The 1400 block of R has always seen more than its share of crime, and the building’s new low-flow showerheads have done little to douse that problem. “If there’s a report of a robbery, assault, anything of that nature in the area, the first place that officers will go is the 1400 block of R Street,” one D.C. police officer told me. “If I’m off-duty and walking by myself, I would walk five blocks out of my way to avoid that block.”

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According to a search on the D.C. police website, the 1400 block of R Street records a crime rate two to three times that of the surrounding blocks. This year, 19 crimes have been reported within 200 feet of 1428 R Street NW, most of them property-related—the search lists nine thefts, six burglaries, and three robberies. Compare that to the six total crimes reported near 1428 T Street NW and the four reported near 1428 Q Street NW.

The block’s criminal element occasionally has priorities higher than financial gain. When Puntanen came to, he found his watch still on his wrist and his wallet and cell phone in his pocket. “The assault had nothing to do with money,” Puntanen says. “Obviously, I had no money. Everything I have is from the dump or from the corner or from the secondhand store. I have a 14-inch TV. I don’t even have a computer. No stereo,” he says. Stanley, too, was never robbed in his four months on R Street. “They only wanted one thing: To get the faggot white guy out of there,” Puntanen says.

“We want this to be a great place to live for everyone,” insists Michael Bodaken, executive director of the National Housing Trust, the nonprofit group that spearheaded the effort to rehabilitate the apartments. Bodaken, who has devoted his work to making affordable housing succeed in urban areas, is disappointed by the news of the assaults. “We’re really concerned about the tenants in these buildings,” Bodaken says.

Beverly Fanelli, director of asset management for the National Housing Trust, says that the building’s property management company, NDC Real Estate Management, was “informed after the fact” of one summer assault. “Management cooperated with police by providing copy of video (from our cameras) to the police department,” Fanelli said in an e-mail. Ted Green, a residential manager for the Pittsburgh-based NDC, declined to comment. “I don’t know anything about that,” Green said when asked about the management’s response to the assaults. He wouldn’t field any specific questions on the events. “I don’t care what you write, because we don’t own the property, and we don’t manage it anymore,” he said.

On Oct. 1, R Street Apartments replaced NDC with the Edgewood Management Corporation, which manages a dozen more National Housing Trust properties. Edgewood says it’s currently in the process of revamping the complex’s daily operations, revisiting everything from customer service to security procedures to “incomplete sanitation.” In the apartment’s central rental office, stacks of paper files have been replaced with long grass centerpieces, hanging paper lanterns, and bright red rugs.

Even the faces are fresh: A sizable chunk of the apartment’s new management team is gay. Bodaken says the management sweep was unrelated to the attacks on residents—he says he “had several issues with the previous management”—but adds that “it certainly can’t hurt to have people working here who are more sensitive to these issues.” On a recent visit to the site, Edgewood Senior Vice President John Noel says that the building’s gay staffers haven’t encountered any abuse in the month they’ve been working on R. An Edgeood rep “walks the property every single day,” Noel says. “We’ve never heard anything like that.”

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In August, police charged two men in Puntanen’s beating: Michael Speight, 19, and Delonte Olden, 24, their faces plucked from footage of the assault courtesy of the apartments’ security video. Both Speight and Olden pleaded guilty to assault with significant bodily injury this month. Because the assault was deemed bias-motivated, the men could serve one-and-a-half times the normal sentence for the crime.

Neither of these men actually lives inside the complex they allegedly policed against gay men. Speight listed his address with the courts on Riggs Street, a block north of R; Olden listed an address in Capitol Heights, Md. (Olden’s attorney declined comment on the case; Speight’s attorney did not return a request).

If the R Street Apartments successfully insulated its residents from the effects of gentrification, neither Speight nor Olden benefited from the effort. As surrounding Logan Circle gets richer and whiter, Speight and Olden drifted back to the one block in the neighborhood that has remained unchanged. “Those apartments around there are just where the kids go and hang out,” Speight’s mother, Betty, told me. For 37 years, she’s lived just north of R Street, in a building she describes as “mixed” and more insulated from neighborhood conflict. Down on R Street, where gentrification ends, crime can flourish. “Michael is a good kid,” Speight tells me. “He just got in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

In December, Puntanen is slated to testify at Speight and Olden’s sentencing hearings, where he’ll tell the court how the attack has changed his life. He lost his second job. His T-cell count took a hit. He went on medication and began to see a therapist again. He painted pictures of a single chair in an empty room. He still barricades his door before he goes to sleep. Because Puntanen refuses to leave his neighborhood, police have counseled him to watch his back. “It seems to me that if one is to live at all, one has got to get rid of labels,” Puntanen plans to tell the defendants, a favorite quote from James Baldwin. In preparation for the court proceedings, Puntanen was asked to listen to the 911 call he had made himself after he gained consciousness alone in his R Street hallway. “If you listen to that call, you will hear a terrified, hysterical gay man,” Puntanen says. “I’ll never get it out of my head."