Draft updates to part of DC’s comprehensive plan are good news for housing advocates

DC’s Comprehensive Plan sets the course for how the District will grow in the next decade, and the Framework at the beginning sets the tone for the rest of the plan. Right now the District is updating this plan, beginning with the Framework. Housing advocates have been paying close attention to whether the updates will modernize how development works in the District.

On Wednesday evening, Chairman Phil Mendelson’s office released a draft of the Framework element bill. The DC Council will vote on it for the second and final time next Tuesday, October 8. It has taken some time to get to this point, and things can still change further. Drafts of bills can be released up to noon before the day of a vote.

But the changes, as they stand right now, are—we think—worth the wait.

What was the ultimate fate of Mendelson’s addition?

Section 227.2, you may recall, was particularly contested. It was not in the 2006 Comp Plan, but was rather written anew by the chairman. In a convoluted way, the chairman’s proposed language could have given the council slightly increased authority over land use. It could have created a scenario in which developers would have come to the council to request amendments to the FLUM or Comp Plan for their projects. This is not currently the case (which we think is a good thing).

Though the section passed without any comment at first reading, zoning commissioner Rob Miller pointed out potential problems with the language and proposed his own amendments. Shortly after, Office of Planning (OP) issued a letter to the chairman with its own proposed language for 227.2.

Miller’s, and OP’s, concern was with whether the four bullet points in 227.2 would require the zoning commission to evaluate planned unit developments (PUDs) on an entirely new standard, and/or require the zoning commission to gauge a PUD’s strict compliance with the Future Land Use Map (FLUM). PUDs are development projects that exceed existing zoning regulations in exchange for public benefits, such as money for local parks or more affordable housing.

But Section 227.2 is vastly improved in the draft. Gone are the offending bullet points, which have been replaced with:

Each land use category identifies representative zoning districts and states that other zoning districts may apply. The Zoning Commission, in selecting a zone district such as through a Planned Unit Development or Zoning Map Amendment, determines if it is not inconsistent with the Comprehensive Plan. In making this determination for a selected zone district, the Zoning Commission considers and balances the competing and sometimes conflicting aspects of the Comprehensive Plan, including the policies and text; the intent of the Future Land Use Map land use category; and the Future Land Use Map and Generalized Policy Map. Under the Zoning Regulations, a proposed Planned Unit Development should not result in unacceptable project impacts on the surrounding area.

This removes the initially proposed mandate for the zoning commision to gauge a PUD’s compatibility with neighborhood character (a completely subjective element), and replaces it with a mandate to determine whether a PUD will result in “unacceptable project impacts on the surrounding area” instead.

What else got changed?

A lot! Most notable to GGWash’s worldview are the following:

Instead of stories or feet, Section 227.4 now allows for the use of floor area ratio, which divides the total gross floor area of all buildings on a lot by the area of that lot. This is more greatly in tune with how most people think about density. As the section says, “Using this approach, some aspects of a building may be higher than is characteristic for the land use category, but still consistent with the category’s density range. Similarly, density on a portion of a site may be greater, provided the density for the site overall is not inconsistent with the specified range.”

One edit that I’m particularly fond of is striking “housing boom” and replacing it with “population boom” in Section 220.5. This explicitly, and correctly, recognizes that housing is expensive because many, many people want to live in DC, not because housing has been built in DC recently.

Likewise, Section 225.5 alters some of the Future Land Use Map descriptions, switching the definition of Neighborhood Conservation Areas from a full-on protectionist vibe to one that acknowledges that “areas with access to opportunities, services, and amenities”—like, say, wealthy neighborhoods like the Rock Creek West and Near Northwest planning areas—should allow for more people to live in them, while housing in more vulnerable areas should be preserved:

Approaches to managing context-sensitive growth in Neighborhood Conservation Areas may vary based on neighborhood socio-economic and development characteristics. In areas with access to opportunities, services, and amenities, more levels of housing affordability should be accommodated. Areas facing housing insecurity (see Section 206.4) and displacement should emphasize preserving affordable housing and enhancing neighborhood services, amenities, and access to opportunities.

