February 11, 2025 Ward 3 Affordable Housing News Digest
District of Columbia
D.C. Council Formally Approves Transfer of RFK Stadium Campus
On February 4, the D.C. Council unanimously adopted a resolution approving the transfer of jurisdiction of the RFK Stadium campus from the National Park Service to the District of Columbia. In a letter urging the Council to pass the resolution, Mayor Bowser said, "I look forward to working with the Council to actualize the campus’ potential for creating housing, jobs, amenities, sports and recreation, green space, parks, and more."
In a statement ahead of the vote, Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen said, “We shouldn’t pencil in a stadium and all the needed parking lots as our starting point. We should pencil in a huge range of housing — some large apartment buildings, some family-friendly rowhomes, and some housing specifically set aside as affordable and for seniors.” He said the site simply can’t “do it all,” and that “creating new neighborhoods of housing absolutely is an economic revenue generator.”
At District Links, Chris Kain reported that at-large Councilmember Robert White, Chair of the Housing Committee, identified housing as the city's greatest need and therefore a priority for the site. Ward 7 Councilmember Wendell Felder, whose district includes the RFK campus, described the redevelopment as a once in a generation chance to drive economic growth on the eastern end of the city, provide affordable and mixed-use housing, enhance recreational opportunities, and perhaps accommodate a new football stadium.
Ward 5 Councilmember Zachary Parker said in a statement that “the future uses of the land must maximize benefits that accrue to all District residents.” He listed several, including “using the land to deliver more units of market rate and subsidized affordable housing.”
At The 51st, Martin Austermuhle points out that the property lease provides that any proposed housing or commercial development can only start after federal environmental and historic preservation reviews, as well as an archeological survey. Building a new stadium would not be subject to those requirements, presumably because that would not constitute a change from the prior use of the property.
OP to Propose Zoning Changes to Implement Connecticut Avenue Development Guidelines
At the February 3 meeting of ANC 3C’s Planning, Zoning, Housing and Economic Development Committee, the Office of Planning (OP) gave a presentation about its plans to seek zoning changes for Cleveland Park and Woodley Park to implement the Connecticut Avenue Development Guidelines. OP expects to submit the draft amendments to the Zoning Commission this spring, in time for a setdown hearing in May and a public hearing this summer.
OP indicated that the map and text amendments that it plans to submit will be consistent with the zoning recommendations spelled out in the Guidelines, i.e.:
For Connecticut Avenue in Cleveland Park, where the Comp Plan calls for Medium Density Residential/Low Density Commercial, new height limits of 75 feet (plus a penthouse of up to 15 feet) — up from 45 feet plus penthouse;
For Woodley Park, where the Comp Plan calls for High Density Residential/Low Density Commercial, new height limits of 90 feet (plus a penthouse of up to 15 feet) on the west side of Connecticut Avenue — up from 55 feet plus penthouse; and 75 feet (plus a penthouse of up to 15 feet) on the east side of Connecticut Avenue — up from 50 feet plus penthouse.
OP is scheduled to make a similar presentation regarding zoning implementation of the Guidelines at ANC 3C’s next regular meeting on February 18, and also one on zoning implementation of the Wisconsin Avenue Development Framework at ANC 3E’s meeting on February 13.
Maryland
More Housing N.O.W. in Montgomery County
At Greater Greater Washington, Dan Reed takes a look at “More Housing N.O.W. (New Options for Workers),” the set of bills introduced in late January by Montgomery County councilmembers Andrew Friedson and Natali Fani-González. Among other things, the Zoning Text Amendment would allow duplexes and triplexes in certain zones along the county’s denser corridors — parts of Connecticut and Georgia Avenues and University Boulevard, for example — where currently only single-family houses are allowed by right.
The package consists of four parts, including speeding up the permitting process for developers who repurpose vacant commercial properties as townhomes and apartments, and allowing them to forego property taxes for 25 years in exchange for paying a lump sum up front. The council would also direct $8 million for first-time homebuyer assistance and $4 million for building workforce housing.
Finally, the county would allow duplexes, townhomes, and small apartment buildings as “an optional method of development” on lots zoned for single-family homes along major arterial roads. Builders would have to set aside 15% of any new homes (if there are at least three) for workforce housing.
