Image by View of 10th Street NW licensed under Creative Commons.

Amending DC’s 2006 Comprehensive Plan, the District’s foundational land use text, has been ongoing since 2016. The DC Council unanimously passed a revised Framework element, which sets the tone for the rest of the document, last October (we loved it!), but the Framework is only the first chapter of a 1,500-page doorstop.

However! A public hearing on 24 additional elements is scheduled for November 12 and 13, following public outreach and feedback solicitation by the Office of Planning in late 2019 through early 2020.

The Nov. 12 hearing isn’t exactly the light at the end of the tunnel. But it should be the beginning of the Comp Plan’s last chapter. (Not the actual last chapter. That’s the implementation element. Haha.) Depending on the kind of feedback the council receives between now and the closure of the hearing record in November, the Comp Plan could pass as soon as the end of the year.

Want more density? In affluent neighborhoods? We need your help.

GGWash has identified three specific things we want to ask the council for during the hearing and markup process, which will be led by Chairman Phil Mendelson. Those things are:

  1. Pass Office of Planning’s amendments, with which we fully agree, intact by the end of 2020
  2. Support other amendments as long as they increase, not suppress, the construction of more housing citywide and especially in affluent neighborhoods; as long as amendments that further “upflum” are either maintained or expanded; and as long as they do not uphold the “protect” and “conserve” language prevalent in the 2006 land use element
  3. Add language to the bill text that creates better Comp Plan procedures and encourages OP to begin to rewrite the 2006 plan by 2022

You can read more about why these are the specific things we are asking for below.

But, first: We need you to sign up to testify (or plan to submit written testimony before the hearing record closes, typically two weeks after a hearing date). We will not be setting up a click-to-send form letter. Instead, because personal emails to councilmembers actually get the job done, we need you to write your elected officials frequently to say what you want them to do with the Comp Plan.

We, of course, recommend that you base your asks on our asks, above. You should send direct, personal, affirmative, and thoughtful emails to Chairman Phil Mendelson, asking for the Comp Plan to be passed by the end of the year with OP’s amendments intact, at pmendelson@dccouncil.us.

For good measure, you should email your ward councilmember (you can check which ward you live in, here), as well as the at-large councilmembers (abonds@dccouncil.us, dgrosso@dccouncil.us, esilverman@dccouncil.us, and rwhite@dccouncil.us). If you are comfortable, please cc me, abaca@ggwash.org. It’s always amazing to see the positive things you have to say about your neighborhood, and it helps me stay in touch with you so that I can keep you posted on what’s going on.

If an email isn’t doable for you, we totally understand. In that case, you can sign onto a petition with our asks here.

If you’re subscribed to GGWash’s advocacy emails, you’ll receive reminders from me about all this! As always, you can reach out to me directly at abaca@ggwash.org. I would love to work with you, your ANC, your COVID pod, your Zoom-based civic association, whatever, to get comments about the Comp Plan submitted before the record closes (typically two weeks after a hearing date, so, presumably, Nov. 26).

Why does this matter?

GGWash has been advocating for a better Comp Plan since the 2006 plan was opened for amendments in 2016. (You can see all our posts here.) To us, “better” has meant the removal of language that allows exclusive neighborhoods — which, in DC, includes those in the Rock Creek West, Near Northwest, and Capitol Hill planning areas — to be “preserved,” while others (such as those with lots of vacant lots) are considered fair game for any and all development.

This is uneven, unfair, and exacerbates the sense that development is exploitative and intended specifically to wipe out longtime District residents. In many places, it has. Wealthy, mostly white residents and the neighborhoods they live in have not assisted with meeting the needs of the District’s growing population.

The revised Framework element allows for a shift in this paradigm, by prioritizing affordable housing and anti-displacement measures while encouraging fairly distributed new growth and development. Other changes to the 2006 Framework, made by the Office of Planning and then by the council, diluted some of the most egregiously exclusionary language.

OP’s amendments to the rest of the Comp Plan continue this line of thinking; we wrote about their proposed amendments after they were released in October 2019 (OP’s final version, released in April 2020, has slight changes and updates, particularly related to coronavirus recovery, but aren’t notable). Changes to the land use section, in particular, strike language we consider problematic, and open the door for a Comp Plan that could, in the future, enable a zoning regime more accommodating of smaller, denser homes.

Because that’s the thing about comprehensive plans: They aren’t self-executing documents. The Comp Plan is not an opportunity to eliminate single-family zoning, but the point isn’t to change zoning through the Comp Plan. Just the same, amendments to the Comp Plan won’t inherently make housing more affordable, or stop displacement, or create more family-sized units. But policies that could do those things have to flow down from what’s allowed from the Comp Plan.

So, the pathway to eliminating exclusionary land use practices in the District is to change the Comp Plan enough that future proposals don’t conflict with it. We feel that OP’s amendments are a good foundation for that ongoing work.

Why these asks for the Comp Plan?

Our primary ask to the council for what we want them to do with the Comp Plan — pass OP’s amendments intact by the end of 2020 — is grounded in the above context. If other DC residents, or organizations, want lots of amendments to the Comp Plan, we’re fine with them, as long as they don’t reduce any of the density increases proposed in the Future Land Use Map.

Amendments to the 2006 Comp Plan have been ongoing since 2016. We are amending the plan in sections, with years in between, with no clear guidance for how public input should work. The last time the Comp Plan was rewritten in full was in 2006, and even good amendments to a bad and outdated plan can’t compensate for the fact that it’s…bad, and outdated. While we respect Chairman Mendelson’s desire to give each piece of the process its full due in front of the body that’s in charge of it, a four-year slog is not appropriate when the Comp Plan isn’t a self-executing document but, rather, one that other policies can’t conflict with. It’s important to be thorough, but another amendment cycle like this one would be a disaster.

Ultimately, the Comp Plan should be passed by the end of the year, and the only way that’s going to happen is if the public feedback before, during, and after the hearing is mostly similar. If some people are asking for the Comp Plan to be sent back to the Office of Planning, and some people are asking councilmembers to reject or rewrite OP’s amendments, and some people are yelling PASS IT incoherently on Twitter (something I’m sometimes guilty of), then Chairman Mendelson is likely to say that Office of Planning’s amendments are too controversial, and require more of his time, which he will likely not be able to devote any of until spring 2021.

But if an overwhelming number of comments prioritize the passage of the Comp Plan this year, with OP’s amendments intact (because they’re very good!), there’s a chance that that might happen. Procedural reforms, like what we proposed in this post, are more valuable than a vastly rearranged Comp Plan, so it’s important to ask for them, too.

That’s up to you. You can tell your elected officials that! (And sign our petition, right now.)

I hear from many GGWash readers and supporters that they’d love to see a YIMBY-like effort to participate in the District. For a number of reasons, which I hope to explain in future posts, our organizing principle is not to push on individual projects, and our advocacy, to the extent that it embodies a yes-in-my-backyard style, has been intensively focused on the Comp Plan because YIMBY policies—such as by-right affordability, bonus density in exchange for more affordable housing, or zoning reform—can’t exist unless the Comp Plan allows for them.

Getting the Comp Plan passed by the end of 2020 with OP’s amendments intact, alongside legislation that lays the groundwork for a better Comp Plan planning process, is a good-government initiative. What’s more YIMBY than that?

Alex Baca is the DC Policy Director at GGWash. Previously the engagement director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth and the general manager of Cuyahoga County's bikesharing system, she has also worked in journalism, bike advocacy, architecture, construction, and transportation in DC, San Francisco, and Cleveland. She has written about all of the above for CityLab, Slate, Vox, Washington City Paper, and other publications.