Why changes to DC’s Future Land Use Map do not eliminate community input

The process of amending the Comp Plan appears to be winding down. Comments from DC Council Chairman Phil Mendelson indicate that we can expect the Comp Plan’s markup and first reading on April 20, which means his amendments will likely be made public this week. The chairman’s amendments, and any subsequent amendments by other councilmembers between first reading and final vote, will, I hope, factor in the testimonies that many of you delivered in support of more density, more housing, and more affordable housing at the two November hearings on the Office of Planning’s (OP) amendments to the plan.

One day, I’ll write about how years and years of working on the Comp Plan has felt, and what I learned, and what I think might happen with land use in the District going forward. But we’re not quite done yet, even though this amendment cycle is about five years old.

There is nothing in particular to take action on right now, but there will be soon: I’m awaiting the chairman’s draft and, when I’ve read it, will post my thoughts on his amendments here, likely with a request for you to contact his office and change his proposed language further.

But I want to address something before we become enmeshed in what the chairman has changed. As Comp Plan limps to its conclusion, there’s a pernicious rumor floating about, undergirding opposition to it: increasing density in the Future Land Use Map (FLUM), something GGWash has asked for and organized its supporters to ask for, removes community input on development projects.

This isn’t true, and that it’s bandying about in the final stretches of the Comp Plan amendment process illuminates quite a bit about who’s on what side, and who believes what, about land use in the District. Let me tell you why.

High-density FLUM = Planned Unit Developments (PUDs)

The below explainer is adapted from a post by Nick Sementelli, who heads up Ward 5 for All and serves on GGWash’s board. Nick wrote out the distinctions between by-right and discretionary development a few weeks ago, in light of the dustup around what changes to the FLUM may mean for future development on Howard University’s east campus in Brookland (former home of the Howard Divinity School).

That particular example comes with its own quirks: The proposed FLUM change for the land is from institutional to mixed-use institutional/moderate density. Many FLUM changes are from one level of residential density to another. But what he wrote about how the FLUM relates to zoning, and how increases in density in the FLUM actually enable more community input, applies to any FLUM change that increases density.

In short: Changes to the FLUM do not eliminate community input. Contrary to assertions of Comp Plan opponents, higher-density designations on the FLUM increase rather than decrease the likelihood of Planned Unit Developments. PUDs allow developers to build beyond zoning, up to the density allowed by the FLUM, in exchange for community benefits. (The DC Code defines 26 benefits that can be negotiated.) As Nick Burger wrote for us in 2016, “Because a PUD can provide substantial zoning relief, developers are expected to provide benefits to the community in return. The PUD process also provides the community an opportunity to engage with and influence the project in a substantial way. So while a PUD often means a developer can build higher or denser buildings, it also means the community can get things like streetscape improvements, community resources, or additional affordable housing.”

PUDs are imperfect, but right now they are the way—pretty much the only way—in which communities have a formal right to derive, extract, negotiate, or just, like, get benefits from development projects in exchange for a denser building.

Ergo, if you want more community input, you want more PUDs. And if you want more PUDs, you want a really high-density FLUM, because that creates enough daylight between zoning and the potential future land use that a developer might actually want to do a PUD.

A scan of 80-something PUDs reveals that only three PUDs were done without associated map amendments. Map amendments are “a request for a zone change from one zone to another in a specific area of the District,” and there are three types, one of which is “Application for a Map Amendment related to a Planned Unit Development (PUD),” which “zone[s] previously unzoned land or rezone[s] already zoned land as part of PUD project. Such a map amendment is made by application and is considered as part of the PUD application process.”

So, a PUD with a map amendment is a PUD in which the site is rezoned (to greater density, because the entire point of a PUD is for a developer to build a denser building in exchange for community benefits, established through a negotiation process). A PUD without a map amendment is a PUD in which the site is not rezoned, but allowed a bonus density above existing zoning, up to 20%, in exchange for that negotiation process for community benefits.

If three PUDs took the PUD-specific bonus density rather than seeking a map amendment, it is therefore reasonable to conclude that a) the PUD-specific bonus density is not worth the time and cost of a PUD negotiation process, so b) when a parcel’s existing zoning and its FLUM designation are close to each other, developers are are more likely to build what’s allowed by-right or request a map amendment instead of going through the process of a PUD, therefore limiting the potential for “the community” to actually negotiate benefits.

So, greater density = greater incentive for developers to do PUDs = more PUDs = community input. You may not like that PUDs = community input, and you may not like that greater density = greater incentive for developers do PUDs, but that’s what’s on the table with the Comp Plan: greater density through the FLUM, and marginal changes to the Comp Plan’s text to identify whether “character” is or is not a priority. (That’s a whole other post…that we’ve written before.) The Comp Plan is a land-use document, and therefore can only meaningfully alter land-use designations and guidance for those designations.

