Reply to Say NO to Bowser on changing building height limits

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Yeah, not gonna get me to agree with you OP.  DC needs affordable housing near transit, and building up is the way to do it.  I don't think all of DC should be turned into downtown Bethesda, but I like the way neighborhoods like Navy Yard are developing with dense buildings and lots of amenities.   What I WOULD like to see is more aesthetically pleasing large developments - why are the new builds all so pastichey and ugly these days?  [/quote]

Do you think once they pass this, you'll get input in aesthetics?  :shock:  :lol:  No you wont. They'll be pastichey (whatever that means) and ugly and permanent. [/quote]

That's a great point for people who care about aesthetics (or their opinion of it) more than having enough housing for people of all income levels throughout the city and where it's needed.  So, you do you.[/quote]

What is happening is that Bowser’s policies are encouraging less affordable housing rather than more.  Case in point is an older modest apartment building on   Connecticut Avenue in Ward three. For the last couple of years, the developer owner has slowly been emptying out the rent control units. Now only a few tenants remain. The developer is using some zoning code tricks to get permission to construct a couple of added floors, resulting in a few more units overall in the building. The result will be an all-luxury building, with just two “inclusive zoning” units. Inclusive zoning units are at a higher income Level than rent controlled units.   So an entire building of transit-oriented, rent controlled units will be lost in exchange for only two IZ  units.

Moreover, hundreds of public housing units in DC are boarded up. What is Bowser’s plan to reconstruct such public housing?[/quote]

Something else funny that she did … that strikes me as very funny! The recent Post article about the Ct. Avenue building where rent controlled apartments were offered to folks with vouchers at higher than market rents. These folks now comprise the majority of the building. There have been problems with the behaviors of some of them  such as defecation in the hallways. The voucher recipients themselves are complaining about the bad apples and lack of city oversight. OK--
But APART from that... the city has commandeered already rent controlled apartments, for voucher recipient at above market prices? So--where affordable housing PREVIOUSLY existed for someone (elderly? student? middle class?) the city is not paying above market. So they have effectively lessened, not increased, affordable housing for all. See the problem?
[/quote]

It’s even sleazier than that. You were referring to another building on Connecticut Ave., Sedgwick Gardens which the Washington Post wrote about a couple weeks ago.  When the owner rents a rent controlled unit through the voucher program it effectively and forever removes that unit from the rent control stock.   So Bowser can boast that her voucher program is enabling formerly homeless people to live in a once nice building in Ward Three.   But thanks to the crime spree and other incidents in the building caused by some of the new voucher tenants or their guests, long time residents on fixed income in the rent controlled units are being intimidated and driven out. So between the voucher program directly removing units from rent control and other residents leaving effectively under duress, the result is that in a year or two the owners will have a complexity non-rent controlled building which they can re-develop and market as high-end housing.   Bowser gets a political win in the short term and her crony developer friends get a nice revenue bump from the vouchers up front but then a big financial windfall long-term.   Meanwhile a significant stock of rent controlled housing in Ward three near the metro is lost.[/quote]

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