Opposition to affordable housing in Chevy Chase, DC
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The Washington Post has an article, "D.C.’s Chevy Chase neighborhood in uproar over affordable housing," about how proposals for a new Chevy Chase Community Center, incorporating a variety of improvements as well as housing above, which could be either 100% affordable housing or partial, are being met by opposition.
What bugs the s* out of me about this, is how DC goes in circles perpetually.
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For example, I remember in a DC planning meeting in the very early 2000s, learning about how the Hollywood branch of the Portland library system had a library and cafe on the ground floor, and 47 units of affordable housing above (" Putting housing above a public library, Portland takes another pioneering step toward urban density," Metropolis Magazine, 2002). That's 20! years ago.
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Similar proposals were made for some libraries in DC--the West End Library site was redeveloped as high income housing, and high quality affordable housing was built on H Street NE on the site of a modular, dinky library ("All-Affordable Apartment Building Headed to H Street NE," NBCWashington).
A proposal in Tenleytown ("Fenty Announces Development Partner for Tenley-Janney Site," DC press release, 2008) was successfully fought off, and in Southeast DC, in the Benning Road neighborhood, residents fought the idea fearing that pedophiles would live in the housing, and prey on children using the ground floor library ("Mixed-Use Messages," Washington City Paper, 2006).
Obviously, DC itself has successful examples of doing this, although more with replacing the civic asset rather than including it going forward. Still you can take the civic asset example from Portland, and the successful housing examples from DC and Portland, and apply it to Chevy Chase.
Although Chevy Chase is also right to be worried. DC has actively placed Section 8 tenants in apartment buildings up and down Connecticut Avenue, and many of the households have been a scourge, bringing the 'hood to Ward 3 ("D.C. housed the homeless in upscale apartments. It hasn’t gone as planned," Washington Post, "Mayor Bowser meets with Connecticut Ave. tenant leaders," Forest Hills Connection).
But buildings like The Baldwin Apartments show it can be done successfully, in a manner that improves the range of what's available in a neighborhood. But DC Government shows a lot that it's management capacity is weak.
Normally, I'd not recommend such a location because it's practically in Maryland, and low income residents need good transit access. OTOH, it would provide options for DC residents who might work in Montgomery County, and there is decent bus service on Connecticut Avenue, and the Friendship Heights Metrorail Station is a 15 minute walk to Wisconsin Avenue (and even faster by bike).
Labels: affordable housing, civic assets, housing policy and planning, management failure, mixed use development
posted by Richard Layman @ 5:39 PM&Permanent Link
7 Comments:
I'll just saw it is classic management by metric. Bowser wants x number of new housing units, and x number of income limited housing. They are cramming them where ever they can find a spot.
And that with DC population growth flatlining.
I'm sympathetic to part of the limits on population growth being the high cost of housing, but post pandemic you can see where the trend lines take you.
https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2023/subcounty-metro-micro-estimates.html
You had three huge drivers in population growth from 2010 to 2020; the "rebound" as DC became safer and more in line with trends, general growth in the entire metro area, and the millennial demographic bulge which wanted urban living in the 20s and 30s.
I completely agree there is a l ack of SFH in DC for sale in the 800K range (middle class two income with kids), and once you throw in schools and daycare costs it is completely unaffordable if you're not bringing in 250K as a household. Given land build out I don't see much opportunity there besides WOTR and former federal land.
The current Mayoral plans are not addressing the real problems and demographic trends.
Rather like her multimillion dollar push for more family housing; once we got through the demographic bulge of 18-25 year olds having babies the demand for family homeless shelters is down.
The site makes a lot of sense for the multiuse, but I'd be concerned about the costs. West End library conversion only worked as super luxe (kamala harris) housing.
That H Street NE project is reasonably impressive, although I never toured a unit. At least from the outside it looks quite good, compared to the brutalist 1960s stuff.
I was writing somewhere else that with the decline in crime (pre covid) certain advocates and elected officials thought they could ease up on retribution for "little crimes" like shoplifting or turnstile jumping, not recognizing that this encouraged more crime not less.
Then when hit with covid, problems accelerated.
What the advocates/officials didn't realize was how tenuous order can be, how easy it is to shift towards disorder.
And given the uptick in crime, not recognizing that in-migration to the city is dependent on public safety.
So it was really a "counter-productive" move.
I WONDER if public safety got back under control if the city could re-attract residential growth?
2. Yeah, with housing, with subsidized land costs, as Alex B. once pointed out to me when I wrote "sloppily", the demand in DC for quality SFH at the price point you mention is virtually unlimited.
The problem is that the land isn't available at a reasonable price for that cost.
And in America, people much prefer that SFH, ideally detached, but in a pinch--there seem to be enough people attracted to rowhouses--detached.
3. With that specific site, as you know there's a sweet spot for how many units you can build and costs. It's probably under the sweet spot.
I think that for DC, changing the crime trajectory won't solve the issues. It's basically that millennials are aging out. Some initiatives (free pre-k) kept them in the District for 2-3 years longer. New ideas like making insurance cover fertility will bring in a few gen z and keep some younger millennials.
As I said, the billions spent of school renovations will be tested in the next five years.
This is from Arlington -- again look at the scale.
https://www.arlnow.com/2023/07/11/arlington-could-buy-a-property-within-what-was-once-a-secluded-black-settlement-for-100-years/
6.5 acres being turned into park versus townhouses, because "black history". It's the new NIMBY.
There is no question that nimby whiteys will stake a claim for preservation in a historically african-american area if it means halting development. They'll easily use historic preservation to achieve their ends. But as can be seen on a map (and as the article states) the land in question is in a stream valley and most is today within a resource protection area (RPA). As noted, the land is/was "low-lying and flood-prone." Naturally at the time, it was sold off to blacks who otherwise would not have been 1) able to afford, or 2) allowed to live, on better ground. Most parkland is undesirable for building on. There are solid reasons why the land referenced should probably not be clear-cut and planted with townhouses. I'm not anti-development (I work in development) but not every vacant space needs to or should be built on.
Dan Malouff once commented that the default position is no development. The second default, almost equivalent, is park.
Don't know this particular site, but yes building in stream valleys or former lakes like Tulare, can be problematic. Tulsa had killing floods in the 80s. One of their mitigation responses has been to buy houses in flood prone aread.
The opportunity for the CC center isn't on the affordable housing side, it's to frame that side of CT avenue and clean up the streetscape. CC has so much potential and this is a real opportunity for the city to start that investment. What is critical is just doing it slightly higher than the stuff on the other side of street. I'm not sure you need the density -- there is a lot from Nebraska north.
I hope you participate in the planning process and make that point, repeatedly (eg for years I pressed the Union Station project on undergrounding certain access elements and they are finally doing it).
It reminds me that I've been meaning to write a piece based on public buildings in Salt Lake City and the environs on how they have a lot of design errors (architecture and urban design both) and just generally how they aren't utilized to create or strengthen neighborhood centers.
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