A thought experiment: How many homes could we build in DC west of Rock Creek Park?

DC neighborhoods west of Rock Creek Park have easy access to sought-after schools, jobs, shopping, and Metro, but are essentially off-limits to all but the wealthy due to restrictive zoning. If you changed that, a lot more people could live there and enjoy those things. Like, a lot!

If we upzoned the Rock Creek West planning district to allow five-floor apartment buildings on all parcels currently occupied by detached single-family homes, the area could accommodate 334,400 new one- to three-bedroom units.

Stretching from Glover Park to Chevy Chase, the Rock Creek West planning district is the wealthiest and whitest in the city, with a median income 70% higher than the city overall. This exclusivity is by design: many neighborhoods of Rock Creek West were developed expressly as segregated suburban retreats for wealthy white Washingtonians, with pre-existing settlements (such as the predominantly Black community of Reno City) even being razed in response to pressure from white citizen’s groups. To this day, the Rock Creek West area element is full of assurances that new development will be kept at a minimum and that the character of the single-family neighborhoods will be preserved.

Three-quarters of its residential land is devoted to detached single-family homes, but these homes make up less than a third of the housing units in the planning district. According to DC’s comprehensive plan, in 2017, Rock Creek West had a total population of 92,399. Let’s imagine that all the 2300 acres (3.6 square miles) currently occupied by detached single-family homes are rezoned to allow five floors of housing with a maximum lot coverage of two thirds and no other restrictions. How much new housing could be built on this land?

This upzoning would allow a total of 334 million square feet of gross floor area - or about 334,000 average-sized units. (Developers usually assume the average unit will be 1000 gross square feet, which includes the unit’s share of common spaces like stairs and hallways. That means these units would have about 850-900 square feet of interior living space, or 1-3 bedrooms.)

How much more housing would this be? Rock Creek West’s detached single-family parcels currently hold about 13,000 detached single-family housing units. That means that 334,000 units would increase the allowable number of housing units in Rock Creek West by 2470% - and if built, would nearly double the number of housing units in the District as a whole!

What’s the takeaway? DC could have plenty of new housing (and commerce!) in high-opportunity neighborhoods. Let’s allow it!