We support DC’s goal of 36,000 units and furthering fair housing

The DC Council holds performance oversight hearings yearly. Organizations and members of the public have the opportunity to testify in front of the council committees responsible for overseeing the work of the city’s administrative departments. Oversight season is the opportunity to comment on what agencies are doing well, doing poorly, or should be doing instead.

The Committee of the Whole held an oversight hearing for Office of Planning on February 25, 2020. Here’s my testimony.

GGWash applauds the Office of Planning’s commitment to Mayor Bowser’s goal of 36,000 new units of housing built in DC by 2025. We are highly supportive of “#36Kx2025,” and agree with the Mayor that 12,000 of those units, at least, should be affordable; advocacy that furthers this is a major goal of GGWash’s housing program, which I run.

The Office of Planning, through its Housing Framework for Equity and Growth and its “continuing conversations” on housing, has done a tremendous job of shaping the discourse surrounding the 36,000-unit goal to elucidate how racial and economic segregation has been furthered by American urban-planning practices. We’re glad to see that that narrative has been looped into OP’s amendments to the Comprehensive Plan.

Unless we allow dense, diverse housing types in all parts of the city, all other measures to make housing more affordable, like rent stabilization and inclusionary zoning, will fall short. To provide enough housing for District residents, we need to build it, and no part of the city should be let off the hook from welcoming more neighbors. So, we fully support OP’s amendments to the Comprehensive Plan, which we think are—correctly—oriented toward allowing more homes in low-density neighborhoods.

Our suggestions for the Comp Plan are only additive. We would like to see a Future Land Use Map that is much more representative of future land uses, with the goal of meeting District residents’ housing needs in a fair, equitable, and accessible way. That means an even greater increase in density across the board, including in affluent, largely single-family neighborhoods, than the “upflumming” that’s currently on the table. Even in OP’s proposed amendments, the FLUM is so fine-grained as to look more like a zoning map. Though the FLUM and the zoning code are linked, they each serve different purposes, and we should treat them as such rather than near-replicas of each other.

We also want to note we feel that OP’s period of public input for amendments to the Comp Plan was the correct length. An ever-extending period of public input, like what we saw beginning in 2006 with the zoning-code update, would not have been appropriate to bring the Comp Plan to match the current realities of development in the District. The Comp Plan probably deserves a full rewrite, but we understand that we are in an amendment cycle. Given that, we urge the Council to pass an amended Comp Plan by the end of 2020.

In the next year, we hope that the Office of Planning will plan around citywide systems, particularly civic infrastructure like schools, parks, and libraries and storage and maintenance for municipal vehicles. We’d also like to see more neighborhood planning. OP completed 27 neighborhood-scale plans from 2002 to 2009 (almost half in 2008), but only 15 from 2010 to 2017. Of those, 24 of the 27 plans done in the 2000s were official Small Area Plans or the like, which go to the council, while only six of 15 in the 2010s were. Most of the 2010s-era plans are smaller in scope as well.

To that end, we are enthusiastic about OP’s intentions for a more strategic analysis of the area around North Capitol and Irving streets, which has been largely neglected by formal planning processes. The future of the hospitals, garden apartments, the Armed Forces Retirement Home, and Catholic University land should match the values that OP has expressed throughout its Comp Plan amendments.

Finally, given that the current federal administration has abandoned the responsibility of enforcing the Fair Housing Act, we ask that OP continue to commit to affirmatively furthering fair housing principles, which include “taking meaningful actions, in addition to combating discrimination, that overcome patterns of segregation and foster inclusive communities free from barriers that restrict access to opportunity based on protected characteristics.”

Overall, we’ve been pleased with OP’s performance over the past year. Director Trueblood and his staff are enthusiastic and committed to progressive planning in the District. Their work on the Comp Plan, Housing Framework for Equity and Growth, and willingness to propose new policies like IZ+ is a welcome shift for an agency that has sometimes been more reactive than proactive. We appreciate the office’s focus on the impact that planning has had on racial and economic equity, and are heartened to see its staff put time and effort toward redressing the harms of segregation and spatial inequity in housing.

We hope that the Council supports OP’s work, most notably by passing an amended Comprehensive Plan by the end of 2020.