Anonymous
08/18/2021 18:17
Subject: We need homes. A lot of homes. Not just affordable, but also middle-income homes.
Anonymous wrote:
For the record, people who used this post to castigate liberals. I'm a liberal. Very, very liberal. What I angers me, is the "smart growth" folks is their insistence that they get affordable housing in Ward 3. There are a lot of less expensive places to live in this city. But you want to live with the other rich white people. Ward 8. PG County, parts of MoCo, have less expensive housing. Buy a condo. DO you know how many families of four are living in a 650 square foot apartments in NYC with hour long commutes on a loud smelly trains? you all need to grow up.
It isn't that the smart growth advocates want the housing for themselves. Most of them live in million + homes. They want affordable housing for their communities because they believe in 1) more density supporting the local retail 2) economic and racial diversity and 3) environmental benefits of having more people live in a compact urban center rather than plowing up more fields for single family homes.
Are you opposed to those three things?
The funny thing about Smart Growth advocates is that they abandon those three principals en masse as soon as a developer wants to plow up fields and cut down trees in Clarksburg or Dale City. Casey Anderson rails against the 270 expansion but he helped create the need for the 270 expansion when he approved all of that greenfield density, and he's been advocating for increasing density in Olney of all places.
Anonymous
08/18/2021 18:07
Subject: We need homes. A lot of homes. Not just affordable, but also middle-income homes.
Anonymous wrote:What is market-rate development? It seems we have market-rate development now.
Market rate development means: anyone is free to build the housing they want on their residential property and neither zoning boards nor historical commissions nor abutters nor NIMBYs get a veto.
Free to build the housing you want if you own the land. That’s what we need.
(I am a homeowner and am not a developer. Also, socially shun that trumper. Unbelievable to me he has anyone in DC that will talk to him after working for Trump. Some people have crappy values and no morals.)
Anonymous
08/18/2021 17:54
Subject: We need homes. A lot of homes. Not just affordable, but also middle-income homes.
Anonymous wrote:
For the record, people who used this post to castigate liberals. I'm a liberal. Very, very liberal. What I angers me, is the "smart growth" folks is their insistence that they get affordable housing in Ward 3. There are a lot of less expensive places to live in this city. But you want to live with the other rich white people. Ward 8. PG County, parts of MoCo, have less expensive housing. Buy a condo. DO you know how many families of four are living in a 650 square foot apartments in NYC with hour long commutes on a loud smelly trains? you all need to grow up.
It isn't that the smart growth advocates want the housing for themselves. Most of them live in million + homes. They want affordable housing for their communities because they believe in 1) more density supporting the local retail 2) economic and racial diversity and 3) environmental benefits of having more people live in a compact urban center rather than plowing up more fields for single family homes.
Are you opposed to those three things?
Of course rich people living in $1M homes don't want more SFHs. They don't care what everyone else is left with, especially the poors.
They want more diverse people in their neighborhood, which based on your response, or lack thereof, you are opposed to. And they are fine with people living in SFH, but it is unsustainable to have all of the acres of land just be SFH. So you are basically opposed to the three elements I posted. Fair enough.
These are just developer talking points to persuade DC to relax zoning for much more market-rate, dense development. Most people can see through this cynical spin. For example, the chair of Cleveland Park Smart Growth owns a business that was the national pollster for the Trump campaign while Trump was promising the save neighborhoods from affordable housing. And then he and other Smart Growth lobbyists pivot for other clients to push Smart Growth as encouraging affordable housing, racial diversity and environmental benefits? Such horse hooey!
You keep bringing up this Trump dude. Hint champ, nobody cares. It's polling. Nobody. Cares.
Thousands of new jobs are being created in DC. Market-rate development is needed. Sorry to burst your bubble. Take Econ 101.
Oh yes, the conservative "take econ 101" retort. Those of us who have lived here under several mayors have seen how it's actually played out as opposed to the theoretical academic concept. Whether it's individuals who are poorer being displaced around the Navy Yard to make room for $1million housing or the opportunity hoarding boom that is happening around H Street NE, generally speaking, only those who occupy the top 5% socio-economically can afford many of these new builds. As the PP pointed out the issue is that often the big development class only cares about making money or the issues is that some people just don't want to live with people who are BIPOC, human beings who experience poverty, or neighbors experiencing housing insecurity. As the PP mentioned, "Ward 8. PG County, parts of MoCo, have less expensive housing" or by a condo.
People live in the whitest places they can afford.