler, who is trying to sell her $1.4 million home in Ward 3.

What will this mean for property values? What about crime?

“Bad things do happen around shelters — you can’t prevent it,” she wrote. “It goes with the territory.”