On Saturday Hil and I went to look at a house I was interested in. It looked good in the pictures, except for the plywood over the doors and windows. Partially restored, I thought, under construction maybe. Wow, was that naive or what?
32 and 34 Q Street NW are both for sale. Both are giant houses, with 8 and 10 bedrooms respectively. Three stories, plus a basement. Zillow says they should be worth more than $700k each. They're listed on the internet for $300k each. The advertisement said that the previous buyer had backed out and the houses are back on the market. If you want to see them, just let yourself in. Bring a flashlight and a screwgun.
When we arrived, the door's plywood cover had already been removed, but the door was still locked. A neighbor said that two days ago someone else had come to inspect the house. I guess he locked the door when he left. Hil and I searched around for some other way in until I realized, hey, I could totally jimmy that lock.
With a four-inch length of rigid steel wire, I worked the lock open and let us into 32 Q Street.
I think Hilary might have been more scared than I was. And if I really thought through what I was doing, I should have been much more scared. The floor was covered in garbage from all the squatters. Dirty clothes and blankets, cigarette butts, plastic bags, all piled in the corners. The plumbing had long ago been shut off, but that didn't stop the squatters from using the toilets. Discarded condoms thrown randomly throughout the rooms and stairwells hinted at the house's other occupants.
We wandered around carefully, quietly, and we heard a noise coming from the kitchen. I had seen a back door in the kitchen. I motioned for Hil to go back to the front door, ready to run out in case we didn't want to meet the source of the noise. I shouted into the dark house, "Hey! Who's there?" And the rustling stopped.
I walked to the kitchen, and saw that the plywood cover had been partially pried open. The neighborhood indigents still had an entrance. I looked into the back yard and saw a woman sitting on the porch, hands trembling, trying to light a sharply bent cigarette. I asked her what she was doing there, if she knew how long the house had been in this condition. She wouldn't look up, wouldn't answer. She just shook her head and fumbled with her lighter.
We continued exploring the old house, which we concluded must have become a hostel at some point, with broken exit signs and fire alarms, floodlights dangling from the walls. And on the second and third floors, we found doors where there shouldn't have been doors.
The bottom of the door was at least two feet off the floor, crudely punched into the wall leading into nextdoor 34 Q. 34 Q had been completely boarded up, no available entrance anywhere I could see. But through the door I heard at least two people whispering. The door was locked sturdily. Boot marks showed that other people had gone to great effort to open this door before. I decided to not press our luck, and instead of kicking in the door, we left the house.
On the way back to the car, I asked a neighbor what they knew of the houses. 30, 32, and 34 Q had all at one point been boarding houses. All were now home to squatters, prostitutes, and drug dealers. They had been officially unoccupied for at least the last two years. And I doubt anyone will buy the houses until they're actually unoccupied.
