Jabari Amud-Ramirez (CAS ’28) grew up in Fort Totten, a primarily Black and Hispanic neighborhood in Ward 4 of Washington, D.C.
When he arrived at Georgetown University, Amud-Ramirez said the lack of racial and economic diversity in the surrounding neighborhood was a massive culture shock.
“I felt like I was going through a portal,” Amud-Ramirez told The Hoya. “This is life here, and this is life at Georgetown, which are two completely different lives. Even though it’s in the same city, it’s two completely different places, and everything is done completely different.”
Over the last century, the Georgetown neighborhood has undergone an exponential increase in the cost of living, prompting a sharp decline in its lower-income and Black population. Since 1937, the average inflation-adjusted rent in Georgetown has increased by more than 600%, while the neighborhood’s Black population decreased by over 80%.
Cameran Lane (CAS ’28) — a member of the Georgetown Scholars Program (GSP), a university initiative that supports first-generation, low-income (FGLI) students — said these disparities extend onto campus, where less than 5% of the undergraduate population is Black and almost 75% come from the nation’s top 20% of earners.
“There is a fair amount of racial diversity, if you’re looking at how many students are students of color,” Lane told The Hoya. “But when you look at how many Black students are on campus, the diversity that the university lays claim to doesn’t always realize itself to me.”
In addition to GSP, Georgetown sponsors the Center for Multicultural Equity and Access (CMEA), which supports students from historically marginalized communities, and offers several affinity spaces, including dedicated housing communities for Black and Latino students.
A university spokesperson said these resources work to provide equal opportunity for all students, regardless of their background.
“Georgetown’s commitment to supporting access and affordability extends beyond financial aid, resulting in a holistic approach that ensures the success of all students,” the spokesperson wrote to The Hoya.
Still, lower-income and Black students struggle to build community at Georgetown, where some say their surroundings don’t always reflect their identity. Just 38% of Black students in 2025 and 27% of lower-income students in 2020 felt it was easy to find peers at Georgetown, according to university cultural climate surveys.
Luke Frederick (GRD ’24), who studied race and incarceration at Georgetown, said economic disparities are particularly pronounced in the school’s social culture.
“Coming to Georgetown, I felt like more of a cultural and class outsider than I did a racial outsider,” Frederick told The Hoya. “I come from a working-class family — my mom is a teacher, my dad works for Goodwill and doesn’t have a college degree.”
“I think that’s just sort of the air around the town,” Frederick added.
Dividing Lines
Beginning in the 1930s, the District passed a series of housing reforms that drove up Georgetown’s cost of living and pushed working-class residents to move elsewhere.
James Benton (GRD ’16) — a Georgetown professor and director of the university’s Race & Economic Empowerment Project, which supports economic and labor reforms in D.C. — said these policies overwhelmingly impacted Black community members.
“A lot of the legislation, across the board, was not explicitly racial, but the way it was applied often has disparate impacts on people,” Benton told The Hoya. “Areas were targeted primarily because they were seen as bad or undesirable, and disproportionately, African Americans caught the brunt of that.”
Benton said the 1934 Alley Dwelling Act, which sanctioned the redevelopment of substandard housing in the District, drove these residents out of the neighborhood with little recourse.
“Residents were told, ‘We’ll rebuild. You’ll be able to come back,’ and most folks could not, because they could not afford the rents for the new apartments that were being built,” Benton said. “They couldn’t afford the mortgage for the townhouses that were created in its absence.”
In 1950, Congress passed the Old Georgetown Act, which required buildings to comply with certain historic preservation standards and further threatened Georgetown’s dwindling Black population, who were often unable to keep up with steep maintenance costs.
Neville Waters III, a fifth-generation Black resident of Georgetown, said his aunt’s family could not afford mandated upkeep on their home and was forced to leave the neighborhood.
“Their house was ‘condemned’ because of the conditions,” Waters told The Hoya. “That was a direct example of someone who was impacted by some particular policy, whether it was applied correctly or whether it was weaponized.”
