Reducing a 25 percent unemployment rate in Ward 8.

While driving into the District and listening to the radio, I heard Mayor Vincent Gray state that the 25% unemployment rate in Ward 8 will be reduced by the jobs created by the pending Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) new headquarters.

According to the National Capital Planning Commission, the construction phase of the plan will result in the redevelopment of the 176-acre West Campus and a portion of the 280-acre East Campus of the St. Elizabeths Hospital in southeast Washington, D.C.

Yet so far, as the City Paper on March 11 reported, the massive West Campus construction phase of the $3.4 billion Department of Homeland Security project has employed DC residents as new hires at a rate of only 35.4%. This is far below the 51 percent hire rate required by the First Source program. Donald Temple, a civil rights attorney, told thefightback.org, “You can’t build a [$3.4 billion] project in this community and then tell us that we can’t participate in the benefits of that. This is not South Africa and apartheid. This is Washington, D.C…”

Continue reading on Examiner.com:
Reducing a 25 percent unemployment rate in Ward 8. -
Washington DC Urban Technology Examiner.com