What do DC candidates think of housing and land use? We looked at the 2022 data

Greater Greater Washington has conducted endorsements in the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia since it launched in 2008. The process for doing so has changed over the past 16 years and will likely continue to do so, because every election year is different, and so is every race. However, the current iteration of our endorsements process involves a questionnaire with varying types of questions about housing, transportation, and land use.

Though we sometimes factor in other considerations at our discretion, the questionnaire typically holds the greatest weight in our endorsement decisions. It informs our work over time, too: After we deliver endorsements, we refer to candidates’ responses to hold those elected responsible, and track candidate policy priorities over time.

As part of our Fall 2023 internship, Dean Howell and I aggregated and analyzed the questionnaire-response data specifically on housing and land use from candidates running for office in the District, Maryland, and Virginia in 2022 and 2023. This post is a summary of the findings from our analysis of questionnaire-response data from candidates for council and Advisory Neighborhood Commission seats in the District’s primary and general elections in 2022. We have also published questionnaire responses from mayor and attorney general candidates, though the responses are too few to conduct a similar analysis.

Methodology

GGWash’s endorsement questionnaires are made up of two types of questions: closed-ended and open-ended. Closed-ended questions, such as multiple-choice and ranking questions, give candidates a range of pre-written responses, and open-ended questions allow candidates to free-write their responses.

For closed-ended questions, we assigned codes to each pre-written response and entered them according to the candidates’ responses. For open-ended questions, we created a list of recurring themes, and gave each a binary indicator for each theme. For example, if a candidate expressed support for inclusionary zoning in any of their open-ended answers, their survey was marked with a “1.” If not, then their survey was marked with a “0.”

Coding open-ended responses this way allowed us to deduce the frequency of the expression of different ideas, but isn’t necessarily an accurate estimate of how many candidates support those ideas.

Main takeaways on 2022 candidates for DC Council

Here are some conclusions from our analysis of questionnaire responses given by the candidates for the DC Council’s ward and at-large seats in 2022. 17 out of 35 total council candidates (including some who didn’t make the ballot) running in the primary for ward or at-large seats responded to our questionnaire in 2022.

• 100% of respondents mentioned in their answers to open-ended questions that they supported increasing housing affordability for DC residents.
• 90% of respondents said that, yes, they support the mayor’s goal to set production targets in each area of the District to more evenly disperse the construction of new housing.
• 70% of respondents said that, yes, they would support amending the District’s preservation laws to remove height and mass from the purview of historic review.
• 82% of respondents supported the following policies for rent-stabilization reform:
  • “Allow only one increase per year, with notice, for any DC rental housing that’s exempt from rent stabilization”
  • “Implement stronger oversight of all landlord petitions filed with the Department of Housing and Community Development”
  • “Clarify what types of landlord upgrades qualify for capital improvements petitions”
  • “Cap annual rent increases at the level of inflation, or consumer price index, and eliminate the extra two percent allowed under current law”
• 100% of respondents said they would prioritize creating opportunities for new housing over preserving green space or the character of existing neighborhoods in a rewrite of the Comprehensive Plan, which will begin in 2025.

Visualizing trends in DC Council candidates’ questionnaire responses

Almost all respondents agreed that affordable housing can be defined as no more than 30% of someone’s income, while opinions diverged on whether affordable housing is, say, rent-controlled or built by the government.

Regardless of how respondents defined “affordable” housing, there was significant and widespread support among them for building more housing, generally, in the District. A majority of candidates who responded to the survey in 2022 agreed that either 50,000-100,000 or over 100,000 units should be built in the District by 2045.

While candidates for council who responded to the questionnaire seemed to agree that building new housing should be a priority (regardless of whether it costs 30% of one’s income, is rent-controlled, or is simply cheap), their opinions on where that new housing should be built vary. The following finding is from my analysis of the open-ended questions, in which a response was recorded as a “1” if a candidate directly mentioned the issue in the answers to their open-ended questions. Out of 18 survey respondents, 12 expressed support for higher density near transit. Nine respondents mentioned density around commercial corridors, and 11 expressed interest in increasing density beyond transit-oriented development and commercial corridors.

Neighborhood Commission seats

Here are some conclusions from our analysis of questionnaire responses given by the candidates for Advisory Neighborhood Commission seats in 2022. 176 total candidates running for ANC seats in all wards responded to our questionnaire in 2022.

17 total council candidates running for ward seats or in the at-large primary responded to our questionnaire in 2022.

• Nearly 70% of respondents chose “Creating new opportunities for housing in my commission’s area” as their top priority for a rewrite of the Comprehensive Plan.
• 85.8% of respondents said that, yes, they believe apartments should be legal to build district-wide.
• 93.7% of respondents who responded to the GGWash questionnaire said that, yes, inducing residents and visitors to drive less should be an explicit policy goal of the District.
• Nearly 80% of respondents said they supported DDOT’s bus priority projects, and would support removing parking and travel lanes to build them.

Visualizing trends in Advisory Neighborhood Commission candidates’ questionnaire responses

While ANC candidates who responded to GGWash’s questionnaire differed on how the District should fund affordable housing, it was clear that most would push for more inclusionary zoning units if they were to negotiate a community benefits agreement.

Throughout the survey, respondents affirmed that increasing the housing supply was more popular than other potential community benefits. Respondents to GGWash’s questionnaire for ANC candidates routinely marked policies that would increase housing supply as their top priority. The following chart shows that, as noted in the previous section, 70 percent of ANC questionnaire respondents said “creating opportunities for new housing in my commission’s area” would be their top priority in a rewrite of the Comp Plan, over “preserving green space” or “preserving the character of existing neighborhoods” in their commission’s area.

A majority of ANC candidates said that, if a development proposal including IZ units came before their commission, they’d encourage more height and density, though the level of support for doing so varies by ward. The following chart shows that candidates for ANC in Ward 7 who responded to GGWash’s questionnaire were least likely to support more height and density, even if a development proposal included IZ units, which are income-restricted and subsidized and therefore “affordable” according to the Office of Planning’s definition. Most candidates in Ward 3 indicated that they would encourage height and density, closely followed by Wards 1, 4, and 5.

In a future post, I’ll review our analysis of responses to GGWash’s Maryland and Virginia candidate questionnaires.