Hearings on the legislative package are set for March 11. Bethesda Today also had a story on the package of proposals.
Commentary by Adam Pagnucco in Montgomery Perspective said his sources in the local real estate industry thought the proposals would have little to no impact, and would be outweighed by the negative effect on investment of Montgomery County’s rent control law and building energy performance standards.
Housing Bills in the Maryland General Assembly Session
Dan Reed of Greater Greater Washington outlined some of the housing related bills coming up in the 2025 Maryland General Assembly session. Highlights include:
Governor Wes Moore and housing secretary Jake Day have offered a new proposal to provide more homes near the state’s big job centers — the Housing for Jobs Act of 2025, a.k.a. House Bill 503/Senate Bill 430. Under the bill, each year Maryland would set a statewide housing goal, goals for six different regions of the state, and goals for each county within those regions, all based on a 1.5 jobs-housing ratio. In regions where the ratio is too high — meaning more homes are needed — the state would limit that county’s ability to deny new housing proposals until it fills the gap.
The Maryland Department of Transportation (MDOT) has proposed the Transit-Oriented Development Reform Act of 2025, House Bill 80/Senate Bill 190. This bill would require that cities and counties allow more types of development near rail stations, and not require builders to provide more parking than they anticipate needing. It would also give MDOT the ability to decide how to use land it owns at transit stations, instead of being held to local zoning requirements that may be too restrictive.
House Bill 38, sponsored by House Majority Leader David Moon, would make it harder for counties to block housing because of school overcrowding, or to request state funds for school construction money when they could make room by redrawing boundaries. The goal is to unlock housing production and make better use of limited state funds.
House Bill 489/Senate Bill 436, sponsored by Delegate Vaughn Stewart and Senator Jeff Waldstreicher, would direct the Maryland Department of Labor to study changing building codes to allow single-stair apartment buildings, which could make new housing both cheaper and more flexible.
Federal
Turner Confirmed to Lead HUD
On February 5, the Senate confirmed Scott Turner as Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) by a vote of 55-44. In the first Trump administration, Turner oversaw the promotion of the opportunity zone program. As summarized by Bisnow,
In his role as HUD secretary, he will direct programs that offer rental assistance to low-income households, support and boost homeownership, and enforce fair housing laws. One of his priorities will be the privatization of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored entities that together guarantee most U.S. mortgages . . . .
Turner seems likely to focus on supply-side solutions to the affordable housing shortage. As reported by AP News, at his confirmation hearing last month, Turner said, “As a country, we are not building enough homes. We need millions of homes, all kinds of homes — multifamily, single family, duplex, condo, manufacturing housing, you name it — we need housing in our country for individuals and families to have a roof over their head and to call home.”
NPR reports that Turner told senators during confirmation hearings that HUD needs to streamline programs, specifically citing the Section 8 housing voucher program, which many landlords find cumbersome. He also said burdensome regulations slow down construction and add to the cost of housing, and that he would work with states to ease their own rules.
Bisnow says Turner moves into his position as new relaxed lending standards for affordable housing development, proposed by the Biden administration, go into effect. The new rules move the maximum loan-to-value ratio up from 87% to 90%, which could “translate to millions in equity that developers don’t have to worry about shoring up.”
Trump Executive Order Could Include Clearing D.C. Homeless Camps
The Washington Post reports that President Trump “is expected to issue an executive order that would seek to ratchet up penalties and enforcement of violent and petty crimes, clear homeless camps, and clean graffiti in the District of Columbia.” Details of the executive order may shift, but early drafts have included language that would order homeless encampments cleared.
News/Commentary
District of Columbia
Hotel Harrington Purchased for Development
Axios reports that The Georgetown Company, the developer behind the forthcoming Four Seasons Residences in Georgetown, is buying the Hotel Harrington in downtown D.C. The company hasn’t decided how it will use the property; a press release said possibilities include another hotel, housing, a higher education site or a social club. The company’s managing director Peter Armstrong said, "This is a blank canvas with multiple options we are considering to help build the future of downtown." But the company did tell Axios that the building’s facade will be preserved.
When the Harrington closed its doors in 2023, housing advocates led by the Wardman Hotel Strategy Team lobbied for the District to acquire the building for affordable housing. The Strategy Team takes its name from its unsuccessful effort to persuade the city to acquire the Wardman Park Hotel in Woodley Park for conversion to affordable housing.