(The most notable exception to PUDs being the avenue to community benefits the Hebrew Home project, where the developer switched from a PUD to a map amendment. Despite the switch to a process that ostensibly requires less engagement, ANCs 1A and 4C worked closely to ensure a greater amount of affordable housing was built as part of the project regardless of the legal path the developer took to build it. This worked well, I understand, because the ANC supported the project from its inception and negotiated in good faith, with the intention to use increased density to add affordable housing.)

Even non-PUD developments (by-right and map amendments) have community input (just not as much)

Perhaps long-winded explanations aren’t your bag. Let’s instead dive into the graphics.

Cheryl Cort at Coalition for Smarter Growth, who now manages the Housing Priorities Coalition, which GGWash is a member of, put together this diagram, showing what is required, and what results from, by-right developments, map amendments, and PUDs.

The Grassroots Planning Coalition, lead primarily by paid staff of EmpowerDC and longtime members of the all-volunteer Committee of 100, has a different take, as illustrated in this graphic:

This is beyond a difference of opinion; GPC’s illustration is incorrect.

GPC’s argument starts with what I’d call a true assessment of the current situation. When a landowner wants to develop a site, they have the choice of either building what is allowed by the current zoning “by-right” (meaning any special permission from the District aside from the standard permits is not needed) or they can appeal to the zoning commission to exceed or adjust the zone (by PUD or map amendment).

The FLUM influences both of those processes in similar, but distinct, ways. But GPC has the relationship backwards. By their telling, the current FLUM requires developers to go the PUD route in every circumstance, while the proposed map would let them use the hypothetically more attractive map amendment process (costing the community the enhanced negotiation process). Additionally, there is currently no specific “public engagement process to determine how upzoning impacts the people & neighborhood”; people’s concerns or support for upzoning (which is a map amendment) might be heard at a zoning commission hearing or an ANC meeting.

So none of those claims are supported by how PUDs or map amendments actually work.

1. PUDs and map amendments are affected by the FLUM in similar ways

GPC’s argument is based on the idea that increasing allowable density via a change to the FLUM will radically change the incentives for PUDs and map amendment. But the choice between them is not particularly related to the FLUM.

Since, as described above, the vast majority of PUDs are submitted in conjunction with a map amendment: If a site’s FLUM designation supports a PUD, it supports a map amendment as well. Conversely, if the FLUM is holding back a map amendment right now, it’s likely holding back a PUD.

2. PUDs have mostly disappeared by now, anyway.

The falsity of the claim that the status quo produces PUDs is, actually, the most measurable. PUDs were a considerable feature of the District’s development “boom,” particularly in the mid- to late 2000s. Since then, they’ve dried up. Most people attribute the slackening of PUDs to frequent litigation of them.

So, blocking changes to the FLUM now won’t preserve, restore, or institute a community-engagement process. That process — PUDs — has, pretty much, already stopped.

3. The proposed FLUM changes are an obvious play by the Office of Planning to make PUDs attractive again, which Mayor Muriel Bowser has long hinted at wanting.

Developers have stopped engaging in the PUD process because opponents of the denser development allowed by PUDs have engaged in a coordinated legal offensive to slow, shrink, and stop them. Faced with the prospect of years-long delays and legal fees, developers instead have built what’s legal by-right or have chosen to sit on vacant lots as those properties appreciate in value. Suing PUDs into virtual oblivion actually increases the incentive for developers to sit on vacant land—and in the District, the value of that land has continued to skyrocket. When the McMillan Sand Filtration Site is finally redeveloped, the market-rate condos and townhomes there, which were always going to be pricey, will be even more so, because the value of the land has increased over time.

The FLUM changes in question are a direct response to those legal challenges; it’s a clear attempt by the city to encourage more PUDs, not stop them. Do I love the idea of relying on the private sector to develop more so as to meet our affordable housing needs? No, I absolutely do not! But! I also know what a comprehensive plan does, and all it does is govern land use. If PUDs = community input and greater density, I gotta roll with supporting greater density to re-stimulate PUDs.

4. The zoning commission does not reject adverse projects.

That’s not what the zoning commission does, ever. Here’s, per the District, what the zoning commission is: “The Zoning Commission (ZC) is an independent, quasi-judicial body. Created by the Zoning Act of 1920, as amended, the ZC is charged with preparing, adopting, and subsequently amending the Zoning Regulations and Zoning Map in a means not inconsistent with the Comprehensive Plan for the National Capital area.” The zoning commission is tasked with ensuring the zoning code is compliant with the comp plan, and any zoning changes like map amendments are thus compliant with the zoning code itself.

So, it can reject projects, but it can only do so on the basis of whether or not they are inconsistent with the Comp Plan or zoning. Applicants often reapply until their project is accepted; the zoning commission’s goal is to get to a yes. Though zoning-commission documents often include phrases like “adverse impacts,” “adverse projects” projects are not rejected on that basis. Implying that a project is “adverse” without explaining what “adverse” means, and that the commission simply rejects things that are “adverse,” is misleading.

