Ward 3 Affordable Housing News Digest -- November 8, 2024 Election Edition
Government Activity
District of Columbia
Development Opponents Gain in Chevy Chase ANC
In Tuesday’s election, candidates with a history of vocal opposition to the District’s plan to redevelop the Chevy Chase Civic Core and add affordable housing appear poised to join the area’s Advisory Neighborhood Commission, ANC 3/4G. Results are still not official; D.C. will count mailed ballots postmarked by election day and received by November 15. It’s also not clear whether any drop box and provisional ballots remain to be counted. Numbers below are those posted November 8 at 5:30 p.m..
In Single Member District (SMD) 3/4G-07, Liz Nagy has a commanding lead (63%-36.6%) over Matt McFarland to succeed Zach Ferguson, who did not run again. In testimony last spring before the Zoning Commission, Nagy characterized the proposed Civic Core redevelopment as “a land grab of public land by the Mayor in a continuing giveaway program to private developers.” She also argued that existing rent-stabilized apartments on Connecticut Avenue “are more affordable than so-called affordable housing at the [Civic Core] will ever be,” and claimed disingenuously that “the city’s RFP does not actually even require housing on the . . . site.”
In a close race in SMD-03, Carol Grunewald appears likely to unseat incumbent Jim Nash, 52.5% to 46.9%. Grunewald’s testimony to the Zoning Commission (one of multiple submissions) said she is “strongly opposed to the proposed upzoning of Connecticut Avenue in Chevy Chase,” and that “Upzoning upper Connecticut Avenue, our Main Street, will destroy Chevy Chase.” She added that, “The replacement of our human-scale Main Street with tall, massive, over-scaled residential and commercial buildings **will** erase our community.”
Laura Phinizy defeated Mark Wolfe to succeed the retiring Michael Zeldin in SMD-04, 70.4% to 27.6%. Phinizy opposed the rezoning of Connecticut Avenue, writing to the Zoning Commission that “I am opposed to UpZoning on upper Connecticut Avenue because I think it will bring the disadvantages of density (more traffic, less parking, more crowded schools, pressure on sewage infrastructures) and the disadvantages of height (loss of light, sun, trees, loss of human-scale feeling), without offsetting advantages.” She also wrote that Connecticut Avenue already has a large number of affordable apartments, and that “The increased heights pushed by developers would generally bring luxury housing in a ratio exceeding 7:1. We don't need more luxury housing.”
Karrenthya Simmons, a staunch affordable housing supporter, has a slim lead over the more equivocal Mark Rooney in SMD-05 to succeed Peter Lynch, who did not run again. In the most recent update, Simmons leads by just 3 votes, 544-541.
ANC Chair Lisa Gore handily defeated Lee Mayer (61% to 37.9%) to be reelected in SMD-01. It’s not clear, though, whether the reconstituted ANC will return Gore to the chair. Mayer was a leading bike lane opponent, and also filed testimony opposing upzoning of Connecticut Avenue.
Peter Gosselin (SMD-06) and Bruce Sherman (SMD-02) were unopposed, and have been reelected over a small smattering of write-in votes.
No other Ward 3 ANC had more than one contested seat. ANCs 3E (Friendship Heights/Tenleytown) and 3C (Cleveland Park/Woodley Park), where development issues often arise, had no contested seats on the ballot.
In 3C’s SMD-01, however, there’s a write-in campaign pitting Samuel Littauer (endorsed by Greater Greater Washington and DC YIMBYs) against Lee Brian Reba, who previously served on ANC 3C from 2008 to 2022.
ANC 3E’s two SMDs on the American University campus had no candidates on the ballot, and will be decided by write-ins. AU political science major Asher Heisten filed an affirmation of write-in candidacy for SMD-08. His social media posts say he supports affordable housing for students and better bike lanes.
In ANC 3A (Middle Wisconsin Avenue), the race for SMD-03 is extremely close. Isaac Bowers currently has a 10-vote lead (340-330) over Maria Perisic. Bowers was endorsed by Greater Greater Washington and DC YIMBYs. Cleveland Park Smart Growth endorsed Bowers, but said both Bowers and Perisic “express support for allowing house-scale apartments in residential areas exclusively zoned today for single-family homes.”
In ANC 3D (Palisades/Spring Valley), Chuck Elkins, who was endorsed by Greater Greater Washington, has a wide lead over Andrew Heimert in the SMD-01 race.
Nathaniel Bowman, endorsed by Greater Greater Washington and DC YIMBYs for SMD-05 in ANC 3F (Van Ness), is badly trailing Adrian Jesus Iglesias.
ANCs Take Divergent Approaches to Proposed IZ Exemption for Wesley Seminary
At its November 6 meeting, ANC 3E (Friendship Heights/Tenleytown/AU Park) unanimously adopted a resolution opposing Wesley Theological Seminary’s petition to the Zoning Commission for a text amendment to permit Landmark Properties REIT to build a 9-story student apartment building on Wesley’s campus primarily for American University Students and to modify Inclusionary Zoning (IZ) requirements for the project. Wesley seeks a waiver of IZ requirements but proposes to make a payment of $8 million to fund IZ units at an off-campus development.
ANC 3E’s resolution expresses concern that the amendment as drafted would set a dangerous precedent of exempting an applicant from IZ requirements, and argues that the extraordinary relief sought requires an exemplary affordable housing proffer.