Carmel Partners acquired the Wardman property and plans a 2-building, 867-unit apartment complex there. Only about 70 of the apartments are expected to be affordable, the minimum required by the inclusionary zoning (IZ) program. Carmel’s website lists the project status as “held.”
Unpaid Rents Pushing D.C. Affordable Housing Owners Into Distress
In Bisnow, Jon Banister writes about Meadow Green Courts, a complex of 51 three-story brick buildings just off East Capitol Street in Ward 7. Most of its 435 units are reserved as affordable to low-income residents. It’s owned by E&G Group, a “Northern Virginia-based, mission-driven housing provider [that] has spent decades operating and preserving affordable housing in D.C., but . . . is now hanging on by a thread.”
The tenants at Meadow Green Courts have racked up more than $6 million in unpaid rent, and after its principals spent more than $4 million out of their own pockets to pay the bills, E&G has run out of money. Meadow Green Courts is scheduled for a foreclosure auction March 12. “If the foreclosure goes through, the protections that keep rents affordable for residents making 60% of the area median income could be removed.”
Five of D.C.’s largest housing owners — Enterprise Community Development, WC Smith, CIH Properties, Donohoe Cos. and E&G — provided data to Bisnow showing they are sitting on more than $30 million combined in total rent delinquencies.
“Mission-driven housing providers like Enterprise are funding operating deficits at levels that are simply unsustainable,” Enterprise President Janine Lind said in a statement. “As a result, affordable housing communities are in danger of default and foreclosure, which would mean affordability covenants disappear, and low-income residents lose their homes.”
The rent delinquency issue stems from pandemic-era policies that allowed renters to stay in their units without paying rent as long as they had a pending rental assistance application. Tenants were allowed to avoid eviction despite piling up tens of thousands in past-due rent. As a result, landlords say their incomes have dropped below the level needed to cover mortgage, insurance and tax payments — putting them at risk of losing assets to foreclosure.
The D.C. Council passed the Emergency Rental Assistance Reform Emergency Amendment Act of 2024 at the beginning of October, but hasn’t passed any additional measures, and the action taken thus far hasn’t solved the problem.
And although $80 million was diverted from the Housing Production Trust Fund to stabilize distressed properties, that money still hasn't been sent to property owners. Bisnow says the “rescue funds are targeted toward income-restricted housing with subsidies, but tens of thousands of naturally occurring affordable housing units aren’t eligible. These properties face the same issues with high rent delinquencies . . . .”
E&G principal Tom Gallagher said, “You can be a slumlord in this environment, but you cannot be an honorable housing provider in this environment.” If properties are sold at foreclosure auctions, he expects they will be taken over by “a different type of housing provider” that doesn’t have a mission to maintain properties while preserving affordability.
Mayor Muriel Bowser has scheduled an event for February 13, to announce “comprehensive legislation to protect DC’s existing affordable housing and ensure DC can build more housing in the future.”
D.C. and Federal Officials See Potential Development of Southwest Office Cluster
The Washington Post [gift link] reported on the January 28 meeting of the Public Buildings Reform Board, which is drawing up recommendations to the administration for drastically cutting federal real estate. Michael Peters, Trump’s appointee to oversee government real estate as commissioner of the Public Buildings Service, told the reform board that an initial review shows that the administration can reduce the federal government’s footprint in the D.C. area by as much as 50%.
The meeting focused on the cluster of outdated office buildings just south of the National Mall, near L’Enfant Plaza and along 14th Street, Southwest. “Where an imposing fortress of federal government bureaucracy now stands, District officials see an opportunity to create a neighborhood of new homes, retail businesses, parks and plazas.” Marcel Acosta, director of the National Capital Planning Commission spoke of the Southwest federal zone as “the big hole in the doughnut,” separating the recreation and tourism of the Mall from the restaurants, hotels, offices and residences of the Wharf.
Joseph Ruocco of the architecture firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill presented “renderings of what the area could look like if the federal government hands off its aging buildings there. He displayed images of parks and plazas where buildings now stand; of new residences and retail; and of a welcoming, tree-lined 10th Street Promenade linking the Mall to the Wharf.”