Without explicitly saying that affordable housing is the city’s greatest priority, the Framework now elevates the issue to a point that it’s effectively undeniable. Sections like 220.5 contain language like:

“The preservation of existing affordable housing and the production of new affordable housing, especially for low income and workforce households, are essential to avoid a deepening of racial and economic divides in the city, and must occur city-wide to achieve fair housing objectives. Affordable renter-and owner-occupied housing production and preservation is central to the idea of growing more inclusively, as is the utilization of tools such as public housing, community land trusts, and limited equity cooperatives that help keep the costs of land affordable, particularly in areas with low homeownership rates and those at risk of cost increases due to housing speculation.”

And, there are also major nods toward transportation accessibility and access. Transportation is as much of an affordable housing policy as producing, preserving, and protecting. If you can’t get to where you need to go, where you live feels even more fraught, and high transportation costs reduce what people can put toward housing.

The Framework now directly acknowledges that access to transportation in DC, just like access to housing, is often unequal. Section 207.3 says:

Many of those who need transit the most, including the low-income households and those with special needs, do not have equitable access to transportation options. Transit often does not connect District residents to jobs in the suburbs, and it may be expensive or difficult to access.”

What’s next?

The final bill will be released before noon next Monday; changes from the language in this draft should be minimal. The second reading and final vote on the Framework element is scheduled for the Committee of the Whole meeting on Tuesday, October 8.

At the bill’s first reading, Mendelson committed to working directly with other councilmembers that spoke during that meeting. His office remained committed to that over recess and the past few weeks.

It appears that the majority of topics raised by vocal councilmembers at first reading—Allen on equitable transportation and access; Silverman on land value recapture; Nadeau on affordability, displacement, and single-family zoning—have been worked into the current draft, though there’s always the potential for a dais amendment.

It’s a reasonable assumption that the Framework bill will pass on October 8. Then, on October 15, Office of Planning will release its neighborhood targets for housing production by planning area, as well as its amendments to all the rest of the sections of the Comp Plan. And then we’ll do much of this—the public organizing, the legislative back-and-forth, and hopefully, this time, a little less waiting—all over again.

The upshot

This draft is good, actually. It reflects considerable work on the part of the chairman’s office to incorporate feedback from councilmembers and interest groups, and indicates an important shift in how we’re talking about housing. It successfully balances many, many competing demands for both neighborhood preservation and character with new development, which is inherently necessary to building more affordable housing.

GGWash is not the only voice in the chorus of people and organizations concerned with the machinations of the Framework and the Comp Plan. The original Housing Priorities Coalition pulled together nonprofit and for-profit affordable-housing developers, faith groups, activists and advocates, and other interested parties to push for language that favored a commitment to Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing, and that wasn’t so rigid in its exclusivity and preservation of historically privileged neighborhoods.

Likewise, the Grassroots Planning Commission organized around its own set of principles. Remember that 13-hour hearing? That kind of thing doesn’t happen without serious public engagement.

Much of the discourse around the Comp Plan has been laser-focused on whether amendments to the Framework would alleviate or intensify the lawsuits that have dogged planned unit developments over the past few years. That’s certainly an important thing to consider: Housing gets more expensive when you don’t build enough of it to meet demand, so slowing down PUDs, while perhaps feeling morally correct, doesn’t actually prevent gentrification or displacement.

Understandably, there was enormous pressure for changes to the Framework element to shut down the lawsuits. But PUDs have always faced legal challenges, and treating the Framework as a battle between development and preservation, while tempting, is a reduction of what the Comp Plan, as a legal document, can and can’t do. It’s a distraction from what’s actually at stake: Whether our foundational land use text says that all neighborhoods are on the hook for shouldering the impacts of a growing city, or whether it preserves and protects places that have always benefited from preservation and protection of property values.

Overall, I’m confident in saying that this version of the Framework better reflects the present tempo of planning and development discourse. It acknowledges that we do need to build, and grow, but that we’ve done so unfairly, and that exclusive parts of the city have not taken on the responsibility of housing DC’s residents.

Comprehensive plans, by their nature, are wonky and hard to process, but the actors who have invested in DC’s Comp Plan have, by and large, been tremendously dedicated to following what’s been happening with it. It’s heartening to see a draft that reflects both public interest and thorough edits.