The Comp Plan guides DC’s growth. Here’s what proposed updates say about housing.

When Mayor Muriel Bowser and Office of Planning (OP) Director Andrew Trueblood released citywide targets for affordable housing production by neighborhood planning area, they also made public amendments to the rest of the Comprehensive Plan—all 24 chapters of it. The Comp Plan guides how the city will grow in the years to come.

On October 8, the council passed the Framework element, the intro which charts the direction for the plan. This is our first look at OP’s proposed updates to the rest of the document. GGWash will be paying particular attention to the land use, housing, and historic preservation sections, as well as the area elements of the Comp Plan as it’s revised.

We’re working through the amendments to each section. Here’s what we found notable in our first pass at the housing text amendments.

What changed regarding housing?

OP struck and added a lot of minor words that, at first glance, don’t seem too critical. Wordsmithing might not come off as a substantial alteration until you recall that the 2006 Comp Plan effectively pushed development into certain areas of the city (ones with lots of vacant lots, which tended to be lower-income), and kept many, many more parts of the city off-limits from most new construction (ones with not a lot of vacant lots, which tended to be whiter and wealthier).

Undoing that paradigm requires a lot of edits. If OP’s amendments are retained in what the council ultimately passes, we think the Comp Plan will be much better off, and much more reflective of how housing has worked in DC.

For example, “the recent housing boom” has been changed to “the recent boom in housing demand,” and “encourage the private sector to provide new housing” has been changed to “encourage and/or require the private sector to provide both new market rate and affordable housing” (page 20 of 79). These are tweaks. But they matter a great deal.

There are some entirely new sections, too. We find that these are much more detailed, data-driven, and honest about the dynamics that drive where people live.

While housing is a regional market, it is also a very personal choice tied to family, community, and the unique identity shared by residents living in the District of Columbia and the Nation’s capital. The fact that many residents place a priority on maintaining their identity as Washingtonians partially explains why 71 percent of the District’s residents moving within the region stay within DC. The rate of retention is actually the highest for extremely low-income households with 77 percent staying in DC. This is due in part to Washington DC’s investment in public transit and affordable housing keeping housing and transportation costs low relative to the rest of the region. However, the same migration data suggests that lower income households tend to move east of the river. In addition, the District struggles to retain moderate income households earning between 80 and 100 percent of the MFI, with only 60 percent of them choosing to stay in the city.

Likewise, OP added this section about supply and demand, which we wholeheartedly agree with:

The supply of housing should grow sufficiently to slow rising costs of market rate rental and for-sale housing. Expanding supply alone will not fulfill all of Washington, DC’s housing needs at lower income levels, but it is one important element of the strategy to ensure unmet demand at higher price points does not further hasten the loss of ’naturally occurring’ affordable housing.

The mayor’s goal for producing 36,000 units of new housing everywhere in the city—not just in certain parts of it—is formally added in Section 501.1, which is revised to say:

The overarching goal for housing is: Develop and maintain new residential units to achieve a total of 360,000 by 2025 that provide a safe, decent, accessible and affordable supply of housing for all current and future residents of throughout all neighborhoods of the District of Columbia. (page 19 of 79)

Other worthwhile additions include:

• A strong acknowledgement that new construction has favored one-bedroom units over multifamily units (though it’s necessary to build more smaller units as well to free up family-sized housing; page 14 or 79).
• A nod toward making more housing accessible by requiring that “a substantial number of the new units added are affordable to District residents” (page 17 of 79).
• And an explicit mandate to “encourage development of both market rate and affordable housing in high-cost areas of the city” and “develop new innovative tools and techniques that support affordable housing in these areas” (because “doing so increase costs per unit but provides greater benefits in terms of access to opportunity and outcomes,” page 21 of 79).

How do I look at all of this stuff?

Everything lives on plandc.dc.gov. Scroll down: The links to most of what is relevant are in the bottom left-hand corner.

The full PDF of the amended 2006 Comp Plan—so, the document in which you can see OP’s redlines, which are amendments—is here. Summaries of OP’s changes to each section are here. The current and proposed Future Land Use Maps and Generalized Policy Maps are here.

You can see OP’s recommendations on amendments submitted during the 2017 open call here. The Housing Equity report with affordable housing targets, which isn’t part of the Comp Plan, is here.

And how can I get involved?

The public has 60 days, until December 15, to review what OP put out (you can email your thoughts to planning@dc.gov). Advisory Neighborhood Commissions have until January 31 to submit resolutions.

Keep in mind that whatever you, or your ANC, submits to Office of Planning will be reviewed by the Office of Planning. But, just like the Framework, the rest of the Comp Plan is a piece of legislation that’s voted on the by the council. So next year the council will take it up, though we don’t yet know when. There will be a public hearing, then a first and second reading; second reading doubles as the final vote.