Ward Memorial AME Church Seeks Zoning Amendment to Increase Affordable Housing
On January 30, Ward Memorial AME Church in the Mahaning Heights neighborhood of Northeast D.C. filed an application with the Zoning Commission, Case No. 25-01, for a map amendment to increase the allowable height and density of residential development on the church’s property. The application states:
The Applicant requests this Map Amendment to rezone the Property from the RA-1 zone to the RA-2 zone in order to allow for the Property to be redeveloped with more affordable housing that may include grand-family and senior housing.
Housing Affordability for Early Childhood Educators
The D.C. Policy Center has published a report on housing affordability for early childhood educators in D.C. It’s the third in a three-part series that examines housing challenges for D.C.’s essential workers using the example of early childhood educators.
“The report’s key findings highlight that housing costs are too high for early childhood educators, making a second income necessary to afford housing expenses . . . . However, many educators do not have access to this additional financial support and are priced out of housing in the District.”
More broadly, workforce housing is a significant challenge in the District of Columbia. Many service sector workers, especially those in essential roles such as teachers, early childhood educators, police officers, firefighters, healthcare workers, and hotel and restaurant workers, struggle to find affordable housing in D.C. Their modest salaries, coupled with the relatively high cost of housing in the District, often force them to choose longer commutes for cheaper housing. This means many essential workers, despite supporting the basic functioning of the city, are priced out of the District.
Blog Posts Reach Opposite Conclusions About Whether Private Sector Production Can Solve the Affordable Housing Crisis
In a blog post for The Center for Social Housing & Public Investment, William Merrifield argues that Washington D.C. has seen an extraordinary amount of housing produced by the private sector in the past decade, and yet rents have still risen dramatically. He makes the case that 84% of all new units built in D.C. between 2005 and 2018 were Class A apartments, and that often affordable housing was demolished to make way for them.
“Unleashing the private market,” Merrifield says, means strong luxury housing production coupled with ballooning costs. Wall Street has effectively financialized the housing market, and as a result, the housing market’s primary purpose is not to house people, but rather to create wealth for institutional investors. In response to arguments that oversupply will lead to price reductions, he says a rent drop 2% or 3% because of overproduction in the next several years would be immaterial in light of how high rents have already gotten.
Housing production is key to solving the affordable housing crisis, but rather than subsidize the private section, “we must seek alternative solutions outside these profit-obsessed forces.” The answer, he says, lies in developing a system of social housing.
At his blog Cornerstone, Luca Gattoni-Celli reaches the opposite conclusion. He says there are three ways we can increase housing production: (1) Let private developers build lots of new profit-driven housing; (2) Build significantly more subsidized and income-restricted affordable housing; or (3) Stand up a vast public enterprise to build and manage a huge amount of new housing units. Gattoni-Celli finds the first option most convincing: “New housing absolutely does not have to be affordable to make housing in general affordable.” We can help everyone by building a lot more housing. “Only developers and private capital markets have a demonstrated the capacity to do so. We must have abundance to have affordability.”
Gattoni-Celli says that subsidized housing “does some real good, but it does not scale.” Increasing subsidies to match the scale of the housing crisis would cost well beyond what is politically realistic. And as to public/social housing, “Our country lacks the state capacity and bureaucratic competence, at any level of government, to manage such huge development projects and serve as a compassionate landlord to millions of people.”
Gattoni-Celli explains the process of filtering, also called “moving chains,” whereby people move up to the best housing they can afford, creating vacancies in less expensive homes that can be filled by other people with less money. He concludes that, “The future is mutually beneficial abundance, not clawing for every dollar of subsidy from a political class . . . obsessed with cultural warfare.”
D.C. Metro Area
The Effect of Trump’s Executive Orders on the Local Housing Market
Urban Turf reported on thoughts from Bright MLS chief economist Lisa Sturtevant about what President Trump’s executive orders could mean for the D.C. area housing market. To the extent Trump cuts agency and department staff, that could lead to more people leaving the area to find new jobs. “Demand for housing in the area would cool, setting up the potential for a drop in home prices, a loss in housing equity for current homeowners, and a drop in local property tax revenue.”
Ending remote work pushes in the opposite direction: “If federal workers are required to be in the office five days a week, expect a resurgence of interest in homes near employment centers such as the District of Columbia and near transportation and transit. Some workers who moved further out during the pandemic will be looking to sell and move closer in once they are required to commute to the office five days a week.”