Federal legislation prohibited housing discrimination in 1968, but Benton said Georgetown remained inaccessible to most Black residents.
“It becomes a matter of economics,” Benton said. “If you can’t afford to move in, then those neighborhoods are going to be closed off to you. You can’t live here if you don’t have the money. It just doesn’t work.”
“It feels weird to wake up in a city where you’ve had roots for years, decades, generations, and all of a sudden you can’t afford to live there,” Benton added.
Frederick said the issue was not singularly racial or economic.
“We’re talking about the Black community, but whatever working-class community existed in Georgetown were all pushed out eventually,” Frederick said. “There’s a class element to this, along with the racial element. Of course, those two are always reverberating and intertwined.”
In just three decades, Georgetown’s Black population dropped from nearly 30% to less than 9% of the neighborhood. Today, it stands at just 5.8%.
Benton said the neighborhood’s social dynamics have fundamentally changed in the wake of this reorganization.
“It’s really shocking, in a good way and in a bad way, to see how the changes have occurred,” Benton said. “There’s a feeling that something is lost, that a neighborhood can be newer and cleaner and have more services, which are all good things, but at the same time, you feel that there’s a sense of community that doesn’t exist anymore.”
Growing up in Georgetown, Waters said the demographic differences are obvious.
“It was a more diverse neighborhood than it is today,” Waters said. “I had white friends, Black friends. It feels less so today — in terms of younger families — people who have kids and younger families, they all tend to be white.”
Monica Roache, a fifth-generation Black resident of Georgetown, said she saw a similar change in the community.
“As a little girl, I was fortunate enough to see several Black families that were left,” Roache told The Hoya. “But year after year, they would pass, and then the family would end up selling the house. There might have been 15 or 16 African American families when I grew up. Now it’s just down to three families.”
“That sense of community is now gone,” Roache added.
Stuck in the Bubble
As a result of these demographic changes, Black and FGLI students say the neighborhood is increasingly financially inaccessible.
Laurel Iron Cloud (COL ’92) — a graduate of the Community Scholars Program (CSP), a summer program that mentors limited-income students — said some experiences, including off-campus housing, were unattainable.
“The prices were high,” Iron Cloud told The Hoya. “From my perspective, it appeared that only the students — with not just a medium amount of money — but the super-rich students could afford to rent a townhouse.”
Lane said he, like many other FGLI students, chose not to live off campus his senior year.
“A lot of students can’t afford to move off of campus,” Lane said. “Housing in the area is just so ridiculously expensive that, a lot of times, it ends up being cheaper for students to just stay on campus, even in their senior year.”
Today, the median monthly rent in Georgetown is $3,324, and the median price of a home is $1,190,000. In Ward 2, where Georgetown is located, the median household income is $128,048, more than double that of Ward 8.
Benton said the Georgetown neighborhood is designed for an elite few, not a diverse student body.
“The policies of the past have set the stage for Georgetown as a neighborhood to be this very exclusive, expensive, out-of-reach place for many people,” Benton said. “Georgetown is a neighborhood that hasn’t gotten any less fashionable.”
The university spokesperson said Georgetown is dedicated to serving students from diverse financial backgrounds.
“We are deeply committed to ensuring that all students and families can afford the cost of a Georgetown education,” the spokesperson wrote. “Georgetown is committed to meeting a student’s full demonstrated financial need through a combination of grants, scholarships, employment and loans.”
Students, however, say these efforts do not account for the neighborhood’s high cost of living, which is 118% higher than the national average and 46% higher than D.C.’s average.
Lane said the disparity projects an elitist image that can be unwelcoming.
“I know some students are attracted to that,” Lane said. “Unfortunately, I think a lot of students equate elitism with opportunity and access, which is not always the case. It’s hard to deny the reality that it’s really become, maybe it has always been, a part of Georgetown’s brand to be elitist.”
Lane said CMEA programming and affinity housing, such as the Black House, have helped him find community on campus.
