As I walked through the Sursum Corda housing cooperative one afternoon, I encountered a group of men congregating on a sidewalk amid the blanched brick buildings. Sursum Corda is one block south of Truxton Circle — but the close proximity does little to spur respect between the two neighborhoods.

“We ain’t Truxton Circle,” one of the men said to me, leaning against the hood of a blue sedan. The group behind him murmured in agreement. “This here is Sursum Corda. We might fuck with them niggas in the back alley on New York Ave. — but we don’t go past that.”

A group of men congregate in Sursum Corda (Photo: Scott Rodd)

The animosity between the two neighborhoods simmers in a place designed for love and unity. Sursum Corda, roughly translated from Latin, means “lift up your hearts.” In the mid-1960s, a Georgetown alumnus named Eugene L. Stewart spearheaded the housing initiative that — unlike other low-income housing efforts — allowed residents build up equity by owning their units. The housing cooperative’s unusual horseshoe layout was meant to foster a tight-knit community, and the Sursum Corda Cooperative Association partnered with religious organizations to provide services to underprivileged residents.

Several decades into the housing experiment, the horseshoe design proved difficult to police, which fostered criminal activity instead of close community ties. The flood of heroine, and later crack cocaine, catalyzed a surge in territorial beefing and street violence.

Today, the tension still lingers.

“Truxton niggas is a bunch of snitches,” shouted one of the men from the back of the group. “Sursum is for real niggas.”

Words, words, words. But words drop bodies on these blocks. Saying the wrong thing to the wrong person, flipping during an interrogation — these are capital offenses out here. Even the prospect of someone snitching can end in cold blood.

In 2004, 14-year-old Jahkema “Princess” Hansen was shot execution style in Sursum Corda after witnessing 28-year-old Marquette Ward murder a neighborhood drug dealer. Ward, who was rumored to have an ongoing sexual relationship with Hansen, grew concerned that she would turn him over to the police. He went so far as to secretly follow Hansen to a police station after detectives had summoned her. Ward confided in another notorious player around Sursum Corda, 22-year-old Franklin Thompson, that Hansen might flip. Ward offered Thompson $8,000 to ensure her silence.

Sign for Sursum Corda Cooperative (Photo: Scott Rodd)

Only five days after Ward murdered the drug dealer, Thompson burst into an apartment in Sursum Corda and opened fire on Hansen and several friends sitting around the dinner table. Hansen got up and ran, though one of the bullets struck a 12-year-old girl sitting at the table. After chasing her through the house, Thompson shot Hansen twice in the back of the head.

Hours before the murder, Thompson allegedly offered her a grim admonition: “Little sis, you best not be snitching.”

The murder garnered national headlines and catalyzed the effort to redevelop — and reform — some of the most troubled neighborhoods in the heart of D.C. In 2005, the District’s New Communities Initiative formulated an ambitious project called Northwest One. The plan aimed to redevelopment nearly 50 acres of land west of North Capitol Street — including housing complexes like Sursum Corda and Temple Courts — and usher in mixed-income housing, retailers, and a new school. From the outset, public officials and housing advocates alike saw promise in the project. Northwest One aimed to distinguish itself from failed redevelopment efforts of the past — notably the permanent relocation of mostly low-income black families from Southwest D.C. in the 1950s and 1960s.

A map of Northwest One (yellow), Truxton Circle (blue), and NoMa (red) neighborhoods in Washington, D.C.

The New Communities Initiative laid out a set of key principles to achieve its ambitious redevelopment goals. One-for-one housing replacement ensured “no net loss of affordable housing units in the neighborhood.” The opportunity for residents to remain in the community during redevelopment, or return if they were temporarily displaced, guaranteed that “current residents [would] have a priority for new replacement units.” Mixed-income housing would “end the concentration of low-income housing and poverty.” Finally, an emphasis on building first promised the construction of new housing before “the demolition of existing distressed housing to minimize displacement.”

But from the start, Northwest One was beset by a series of stumbling blocks and outright blunders. In 2007, fresh off an election victory, Mayor Adrian Fenty fast-tracked the demolition of Temple Courts — the large affordable housing complex at the heart of Northwest One. Although a replacement complex had not yet been built — breaking one of the central principles of the New Communities Initiative — Temple Courts tenants were relocated with the promise of being able to return. By late 2007, before Temple Courts was demolished, Fenty secured an agreement with a group of developers to raze and rebuild much of the Northwest One project area.

But as the dust from Temple Courts settled, the Northwest One project unraveled. Discussions to transform Sursum Corda into a mixed-use development never came to fruition. The group of developers hoped to build mixed-income housing on the land where the D.C. Housing Authority was headquartered, but the agency failed to pack up and move to another location. Finally, when the developers reviewed the title for the land where Temple Courts once stood, they discovered a 40-year-old mortgage policy that allowed only subsidized housing to be built on the property. The inability to construct mixed-income housing and retail space on the site torpedoed any chance of raising funds to redevelopment the land. After refinancing the mortgage, the maturity date for the policy was set for 2024 — but developers didn’t have that kind of patience. Instead, the property was paved over and turned it into a parking lot. In September of last year, the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development began soliciting new proposals for the property.