Nationwide
NAHB Says Trump Tariffs Will Raise Housing Costs
President Trump has temporarily deferred his threat to impose 25% tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico, but the threat remains. On January 31, the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) wrote Trump a letter pointing out that the tariffs would slow down the domestic residential construction industry at a time when the country is facing a severe housing shortage and affordability crisis.
An ongoing challenge facing home builders is the cost and availability of building materials. Since January 2021, inputs to residential construction saw price increases of just over 30%. Our sector relies heavily on a diverse and cost-efficient supply chain for building materials such as lumber, steel, gypsum and aluminum. While home building is inherently domestic, builders rely on components produced abroad, with Canada and Mexico representing nearly 25% of building materials imports. Imposing additional tariffs on these imports will lead to higher material costs, which will ultimately be passed on to home buyers in the form of increased housing prices.
Separately, an article by Ashley Fahey in The Business Journals [subscription req’d] says “many in homebuilding, construction and development say the tariffs as planned would inevitably increase the prices on key materials” shipped from Canada, Mexico and China. “Those price increases would then be passed along to consumers.”
The CEO of a California-based real estate company told Fahey that tariffs imposed during the first Trump administration “added $9,000 in costs on average per single-family home, primarily because of tariffs on Canadian lumber, drywall from China and Canada, and pressed steel and aluminum from China.” He added that tariffs this time around would likely result in more developments being paused, changed or canceled.
Fahey says that, “While the Trump administration has touted plans to roll back regulations and open up federal land for development as ways to address the cost of housing, economists widely project that the White House's tariff and immigration policies will cause costs to surge. Those costs will most likely be passed to renters and homebuyers.”
Owning a Home Is Now More Affordable Than Renting
According to ATTOM's 2025 Rental Affordability Report, owning a home in the United States is more affordable than renting a three-bedroom property in about 60% of the markets around the nation. For those who can manage a down payment, owning is the more affordable choice, despite median home prices generally rising faster over the past year than average rents around the country.
Senior Housing Demand Will Exceed Supply
An article in Bisnow says the U.S. needs more than 560,000 new units of senior housing to meet the demand expected by 2030. After a huge dropoff in senior housing development during the pandemic, fewer than 200,000 senior housing units are on the way at current development rates, 360,000 units short of the projected 2030 demand.
The U.S. population of those aged 80 and over is projected to grow by more than a quarter by 2030 to nearly 19 million. Statistics indicate that when people become octogenarians, they typically begin looking to move into a senior facility. The projected shortage could leave them priced out or on a waitlist.
New projects are stalled as developers are unsure whether the growing population will translate to rent gains and high occupancy rates. Senior housing projects that do move forward are expected to be designed for the wealthiest seniors by offering luxury design, fine dining, and top-tier amenities.
How Progressives Killed American Mobility
In a long essay in The Atlantic [gift link] under the title “How Progressives Froze the American Dream,” Yoni Applebaum writes that many Americans are stranded in communities with declining prospects, and lack the practical ability to choose where they want to live. Those who do move are typically heading not to the places where opportunities are abundant, but to those where housing is cheap. This sclerosis traces back, he says, “to the self-serving actions of a privileged group who say that inclusion, diversity, and social equality are among their highest values.”
A brief summary can’t do the essay justice, but here are a few excerpts:
To stave off change [in Greenwich Village], [Jane] Jacobs and her allies asserted a proprietary right to control their neighborhood. It belonged, they argued, to those who were already there, and it should be up to them to decide who would get to join them. Over the decades that followed, that idea would take hold throughout the United States. A nation that had grown diverse and prosperous by allowing people to choose their communities would instead empower communities to choose their people.
***
The opposition to mobility appears concentrated in progressive jurisdictions; one study of California found that when the share of liberal votes in a city increased by 10 points, the housing permits it issued declined by 30 percent. The trouble is that in the contemporary United States, the greatest economic opportunities are heavily concentrated in blue jurisdictions, which have made their housing prohibitively expensive. So instead of moving toward opportunity, for the first time in our history, Americans are moving away from it — migrating toward the red states that still allow housing to be built, where they can still afford to live.
