Reply to We need homes. A lot of homes. Not just affordable, but also middle-income homes.

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote]We need homes. A lot of homes. Not just affordable housing, but also middle-income ones, and even luxury homes. I agree with virtually every word of Hayley Bonsteel’s excellent piece for The Urbanist titled “How to Finetune Rep. Macri’s Single-Family Rezone Bill.” I have long been opposed to single-family zoning (not housing), for a number reasons but largely because of its malicious history. Bonsteel is correct in that we must return to our abundant housing roots.

However, abolishing single-family zoning will barely move the needle on our housing crisis. We can’t duplex and triplex our way out of this—though it’s a good step since we do need more diverse types of housing, and rapidly. The decades long fight just to add, and then liberalize accessory dwelling units, or re-legalize duplexes and small apartments in now single-family zones, will pale in comparison to the needed shift.

We sit at the threshold of a decades long housing crisis, and a steepening climate crisis (one our mayor seems wholly unprepared to take on). The region includes some of the smartest and most sophisticated companies in the world, but rather than come to terms with the depth of the scale of this crisis, we put on blinders.
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https://www.theurbanist.org/2020/01/29/housing-action-on-a-truly-massive-scale/

(2020)

About Seattle, but every word applies to the DC area EXCEPT that Seattle is farther along on zoning reform than we are.

We first need to upzone single family home lots.
That means Takoma Park. And Bethesda. And Ward 3 DC.  Allow duplexes, triplexes, pop ups, and ADUs.

Then we need even more homes than that.

And if we don’t do all these things, average people will be priced out of anything within 90min of DC.[/quote]

This sounds good on paper.   But in the real world people who can afford single family homes in DC clearly have options.  They will put up with some changes around the edges, but if you threaten their quality of life they will move.  Look at how well busing worked in the 1970s. It took cities about 30 years to recover from that mistake. Some have never recovered.  Let’s not try that again.  [/quote]

Those who live in SFHs in DC, especially Ward 3, pay a substantial portion of DC income tax revenues.  Why do you think DC has done reasonably well, financially, over the last few decades.  It is those taxpayers.  They want SFHs.  If you drive them out to the burbs, you lose their tax base.  And guess what, COVID has made clear that they do not need to be in the office.   [/quote]

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