“The greatest example is the work that the CMEA does,” Lane said. “I think the Black House and the other affinity spaces that we have on campus are excellent in helping to build community, but part of that isn’t just about having space, it’s about having opportunity.”
“The campus definitely alleviates a lot of that, but there’s a lot still lacking,” Lane added.
Iron Cloud said she felt students were not always aware of others’ financial situations.
“I’ve never felt any type of insensitivity,” Iron Cloud said. “From my perspective, it was more of a presumption. The uber rich, I think they just assumed that how they lived was how everybody lived.”
Lane said future progress must recognize these underlying dynamics.
“I don’t think any actor at Georgetown can reverse the decades of gentrification, but I think it’s important for us to recognize our role in it, and how it continues to impact students today,” Lane said.
“Even though it’s historical, it’s a tragedy because it is economic and racial,” Lane added. “It is very much still impacting decisions students can make today.”
In My Backyard
Although demographic transitions in the Georgetown neighborhood have slowed since the turn of the century, as housing costs rise and diversity decreases across the District, other neighborhoods face a similar fate.
Fredrick said Georgetown has served as a blueprint for the gentrification of other D.C. wards.
“What happened to Georgetown is now happening to the rest of the city,” Frederick said. “There’s a precipitous drop off in the Black population in Washington, D.C. They are being priced out. Many of them are having to go to Maryland or Virginia or just move elsewhere, because the economic landscape and the housing landscape is just not working for them.”
The District’s recent development projects have largely focused on new infrastructure, like an updated stadium for the Washington Commanders and renovations to the National Air and Space Museum.
Benton said these benefits are appealing, but draw support away from historically neglected communities.
“You have all these stadiums,” Benton said. “You have a restaurant scene that didn’t exist 20 years ago. You have wonderful theaters. You have all these amenities, but at the same time, you’ve got people in neighborhoods that are saying, ‘we have been left behind.’”
Benton said the upcoming mayoral primary, the first without an incumbent candidate in 20 years, will be a test of this agenda.
“This year’s election is going to come down to a referendum on do people want this type of development, even if it means people are left behind?” Benton said. “Or do people want to invest in neighborhoods that are left behind, even if it means alienating the people who have enjoyed the benefits of all this revitalization, all this gentrification over the past 25 years or so?”
Residents of Ward 3, the highest-income ward in the District, recently filed a lawsuit to halt construction of a short-term family housing program that would serve as a homeless shelter for residents.
Roache said she supported similar community reinvestment, but did not think it would be well received in Georgetown.
“I don’t see the community going for it,” Roache said. “I know there’s been other parts of the city that have — Ward 3, which is an affluent area — and I know there’s been a lot of kickback. They’re not gonna like it.”
Lane said the neighborhood’s affluence is reflected in the university’s culture.
“Georgetown, in a lot of ways, is positioned to present this image of elitism,” Lane said. “That we, as a university, are in Georgetown. I don’t think enough is done to dispel that image.”
Amud-Ramirez said to mitigate this culture, the university should center minority voices.
“Georgetown needs to do better at promoting the minority, showing that there is life in the minorities, and making events for those minorities to have some type of life, some type of bonding,” Amud-Ramirez said. “Because being a part of the Black community in Georgetown, we’re not as united as we should be, and I feel like it is because of the system that we’re in.”
Iron Cloud said a diverse student body can inform and expand student perspectives.
“Having a diverse student body is a benefit to everybody, not just to students like myself, Black and Lakota,” Iron Cloud said. “What I brought to Georgetown was a lot, in addition to what I gained. My friendships, the people I met, the lives that I’ve enriched, it was just as important as the enrichment of my life by attending Georgetown.”
Benton said addressing these historic disparities, both on campus and in the Georgetown neighborhood, would require a shift in public thought and values.
“These disparities didn’t happen overnight, and they’re not going to go away with a single bill or a shift in policy,” Benton said. “It’s going to take a generational type of action, in terms of policy, in terms of activism, in terms of public sentiment. How do people see themselves as members of a multicultural, multi-ethnic, pluralistic country?”