***
Not far from where I live, in Washington, D.C., two lawn signs sit side by side on a neatly manicured lawn. One proclaims NO MATTER WHERE YOU ARE FROM, WE’RE GLAD YOU’RE OUR NEIGHBOR, in Spanish, English, and Arabic. The other reads SAY NO, urging residents to oppose the construction of an apartment building that would house the new neighbors the other sign purports to welcome. Whatever its theoretical aspirations, in practice, progressivism has produced a potent strain of NIMBYism, a defense of communities in their current form against those who might wish to join them. Mobility is what made this country prosperous and pluralistic, diverse and dynamic. Now progressives are destroying the very force that produced the values they claim to cherish.
Applebaum’s new book, “Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity,” will be released February 18. He is scheduled to speak on February 26, 7:00-8:00 p.m., at Politics and Prose at The Wharf, 610 Water St., S.W.
Does Single-Family Zoning Protect Property Rights?
In his blog Rent Free, libertarian Christian Britschgi responds to a recent essay in The Federalist that makes a conservative case against New Urbanism and its "assault" on property rights and the single-family zoning restrictions that allegedly protect them. Britschgi’s response is, essentially, “a pox on both their houses.” “Contradictory as it may seem, the argument that choice and property rights are best protected by regulations that limit choice and property rights is not uncommon in housing policy discussions.”
In The Federalist essay, Jonathan and Paige Bronitsky claim that the New Urbanists “want to bulldoze the suburban American dream.” They say New Urbanism has two faces:
On one end, you have high-density urbanism, where developers — in cahoots with machine politicians — cram as many people as possible into apartment blocks, eliminating cars and personal space under the guise of environmentalism and a sense of community. On the other, you have the faux-traditional, highly regulated enclaves of Seaside and Celebration, Florida, prohibitively expensive and ironically more artificial than the suburban developments they criticize.
Britschgi says the Bronitskys offer “a contradictory tangle of critiques.” For example:
"Machine politicians" are trying to force everyone into family-unfriendly high-density housing. Instead, we need "policies that encourage more single-family homes." That would also seem to involve politicians putting their thumbs on the scales of how people live.
Profit-seeking multifamily developers cynically pushed for the erosion of local zoning rules just to squeeze a buck. Do the builders of single-family homes operate their businesses as charities?
Turning his fire on both suburban partisans and urbanist advocates of all political persuasions, Britschgi says,
Each side also either ignores, or outright advocates for, regulations that limit the type of housing they think is second-best and subsidizes their preferred option.
The Bronitskys' essay is a good example of this hypocrisy being deployed in favor of the suburbs and standard zoning regulations.
But their New Urbanist targets do this all the time too.
Britschgi argues instead for a libertarian approach to land use:
Free markets give people want they want at the price they're willing and able to pay. It's a setup that respects people's freedom while sorting out their preferences in the aggregate.
Odds are free markets in housing would produce lots of single-family homes in low-density suburbs, lots of walkable communities full of middle housing that's missing no more, and lots of urban blocks where apartments and ground-floor retail go together like milk and coffee.
Short Takes From Around the Country
In the spring of 2023, Sacramento, California, offered the residents of a homeless camp a lease that called for city-owned trailers and guaranteed use of a plot of city land as a “safe parking site” until each resident secured “individual, permanent durable housing.” Shelterforce has the story of how that agreement fell apart, leading to the city clearing the site in August 2024.
Next City reports that in Nashville, Tennessee, a Massachusetts-based community development financial institution (CDFI) and a local developer are working together to adaptively reuse vacant hotels as mixed-income housing.
A Bisnow article about ski resort owners pursuing big new mixed-use projects mentions that at Vail Mountain, Colorado, a resort is developing a fourth base village that will include new workforce housing on a site previously planned for high-end condos. And Lake Tahoe's largest ski resort has received county approval for a 94-acre development that, in addition to condos, hotels and timeshares, would include housing for 396 employees.
According to The Colorado Sun, Colorado Democrats have introduced legislation, House Bill 1169, that would allow religious and educational institutions to build housing on their land — whether it’s zoned for residential construction or not. It allows for up to three stories, but churches could build even higher densities if neighboring buildings are already taller.
