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

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Yes, that is also an area city planners have been focusing on trying to get development and commerce into for years. But we in Ward 3 also have plenty of room to accommodate more housing and, specifically, more affordable housing.[/quote]

Where are the parcels of vacant land in Ward 3?  [/quote]

You don’t need vacant land to add more housing in Ward 3 if you change the zoning to allow more than one single family house per big lot. You also could build new multiuse buildings that include housing and commerce on lots that currently hold unleashed single-story commercial properties.[/quote]

Wouldn’t this fundamentally transform the character of neighborhoods like AU Park and Chevy Chase DC, which have quiet street with mostly single family residential ?[/quote]

I don’t think adding a few townhouses or small apartment buildings would significantly alter anything, but more to the point, so what? Why should only the people who can afford to buy houses here now be able to live here? If we had more varied kinds of housing stock here, more people could move to this neighborhood. [/quote]

There are other neighborhoods.  I might want to live on Park Avenue or in Pacific Palisades.  Should they build more affordable housing there for people like me?[/quote]

There aren't other neighborhoods in D.C. that are right next to multiple public transit options and major commercial corridors (like Wisconsin and Connecticut avenues) and have relatively low density that means they could easily accommodate more housing. The city, as a whole, needs more housing and more affordable housing, and it can't all be put in someone else's neighborhood just because you don't want it in yours.

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DC is riddled with  major commercial corridors and transit options. Our bus system (up/down and across is excellent). You are stating falsehoods.[/quote]

But most of those other neighborhoods aren’t zoned only for SFH homes on big lots, as the ones near transit and commerce in upper Ward 3 are, which means they’re already more densely developed. [/quote]

And yet...they're not. The Mayor's whole neighborhood around upper 16th is hardly more densely developed than around Wis and Conn in Ward 3. Are you actually from here?[/quote]

Yes, I live in Ward 3 and I grew up in the suburbs. What’s the Metro line that runs through the mayor’s entire neighborhood, like the Red line does here? And I bet lot sizes are bigger here west of the park then there, too. [/quote]

I guess you don't get out of Ward 3 much. I live in Ward 3 and never use metro. Mayorr's neighborhood has tons of buses (like we do) and HUGE lots. Do you leave your block? Errrr…..[/quote]

I lived in Ward 2 for five years, Ward 1 for four years, and Ward 4 for nine years before moving to Ward 3, and I take Metro daily (and used to commute by bus in some of the other areas). The point is that it's ridiculous not to allow denser development along a Metro line when there's a ton of available land for more housing here in Ward 3 if you change the laws. The availability of land for more housing in the mayor's neighborhood is irrelevant to that point, but even if it weren't, Ward 3 makes a BETTER candidate for more development because in addition to buses, we also have Metro.[/quote]

Where is the "ton of land" for more housing in Ward 3, of the size that could accommodate significant projects like Fanne Mae/City Ridge?  There are hardly any green or gray field sites left, unless the proposal is to contribute some public playgrounds to the GreaterGreaterDevelopment cause.[/quote]

The ton of land is in the existing lots, which could house far more people if it were possible to build something other than just single-family homes on them, and also in existing commercial properties along Wisconsin, some of which are one- or two-story buildings that could, instead, be large apartment buildings with retail on the ground floor. [/quote]

If you take Cleveland Park as an example and you have an number of Victorian or Four-Square houses on 40 to 45 foot lots, how do you build something else on them (other than maybe a garage-sized ADU if it fits in the back)?  It's a historic district, and you can't tear down the houses.  As for the commercial strip, historic preaervcatrion might let you go up a couple of stories, but not 10 stories.  Van Ness and most of Tenleytown are not historic districts, so there may be more flexibility there.[/quote]

The houses are charming 1920s houses though. Such a shame. My prediction is that developers would raze them and build mcmansions (still for single family) that fill the lots with little squiggles of green between. Kind of like that neighborhood by Foxhall.[/quote]

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