Is there a coherent argument that loosening zoning laws will lead to affordable housing in DC?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s funny Bowser wants to make the city more dense but does nothing in the way of preparing the city’s infrastructure for more people. They can’t even take care of the metro.

Atlanta is the canary in the cave mine for this. That city's population is growing at an explosive rate and their infrastructure has not kept up with the growth. At least metro actually takes you places you need to get to. If you had to rely on MARTA then you're SOL.

DC and the suburbs are better equipped to handle the growth.

There is zero point to making the city exaggertedly denser. Good fast public transport extending to the suburbs renders that moot.

New high speed transit is incredibly expensive. We can build a bit more, but we should leverage the transit we have.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I hear this constantly asserted, as if it were self-evidently true, but cannot figure out how it could possibly be correct.

There's 700,000 people in the District. There's 5 million in the suburbs. If you add 30,000 housing units in DC, they will instantly be soaked up by people in the suburbs looking for shorter commutes.

As people move into DC from Falls Church and Rockville and Fairfax, their old places will open up for other people. Other people will move into those places from suburbs even further out, which will open up slots in places like Chantilly or Columbia or wherever else those people are coming from and that would put downward pressure on housing prices in the suburbs they've left.

But how does any of that lead to affordable housing in DC?

It doesn't.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hear this constantly asserted, as if it were self-evidently true, but cannot figure out how it could possibly be correct.

There's 700,000 people in the District. There's 5 million in the suburbs. If you add 30,000 housing units in DC, they will instantly be soaked up by people in the suburbs looking for shorter commutes.

As people move into DC from Falls Church and Rockville and Fairfax, their old places will open up for other people. Other people will move into those places from suburbs even further out, which will open up slots in places like Chantilly or Columbia or wherever else those people are coming from and that would put downward pressure on housing prices in the suburbs they've left.

But how does any of that lead to affordable housing in DC?

1. Our housing problem is regional. Reducing the cost of housing in the far suburbs is also good. Plus the people who move are better off at each step.

2. The suburbs are looking at the issue as well. Pro housing groups are supporting more development in MoCo, in Arlington, in Alexandria, etc. The metropolitan washington council of government is setting regional goals, with targets for each jurisdiction

3. To the extent more people live closer in, this reduces road congestion, pollution, traffic accidents, etc.

That isn't the argument the upzoning crowd makes though. They say it will lead to affordable housing in the District, and I want to know how that will happen.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hear this constantly asserted, as if it were self-evidently true, but cannot figure out how it could possibly be correct.

There's 700,000 people in the District. There's 5 million in the suburbs. If you add 30,000 housing units in DC, they will instantly be soaked up by people in the suburbs looking for shorter commutes.

As people move into DC from Falls Church and Rockville and Fairfax, their old places will open up for other people. Other people will move into those places from suburbs even further out, which will open up slots in places like Chantilly or Columbia or wherever else those people are coming from and that would put downward pressure on housing prices in the suburbs they've left.

But how does any of that lead to affordable housing in DC?

1. Our housing problem is regional. Reducing the cost of housing in the far suburbs is also good. Plus the people who move are better off at each step.

2. The suburbs are looking at the issue as well. Pro housing groups are supporting more development in MoCo, in Arlington, in Alexandria, etc. The metropolitan washington council of government is setting regional goals, with targets for each jurisdiction

3. To the extent more people live closer in, this reduces road congestion, pollution, traffic accidents, etc.

That isn't the argument the upzoning crowd makes though. They say it will lead to affordable housing in the District, and I want to know how that will happen.

I am not sure which upzoning crowd you mean. I follow regional discussions. However its also of course possible that there is a limit on the number of people who would move from Arlington, Bethesda, to the District even if District rents/prices were lower. Not everyone works in the District, and believe it or not, some people just prefer to not live in the District.

Also of course upzoning can be done in conjunction with more committed AH, but I think we already had that discussion in the other thread. Personallly I am skeptical that the "keep density of Ward 3" crowd is sincere in wanting more committed AH in Ward 3.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hear this constantly asserted, as if it were self-evidently true, but cannot figure out how it could possibly be correct.

There's 700,000 people in the District. There's 5 million in the suburbs. If you add 30,000 housing units in DC, they will instantly be soaked up by people in the suburbs looking for shorter commutes.

As people move into DC from Falls Church and Rockville and Fairfax, their old places will open up for other people. Other people will move into those places from suburbs even further out, which will open up slots in places like Chantilly or Columbia or wherever else those people are coming from and that would put downward pressure on housing prices in the suburbs they've left.

But how does any of that lead to affordable housing in DC?

