According to residents of the Novel South Capitol apartment building in Navy Yard, Washington D.C., many of their fellow tenants roam the common areas without masks.
Residents spoke to the Washingtonian, one of them being a 38-year-old self-descibed entrepreneur who asked to remain anonymous and said she loved living at the luxury building until the coronavirus pandemic struck. She and her live-in boyfriend are in high-risk categories, and the stress of dealing with fellow tenants who refuse to wear masks is too much.
"The entrepreneur says she has seen maskless residents in the building gym, the lobby, the elevators, and the shared lounge areas, despite signs in common areas stating masks are required, as well as email communication from Novel South Capitol management reminding residents to mask up," the Washingtonian reports.
The entrepreneur describes an encounter where she was about to take an elevator to the rooftop of her building when a maskless tenant held the door for her. "I said, no, thank you, I'll wait for the next one. But please put your mask on in the elevator. He kind of scoffed at me like I was the most ridiculous person, and then the door closed and he left," she said.
"I do know there are a lot of Republican [Hill] staffers and some White House staffers pre-inauguration that lived in this building because of the proximity to the Capitol," says the entrepreneur. "The only thing that I can think of is that there's a significant percentage of residents who don't believe in masks or are not wearing them to prove a point."
The entrepreneur and another fellow resident suspect that Navy Yard's reputation as a "Republican safe" space may be related to the lack of mask wearing.
Another resident, a 31-year-old freelancer who is a woman of color, says the maskless people she encounters "are always white, they're always pretty young," adding that she feels like they get especially offended when "a brown person would talk to them and say that to them."
"While DC is overwhelmingly blue, Navy Yard saw an almost eight percent increase in Trump voters in the 2020 election compared to 2016, according to a New York Times map of election results. And a 2018 Politico piece cited neighborhoods such as Navy Yard and the Wharf as preferred zones for pro-Trump staffers in an otherwise liberal DC."
Read the full article over at The Washingtonian.
