Bright spots in 2021: Laying groundwork for more, and more affordable, housing

On an otherwise ordinary day back in June, our policy team was — while working virtually — nonetheless abuzz. Links pinged from Ron to Alex to Caitlin as we took in the proposed 2022 DC budget.

After watching and re-watching budget presentations and poring through hundreds of pages of (ahem, slightly dry and occasionally obscure) text, we confirmed among ourselves and our network what each of us had begun to suspect: many of the needs for which the GGWash community has advocated for years, if not a decade, were funded, some at unprecedented levels.

In a time when much had been lost due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it was a signal that DC’s recovery would be at least somewhat informed by the values that GGWash has spent 13 years working to instill in policy. (Though our work has focused more on DC this year than the regional lens we’re known for, we’re working to regain that regional focus in 2022.)

That was one of the key highlights of the year. In a two-part update, we’d like to share a few more of those bright spots, as well. We’re kicking it off with reflections on land use and housing reforms in 2021.

Laying the foundation for more housing

This spring, the DC Council passed a significant amendment to its 2006 Comprehensive Plan, which included changes to the Future Land Use Map (FLUM).

The FLUM isn’t a zoning map, but it determines what the future potential density of a site is. Changes to the text of the Comp Plan can enable more housing, but the FLUM is more essential to doing so than the text, as it categorizes sites as low-, moderate-, medium-, or high-density.

GGWash’s policy team, led by Alex Baca, worked with Office of Planning, the DC Council, and with you to pass higher-density designations to some notable public sites on the FLUM, including the Reeves Center and Engine 9 on U Street.

We can’t tell you exactly how many new homes will result from these changes, or how much they’ll cost—development math isn’t easy. But we can tell you that, already, two major redevelopments on U Street will be bigger than before, which means more housing, and more affordable housing, than would have been built otherwise.

This success built on years of historical advocacy; first to even amend the FLUM, which wasn’t initially in the cards, and then to push for a citywide goal of 36,000 new housing units, which Mayor Bowser adopted in 2019. Passing the Comp Plan involved a last-minute push to clarify a potentially derailing, and erroneous, concern that the changes would prevent future community input into development decisions.

With your support, including hundreds of emails, testimony to public officials, and donations to keep this work going, we brought the Comp Plan over the finish line.

We think the amendments to the 2006 Comp Plan make some zoning changes possible in the near term, which is something Alex will be looking into in 2022. Regardless, changes to comprehensive planning procedures are incorporated into the amendments. This was a major GGWash ask which your testimony to the Council in November 2020 made possible. Based on those changes, we’ll be pushing for a full rewrite of the Comp Plan—not another amendment process—by 2025. That opens the door for even more significant, important changes in the future.

These forward-looking efforts have real, near-term impacts. The District (according to…the District) has built 20,251 market-rate units of its 24,000-unit goal, and 3,578 means-tested, subsidized, affordable units of its 12,000-unit goal. There is still an enormous amount of work to do to increase the production of housing, particularly of housing restricted to those making below 60 percent of the median family income.

Your support makes this work possible

But we’re not FLUMmoxed about what to do next: in 2022, with your support, GGWash will work to ratify the targets in the zoning code, support creation of “missing middle” housing, and ensure there’s funding for a Comp Plan rewrite to begin by 2025. Comp Plan 2025 Advent Calendar, anyone?

Donate toward our $25,000 year-end goal to ensure this work can continue in 2022.

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