1. Our housing problem is regional. Reducing the cost of housing in the far suburbs is also good. Plus the people who move are better off at each step.

2. The suburbs are looking at the issue as well. Pro housing groups are supporting more development in MoCo, in Arlington, in Alexandria, etc. The metropolitan washington council of government is setting regional goals, with targets for each jurisdiction

3. To the extent more people live closer in, this reduces road congestion, pollution, traffic accidents, etc.

That isn't the argument the upzoning crowd makes though. They say it will lead to affordable housing in the District, and I want to know how that will happen.

I am not sure which upzoning crowd you mean. I follow regional discussions. However its also of course possible that there is a limit on the number of people who would move from Arlington, Bethesda, to the District even if District rents/prices were lower. Not everyone works in the District, and believe it or not, some people just prefer to not live in the District.

Also of course upzoning can be done in conjunction with more committed AH, but I think we already had that discussion in the other thread. Personallly I am skeptical that the "keep density of Ward 3" crowd is sincere in wanting more committed AH in Ward 3.

Have you been on 66 during rush hour? I think there are many, many, many people who would pay *a lot* to cut their commutes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hear this constantly asserted, as if it were self-evidently true, but cannot figure out how it could possibly be correct.

There's 700,000 people in the District. There's 5 million in the suburbs. If you add 30,000 housing units in DC, they will instantly be soaked up by people in the suburbs looking for shorter commutes.

As people move into DC from Falls Church and Rockville and Fairfax, their old places will open up for other people. Other people will move into those places from suburbs even further out, which will open up slots in places like Chantilly or Columbia or wherever else those people are coming from and that would put downward pressure on housing prices in the suburbs they've left.

But how does any of that lead to affordable housing in DC?

1. Our housing problem is regional. Reducing the cost of housing in the far suburbs is also good. Plus the people who move are better off at each step.

2. The suburbs are looking at the issue as well. Pro housing groups are supporting more development in MoCo, in Arlington, in Alexandria, etc. The metropolitan washington council of government is setting regional goals, with targets for each jurisdiction

3. To the extent more people live closer in, this reduces road congestion, pollution, traffic accidents, etc.

That isn't the argument the upzoning crowd makes though. They say it will lead to affordable housing in the District, and I want to know how that will happen.

I am not sure which upzoning crowd you mean. I follow regional discussions. However its also of course possible that there is a limit on the number of people who would move from Arlington, Bethesda, to the District even if District rents/prices were lower. Not everyone works in the District, and believe it or not, some people just prefer to not live in the District.

Also of course upzoning can be done in conjunction with more committed AH, but I think we already had that discussion in the other thread. Personallly I am skeptical that the "keep density of Ward 3" crowd is sincere in wanting more committed AH in Ward 3.

If the mayor were serious about affordable housing, she would do two things:

The first is to increase the required minimum for inclusonary zoning units in eligible projects from 10 percent (works out to about 8 percent) to something meaningfully higher, like 15-20 percent. Even most PUDs contain only the bare statutory minimum. Certainly much higher IZ, like 30%, should be required for large projects that take advantage of any up-change in zoning to have greater height and density. Yet when this is suggested to OP staff, they fidget uncomfortably and tell you that development interests will fight any increase in IZ requirements.

The second is to protect the existing rent controlled housing stock. Yet the mayor's housing plan fails to acknowledge rent control. In Ward 3, for example, there are thousands of RC housing units, the second highest total by ward in the District. Yet these units, in older, less flashy buildings that are tempting targets for developers, are the most vulnerable. It will be much harder to add more affordable housing at the same time that we are losing a very significant contributing factor to affordable housing. It's like taking one step forward and two steps backwards.

The mayor and OP should embrace both of these policy initiatives .... unless their proposed upzoning and comp plan changes aren't really about affordable housing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Have you been on 66 during rush hour? I think there are many, many, many people who would pay *a lot* to cut their commutes.

Some would. Some wouldn't (some have a spouse who works in the suburbs, some are consultants with multiple job locations, some would never give up their "10" schools, etc)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hear this constantly asserted, as if it were self-evidently true, but cannot figure out how it could possibly be correct.

There's 700,000 people in the District. There's 5 million in the suburbs. If you add 30,000 housing units in DC, they will instantly be soaked up by people in the suburbs looking for shorter commutes.

As people move into DC from Falls Church and Rockville and Fairfax, their old places will open up for other people. Other people will move into those places from suburbs even further out, which will open up slots in places like Chantilly or Columbia or wherever else those people are coming from and that would put downward pressure on housing prices in the suburbs they've left.

But how does any of that lead to affordable housing in DC?

1. Our housing problem is regional. Reducing the cost of housing in the far suburbs is also good. Plus the people who move are better off at each step.

