As we near the halfway point in our cel­e­bra­tion of 50 years of ser­vice, we owe our vol­un­teer lead­ers and mem­bers from years and decades past a debt of grat­i­tude for the FBA’s achieve­ments. Thanks to their fore­sight, plan­ning and actions, the FBA has had the means to sup­port sub­stan­tial efforts toward its mis­sion of pro­tect­ing and pre­serv­ing the FB/WE his­tory and res­i­den­tial qual­ity of life.

What our pre­de­ces­sors couldn’t (or wouldn’t) imag­ine is that the FBA appears to be the only orga­ni­za­tion com­mit­ted to restor­ing this gem of a neigh­bor­hood to its right­ful place as a thriv­ing, liv­able res­i­den­tial community.

Plat­i­tudes, lip ser­vice and favors to the well-connected few seem to have blinded folks to the pre­car­i­ous sit­u­a­tion of FB/WE which is rife with absen­tee land­lords and home­own­ers, apart­ment build­ings oper­at­ing ille­git­i­mately as hotels and de facto dor­mi­to­ries, and an ever-dwindling full-time res­i­den­tial population.

With­out a con­certed effort community-wide—not just the FBA lead­er­ship and FBA’s ded­i­cated volunteers—to cor­rect this, FB/WE is on the verge of becom­ing a quaint, hollowed-out stage set for the busi­ness and com­mer­cial (but tax-free) activ­i­ties of the World Bank, IMF, Red Cross, and pri­vate col­lege, GWU.

In the com­ing weeks, we will delve fur­ther into the FBA’s his­tor­i­cal con­tri­bu­tions to our neigh­bor­hood and see how that has shaped our cur­rent sit­u­a­tion in FB/WE. And while you may not be inter­ested in vol­un­teer­ing or par­tic­i­pat­ing in each and every FBA event, your new or renewed $15 mem­ber­ship in the asso­ci­a­tion affirms inter­est in qual­ity of life in this extra­or­di­nary neighborhood.

P.S. Buy­ing locally from our Pre­ferred Mer­chants helps, too.