Portland, Oregon legalized fourplexes throughout the city in 2021. In the first year after legalization, they constituted just 1% of new housing citywide. But now they’re taking off. New data show they rose to 7% of new housing in the second year, and 26% in the third.
Cambridge Day reports that on February 10, the Cambridge, Massachusetts City Council voted to allow four-story buildings to be built as-of-right in all residential areas, with an additional two-story bonus for buildings with inclusionary units on lots of more than 5,000 square feet. “The new zoning ordinance bans single- and two-family zones, dubbed ‘exclusionary zoning’ by city officials and residents alike for preventing denser and cheaper housing, with the intent of addressing the city’s housing affordability crisis.”
Gothamist has a story on how dedicated affordable apartments in New York City sit empty for months because the city’s bureaucratic rules require landlords to sift through long lists of people registered in the city’s housing lottery system, instead of permitting owners to list them on the market or allowing would-be renters to apply directly.
Calendar
February 12 — Mayor Bowser is scheduled to make an announcement on “comprehensive legislation to protect DC’s existing affordable housing and ensure DC can build more housing in the future,” 12:30 p.m., Ceremonial Room, Room 509, John A. Wilson Building. 1350 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W., or online at mayor.dc.gov/live.
February 13 — Next regular meeting of ANC 3E (Friendship Heights & Tenleytown), 7:30 p.m., online. The agenda includes a presentation by the Office of Planning regarding zoning implementation of the Wisconsin Avenue Development Framework. It also includes an update from Federal Realty Investment Trust regarding its PUD project in Friendship Heights. Register for Zoom attendance here.
February 18 — Next regular meeting of ANC 3F (Van Ness), 7:00-9:00 p.m., online. The agenda with a Zoom link is here.
February 18 — Next regular meeting of ANC 3C (Cleveland Park and Woodley Park), 7:00-9:00, online. The agenda and a registration link are here. The agenda includes a presentation from the Office of Planning on zoning implementation of the Connecticut Avenue Development Guidelines.
February 19 — Next regular meeting of ANC 3A (Middle Wisconsin Avenue), 7:00 p.m., virtually via Zoom.
February 20 — Urban Land Institute (ULI) will present the final recommendations of the Van Ness / UDC / Intelsat Technical Assistance Panel (TAP), 3:30-5:00, in person at UDC and online. Details here.
February 24 — Regular meeting of ANC 3/4G (Chevy Chase), 6:30-8:00, virtually via Zoom.
February 25 — Performance oversight hearing for the Office of Zoning, Office of Planning, and Department of Buildings before the D.C. Council’s Committee of the Whole, 11:00-6:00. Streamed live at www.ChairmanMendelson.com/live.
February 25 — Special meeting of ANC 3/4G (Chevy Chase), 6:30-8:30 to discuss the ANC’s standing committees. Virtual.
February 26 — Performance oversight hearing for the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development before the D.C. Council’s Committee on Business and Economic Development, 9:30-1:30. Streamed live at www.youtube.com/channel/UCbFwXXcbCuQk3-zlwqe97mA/streams.
March 3 — Performance oversight hearing for the D.C. Housing Finance Agency, Department of Housing and Community Development, and Housing Production Trust Fund before the D.C. Council’s Committee on Housing, 9:30-5:30. Streamed live at www.youtube.com/@committeeonhousingdc.
March 5 — Performance oversight hearing (public witnesses only) for the Department of Human Services and Interagency Council on Homelessness before the D.C. Council’s Committee on Human Services, 9:30-3:00. Streamed live at www.dccouncil.gov.
March 6 — Performance oversight hearing for the D.C. Housing Authority before the D.C. Council’s Committee on Housing, 9:30-5:30. Streamed live at www.youtube.com/@committeeonhousingdc.
March 7 — Performance oversight hearing (government witnesses only) for the Department of Human Services and Interagency Council on Homelessness before the D.C. Council’s Committee on Human Services, 9:30-1:30. Streamed live at www.dccouncil.gov.
March 11 — Montgomery County Council hearings on the More Housing N.O.W. legislative package, 1:30 and 7:00 p.m., Council Office Building, 100 Maryland Ave, Rockville, MD - Third Floor Hearing Room, and via Zoom. Sign up to testify here.
To let us know of something we should add, please email christopher.vaden78@gmail.com.