2. The suburbs are looking at the issue as well. Pro housing groups are supporting more development in MoCo, in Arlington, in Alexandria, etc. The metropolitan washington council of government is setting regional goals, with targets for each jurisdiction

3. To the extent more people live closer in, this reduces road congestion, pollution, traffic accidents, etc.

That isn't the argument the upzoning crowd makes though. They say it will lead to affordable housing in the District, and I want to know how that will happen.

I am not sure which upzoning crowd you mean. I follow regional discussions. However its also of course possible that there is a limit on the number of people who would move from Arlington, Bethesda, to the District even if District rents/prices were lower. Not everyone works in the District, and believe it or not, some people just prefer to not live in the District.

Also of course upzoning can be done in conjunction with more committed AH, but I think we already had that discussion in the other thread. Personallly I am skeptical that the "keep density of Ward 3" crowd is sincere in wanting more committed AH in Ward 3.

If the mayor were serious about affordable housing, she would do two things:

The first is to increase the required minimum for inclusonary zoning units in eligible projects from 10 percent (works out to about 8 percent) to something meaningfully higher, like 15-20 percent. Even most PUDs contain only the bare statutory minimum. Certainly much higher IZ, like 30%, should be required for large projects that take advantage of any up-change in zoning to have greater height and density. Yet when this is suggested to OP staff, they fidget uncomfortably and tell you that development interests will fight any increase in IZ requirements.

The second is to protect the existing rent controlled housing stock. Yet the mayor's housing plan fails to acknowledge rent control. In Ward 3, for example, there are thousands of RC housing units, the second highest total by ward in the District. Yet these units, in older, less flashy buildings that are tempting targets for developers, are the most vulnerable. It will be much harder to add more affordable housing at the same time that we are losing a very significant contributing factor to affordable housing. It's like taking one step forward and two steps backwards.

The mayor and OP should embrace both of these policy initiatives .... unless their proposed upzoning and comp plan changes aren't really about affordable housing.

If you increase the IZ requirement too much, you reduce development and get fewer IZ units (as well as fewer market rate units)

Are all those RC (actually rent stabilized, right?) units actually inhabited by low income HHs? Isnt retaining them by conversion to committed AH part of Bowsers plans?

She proposed putting $15 million into a Housing Preservation Fund — up from the $10 million it got last year — to help preserve existing units of affordable housing, but the Council eliminated the funding altogether.

[Anonymous]

You mean like the entirely rent controlled building on Connecticut Avenue that is being emptied out for an upscale renovation, with the expectation of fewer than 2 IZ units once the building has been redone?

The residents of the building who were forced out have all been Bowsered.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hear this constantly asserted, as if it were self-evidently true, but cannot figure out how it could possibly be correct.

There's 700,000 people in the District. There's 5 million in the suburbs. If you add 30,000 housing units in DC, they will instantly be soaked up by people in the suburbs looking for shorter commutes.

As people move into DC from Falls Church and Rockville and Fairfax, their old places will open up for other people. Other people will move into those places from suburbs even further out, which will open up slots in places like Chantilly or Columbia or wherever else those people are coming from and that would put downward pressure on housing prices in the suburbs they've left.

But how does any of that lead to affordable housing in DC?

1. Our housing problem is regional. Reducing the cost of housing in the far suburbs is also good. Plus the people who move are better off at each step.

2. The suburbs are looking at the issue as well. Pro housing groups are supporting more development in MoCo, in Arlington, in Alexandria, etc. The metropolitan washington council of government is setting regional goals, with targets for each jurisdiction

3. To the extent more people live closer in, this reduces road congestion, pollution, traffic accidents, etc.

That isn't the argument the upzoning crowd makes though. They say it will lead to affordable housing in the District, and I want to know how that will happen.

I am not sure which upzoning crowd you mean. I follow regional discussions. However its also of course possible that there is a limit on the number of people who would move from Arlington, Bethesda, to the District even if District rents/prices were lower. Not everyone works in the District, and believe it or not, some people just prefer to not live in the District.

Also of course upzoning can be done in conjunction with more committed AH, but I think we already had that discussion in the other thread. Personallly I am skeptical that the "keep density of Ward 3" crowd is sincere in wanting more committed AH in Ward 3.

Have you been on 66 during rush hour? I think there are many, many, many people who would pay *a lot* to cut their commutes.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hear this constantly asserted, as if it were self-evidently true, but cannot figure out how it could possibly be correct.

There's 700,000 people in the District. There's 5 million in the suburbs. If you add 30,000 housing units in DC, they will instantly be soaked up by people in the suburbs looking for shorter commutes.