“Upflumming” will generally allow denser zones and, therefore, denser projects; that’s true whether they are done as PUDs or by-right after a map amendment. Denser projects or no projects are the two poles of the Comp Plan discourse: Those of us who think the city needs to add housing, even ~luxury condos~, to keep up with its population and job growth, and limit the impact it has on existing residents, have supported the proposed amendments.

Opponents have claimed the changes would invite undesirable growth, and by doing so will further displace longtime Black residents. But some people just don’t like big buildings—Committee of 100, the Kalorama Citizens’ Association, and the like are the examples I have at hand—and are using this (seemingly never-ending) process to gloss the anti-development views they’ve held for years in a veneer of racial justice.

GPC has yoked together people who care deeply about preventing the displacement of longtime residents, and sincerely believe in Empower’s ability to organize community power, with house-rich homeowners long known for meddling in development fights. It’s also worth noting that some GPC-affiliated folks were part of the aforementioned legal challenges that have stymied PUDs, some of which seem like legitimate attempts to keep vulnerable residents in their homes (Brookland Manor), and some of which are accelerating displacement (Bruce Monroe).

So, why object to adding density to the FLUM through these specious claims about how PUDs, map amendments, and by-right zoning work? It’s really rhetorically complicated to fight proposed amendments to the FLUM via a blatant misrepresentation of what PUDs do, and it’s not going to hold up when Chairman Phil Mendelson’s draft is released to the full council. It would be much more honest for opponents to just say they don’t want bigger buildings in the District.

Who believes what?

For those of you who are Comp Plan-curious, and who want to see more housing in DC but find more to like in the line of argument that developers making money will hurt low-income communities: I’m glad you made it this far! As this post demonstrates, GGWash believes that higher-density land-use designations in the Future Land Use Map, particularly on District-owned land, are critical to building more housing, and more affordable housing, in the future. We do not believe this because developers are paying us to (because they aren’t). We believe it because I, personally, have spent many, many years working on land-use policy in the District, and this is what I’ve concluded after learning as much as I can about how the Comp Plan, the FLUM, PUDs, map amendments, and the zoning commission work, and work together. And I hope you found this post to be a useful explainer as to why opposing higher-density FLUM designations will not kill PUDs, despite opposition to it on those grounds.

I have long respected GPC’s stances as they present them. Where I’ve had the greatest issue is that many of their asks, such as reinforcing rent control, more community impact statements, or reforming public housing, are better (or only) accomplished through legislation or the District budget rather than changes to a land-use document. GGWash is a member of the Reclaim Rent Control Coalition, and I look forward to the opportunity to support a bill that advances the entirety of that coalition’s platform. There’s a reason we haven’t tried to advocate for it in the Comp Plan, because it’s not how that policy gets changed.

To put it more harshly, and in terms that speak more directly to GGWash’s core supporters and their often-YIMBYish tendencies: Four years is enough time for half-truths, lies, rumors, secrets, gossip, and clubbiness to wrap around and obscure a process that’s quite opaque to begin with. (Some of our opponents might claim that we are peddling those lies ourselves, winky face.)

Here’s the funniest thing of all of this, to me: I actually, personally, do not think that PUDs are that great. This is a departure from some earlier GGWash messaging, for sure: In the early days of the Comp Plan, we told you that you should like PUDs, because they delivered affordable housing and community benefits in ways that other legal pathways for new development (by-right projects, and map amendments) do not. That is still true. But I do not believe that affordable housing will be the top preference for “communities” all of the time; that’s why we supported amendments to the Framework element, which passed back in October 2019, to prioritize affordable housing and anti-displacement policies like build-first and right-to-return as PUD benefits.

If we’re truly going to treat deeply affordable housing and anti-displacement as our top priorities, it strikes me as both inefficient and unfair to rely on negotiation processes between developers and volunteer community members to break the right way.

But beyond “whither PUDs,” the greatest bummer for me of the whole Comprehensive Plan process has been watching EmpowerDC throw its lot in with the Committee of 100. The District desperately needs a strong corps of neighborhood-level organizers and, in addition, needs anti-displacement policy experts. Over and over, I’ve had people ask me to explain the “unholy alliance” of an organization that claims to represent DC’s last and least with a long-running organization whose most prominent leaders are white homeowners in the District’s most affluent neighborhoods—precisely the people who have never felt the true sting of displacement. I’ve always refused to answer, because it’s not my story to tell. But I do think that Empower deserves better than to be co-opted by an organization that, while counting some racial diversity among its members, promotes the views of primarily white preservationists.

The only way we will house people in the District, affordably, is for out-of-scale character to be built at an unimaged magnitude—yes, even luxury buildings. Proposed changes to the FLUM won’t even begin to induce the production that we need, because the private market alone will never house all DC residents. Even still, opposing higher-density designations on the FLUM on the grounds that they eliminate community input is a falsehood that I don’t think should go unaddressed.