Why has Washington D.C. historically had such relatively high poverty and crime levels?

Both responses to your inquiry give good information, but I don't think they entirely hit the nail on the head. There's several aspects at play when trying to figure out the answer to your question. I grew up in D.C. during the 80's, 90's, and early 2000's, so I'm also going to interweave some of my own personal observations into my response. I'll note when I do so, if you feel the need to take a grain of salt when it happens.

I think the first thing to understand about D.C. is that it is a city that has had stunning shifts in its demographics in the past 60 years or so. The great migration of African Americans to the city began during the first World War, and only accelerated during the economic opportunities offered to African Americans working in factories during World War II and on into the 50's. By 1957, Washington D.C. was the first major city in America to have a majority black population.

I want to take one moment to clarify that I am in no way claiming that African Americans are the source of crime. However urban areas with major African American populations are often afflicted with the sort of factors that do cause crime (poverty, neglect, hopelessness, oppression, etc., etc.).

However, the factors that I listed that cause crime weren't particularly note-worthy in D.C. during the 40's, 50's, and early 60's. As I stated previously, the reason African Americans moved to D.C. in the first place was because of the economic opportunities that it afforded. It was not until the late 60's that things began to take a turn for the worse.

Personal story warning: I remember visiting a friend's house when I was a teenager and noticed that my friend's father had a yearbook from the very high school that we both attended. I was absolutely floored when I realized that practically every student in the yearbook was white (the yearbook was from the early 60's). By the time my friend and I attended the high school, the reverse was true. White students were a small minority and the vast majority of students were black or Latino.

White flight and middle/upper income Black flight to the surrounding suburbs had already begun in the mid to late 60’s due to a search for newer housing and a school system that was not segregated. This flight was massively accelerated by the riots that broke out in the city after the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Large swaths of the city were destroyed; many families and businesses fled out of fear, and the city began to slowly but inevitably became a less and less desirable a place to live, which naturally only served to make the problems worse.

It’s worth noting at this point that there is one eccentricity about D.C. that contributes to its woes and helps make it one of the more problem-plagued cities in America. The people who work middle-class to upper-class jobs in D.C. rarely live in D.C., and thus rarely pay taxes to D.C. Instead the majority of them commute home to Virginia or Maryland, which receive their taxes. Those middle to upper-class people that do live in D.C. keep themselves quite segregated from the city as a whole. Neighborhoods like Georgetown, Palisades, Tenleytown, Spring Valley, Van Ness and Cleveland Park, are predominantly whiter, wealthier, and less likely to contribute to D.C.’s unenviable reputation as a murder capital.

While it’s true that at one time, D.C. was under Federal control and thus received Federal funding, this was made less true when the District of Columbia Home Rule Act was passed in 1973. This legislation would prove to be rather harmful to a city that was already beginning the suffer the ill-effects of the aftermath of the MLK Jr. riots. It gave D.C. some autonomy to rule itself, however specifically forbade passing a tax on those that worked in D.C. but lived elsewhere.

In retrospect, what initially seemed like a good thing (D.C. gaining some measure of autonomy and the right to vote for Mayor and a City Council) turned out to be damaging. D.C.’s new local government was plagued with inefficiency and corruption. Particularly infamous was Mayor Marion Barry. During his tenure, one magazine voted Washington D.C.’s as the “worst city government in America”.

Personal Story Warning: I remember as a kid getting almost two weeks off from school after a snow storm. Part of the reason was that the city was so broke that it couldn’t afford salt.

A perfect storm was brewing. Wealthy people were fleeing the city. Chunks of the city had been destroyed during the riots. A corrupt and inexperienced government had been put in place.

Then crack-cocaine hit. It would be almost impossible to exaggerate the negative impact this simple white substance would have on cities across America, and one of the hardest hit would be Washington D.C. It was during the 80’s and 90’s that D.C. would earn its title of “murder capital”. President Bush Sr. gave a nationally televised speech about the drug, famously pulling out a baggie of it for the cameras and stating “This is crack cocaine, seized a few days ago by drug enforcement agents in a park just across the street from the White House. It’s as innocent-looking as candy. But it’s turning our cities into battle zones." Even Mayor Marion Barry would be arrested for possesion of the drug.

Personal Story Warning: My sister, my brother, and I all attended the same public high school in D.C. Every single year that my brother, my sister, or I attended the school, at least one student died from drug or gang-related violence. We went to what was commonly considered to be the safest public school in D.C.

Violence of this magnitude continued through the mid to late 80’s, all the way until the late 90’s. There were entire quadrants of the city you didn’t visit if you didn’t have to. Places like Anacostia and Barry’s Farm became synonymous to warzones. “Crackhead” was a term I was familiar with by elementary school.

However by the late 90’s the epidemic had begun to pass. For whatever reasons, the popularity of crack-cocaine began to wane. Neighborhoods you wouldn’t step foot in five years earlier began to gentrify and property values sky-rocketed proportionately. Residents from the worst neighborhoods migrated to the surrounding areas (most noticeably to Prince George’s County, which now experiences crime rates similar to those D.C. had earlier). Many of the neighborhoods that were once considered to be extremely dangerous have great investment value and promising futures.

However I will never forget what D.C. used to be like, and I hardly recognize it today when I visit.