As people move into DC from Falls Church and Rockville and Fairfax, their old places will open up for other people. Other people will move into those places from suburbs even further out, which will open up slots in places like Chantilly or Columbia or wherever else those people are coming from and that would put downward pressure on housing prices in the suburbs they've left.

But how does any of that lead to affordable housing in DC?

1. Our housing problem is regional. Reducing the cost of housing in the far suburbs is also good. Plus the people who move are better off at each step.

2. The suburbs are looking at the issue as well. Pro housing groups are supporting more development in MoCo, in Arlington, in Alexandria, etc. The metropolitan washington council of government is setting regional goals, with targets for each jurisdiction

3. To the extent more people live closer in, this reduces road congestion, pollution, traffic accidents, etc.

That isn't the argument the upzoning crowd makes though. They say it will lead to affordable housing in the District, and I want to know how that will happen.

The "upzoning crowd" says that upzoning will lead to a greater supply of housing in the District, and it will.

[Anonymous]

Higher density on its own won't lead to affordable housing. Ideally, upzoning Ward 3 would also be accompanied by a major program of building high-quality affordable housing in the newly dense zones there; if it were up to me, the city itself would build and own it (cutting out the profit motive). You could do bigger buildings on places like Wisconsin Avenue and Connecticut Avenue and then still also allow for non-single-family homes on side streets without dramatically changing the "leafy character" of the neighborhood; things wouldn't look much different if you had, say, two duplexes on a lot replacing one big house. That would lead to more housing, period, which -- in combination with protecting existing rent controls, expanding the affordable housing quotas on new construction, preserving IZ policies and also building new HIGH-QUALITY public housing -- would definitely help ease the housing affordability problem in our city and in Ward 3.

(I live in Ward 3, so before my neighbors tell me to advocate for this in my own neighborhood, I am doing exactly that.)

[Anonymous]

Not by themselves. You also need explicit laws in place to build dense housing and cap rents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Higher density on its own won't lead to affordable housing. Ideally, upzoning Ward 3 would also be accompanied by a major program of building high-quality affordable housing in the newly dense zones there; if it were up to me, the city itself would build and own it (cutting out the profit motive). You could do bigger buildings on places like Wisconsin Avenue and Connecticut Avenue and then still also allow for non-single-family homes on side streets without dramatically changing the "leafy character" of the neighborhood; things wouldn't look much different if you had, say, two duplexes on a lot replacing one big house. That would lead to more housing, period, which -- in combination with protecting existing rent controls, expanding the affordable housing quotas on new construction, preserving IZ policies and also building new HIGH-QUALITY public housing -- would definitely help ease the housing affordability problem in our city and in Ward 3.

(I live in Ward 3, so before my neighbors tell me to advocate for this in my own neighborhood, I am doing exactly that.)

The Office of Planning is pushing what they soothingly call "gentle density" that could lead, particularly within a half mile of Wisconsin Ave., to upzoning of single family residential streets by administrative (OP) decision. Gentle density calls for allowing up to 4 story multifamily buildings one quarter mile from any bus route and one-half mile from a Metro stop. Significant parts of the AU Park, Tenleytown, Chevy Chase DC, Cleveland Park, Cathedral Heights, McLean Gardens, Mass Ave. Heights neighborhoods could be impacted.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hear this constantly asserted, as if it were self-evidently true, but cannot figure out how it could possibly be correct.

There's 700,000 people in the District. There's 5 million in the suburbs. If you add 30,000 housing units in DC, they will instantly be soaked up by people in the suburbs looking for shorter commutes.

As people move into DC from Falls Church and Rockville and Fairfax, their old places will open up for other people. Other people will move into those places from suburbs even further out, which will open up slots in places like Chantilly or Columbia or wherever else those people are coming from and that would put downward pressure on housing prices in the suburbs they've left.

But how does any of that lead to affordable housing in DC?

1. Our housing problem is regional. Reducing the cost of housing in the far suburbs is also good. Plus the people who move are better off at each step.

2. The suburbs are looking at the issue as well. Pro housing groups are supporting more development in MoCo, in Arlington, in Alexandria, etc. The metropolitan washington council of government is setting regional goals, with targets for each jurisdiction

3. To the extent more people live closer in, this reduces road congestion, pollution, traffic accidents, etc.

That isn't the argument the upzoning crowd makes though. They say it will lead to affordable housing in the District, and I want to know how that will happen.

The "upzoning crowd" says that upzoning will lead to a greater supply of housing in the District, and it will.

It will. But it will not necessarily be affordable, unless the legal requirement to include more affordable housing is changed. Fat chance that Bowser and DC agencies that have been "captured" by monied development interests will champion that.