Meeting the same night, ANC 3D (Palisades & Spring Valley) approved a letter recommending that the Zoning Commission approve Wesley’s proposed text amendment. As to IZ, ANC 3D supports Wesley making off-campus investments and says, “we believe these maters can be satisfactorily resolved during the campus plan process that would follow any approval of these text amendments.”
In addition, ANC 3D notes that American University has approximately 5,000 more students than it can house on-campus, and says that “we are therefore
happy to see a proposal from Wesley that would begin to relieve this burden on the neighborhood and the District’s housing stock.”
The Zoning Commission is scheduled to hear the matter, Case No. 24-09, on November 18.
Emergency Rental Assistance Application Portal to Open November 20
District Links reported that the D.C. Department of Human Services (DHS) has announced that the Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERAP) application portal will open for fiscal year 2025 applications on November 20 at Noon. Unlike last year, the portal will remain open until pending applications reach the available funding. This marks a significant change from the past year, in which DHS staggered applications with quarterly portal openings.
Recently-passed legislation includes a modified definition for what qualifies as an emergency situation. A qualifying “emergency situation” is “the result of an unforeseen or unusual event, such as the loss of a job or high medical costs, that impacts the [applicant’s] ability to pay rent and that cannot be resolved without financial assistance.” The legislation also removes applicants’ ability to establish eligibility criteria by self-attestation, and requires that applicants provide documentation to show District residency, household income and assets, and household composition.
Office of Planning Receives Award for Northwest Neighborhood Plans
D.C.’s Office of Planning (OP) recently received three awards for its work, including one from the Lambda Alpha International Land Economics Society on October 28 recognizing OP’s collection of neighborhood plans to spur housing construction west of Rock Creek Park. OP received the Outstanding Plan or Program Award for a collection of neighborhood plans designed to advance the District’s housing goals west of the park. These plans allow for approximately 10,000 new housing units, of which over 2,000 could be dedicated affordable housing.
Maryland
MoCo Voters Shorten County Executive Term Limits
In Montgomery County, voters have approved, by a margin of roughly 68% to 32%, a Charter Amendment that reduces the term limit for the County Executive from three to two consecutive terms. This means that current County Executive Marc Elrich, a vocal opponent of the County Planning Board’s Attainable Housing Strategies Initiative, will not be able to run for a third term in 2026.
The Washington Post [gift link] notes that Elrich has won his two Democratic primaries by razor-thin margins before prevailing easily in the general election. Elrich blamed the outcome of the ballot measure on Republicans and developers:
“You’ve got Republicans who couldn’t beat me in a one-on-one election. You’ve got developers who couldn’t beat me one-on-one after spending millions of dollars trying to do that twice,” Elrich said at a news conference Wednesday. “The best strategy, as they knew, was to try to knock me out using term limits.”
Virginia
Housing Supporters Win Arlington & Alexandria Races
The Washington Post [gift link] reports that Democrats swept local offices in Northern Virginia.
Alexandria City Council member Alyia Gaskins, who was running uncontested in the general election after winning the Democratic primary, will become Alexandria’s first Black woman mayor. In addition, the full Democratic slate for Alexandria City Council — including incumbents Canek Aguirre, Sarah Bagley, John Taylor Chapman and R. Kirk McPike, were reelected. Gaskins and the four council incumbents all joined in the city council’s unanimous vote last November to approve the city’s Zoning for Housing/Housing for All zoning revisions.
In Arlington, Julius D. “J.D.” Spain Sr. declared victory over three others in a ranked-choice contest for the sole empty seat on the Arlington County Board. At the time of the Democratic primary, ARLnow said that “Spain was one of two Democratic contenders supporting the Expanded Housing Option [a.k.a. “Missing Middle”] in a race partly defined by debate over housing policy. . . . YIMBYs of Northern Virginia, an organization advocating for additional housing, hailed” Spain’s primary win.
The Post says that,
A vocal contingent of residents in both jurisdictions, including some Democrats, have voiced discontent over housing density, government transparency, school safety and education funding — issues that animated the contests in these highly educated, mostly wealthy suburbs outside D.C.
Yet in a year with a presidential election on the ballot, those concerns did not appear to be enough to tip the races . . . .
***
In Alexandria, council elections this year were dominated by divisions over several votes that promised to further urbanize this onetime bedroom community: a since-canceled proposal to build a new sports arena in Potomac Yard and the council’s vote last year to end single-family-only zoning — an effort that is now being contested in court. The Democratic council candidates and Gaskins had voiced support for both efforts . . . .
The pro-housing group YIMBYs of NoVa had endorsed Spain, Gaskins, and the four incumbent Democrats on the Alexandria City Council who successfully ran for reelection.
News/Commentary
District of Columbia
D.C. Could Quadruple Downtown Housing Stock
A new report by commercial real estate services firm CBRE, in coordination with the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development (DMPED), says downtown D.C. could nearly quadruple its downtown housing inventory by repurposing federal buildings and private office space and developing underused parcels. That’s according to a story by Ben Peters in Washington Business Journal [subscription req’d].
The study, which defined downtown as extending from the West End, Foggy Bottom and the E Street Expressway to Union Station on the east, detailed opportunities for the District to take its downtown housing stock from 20,000 to 80,000 units. CBRE’s presentation slides from an October 31 event are here.
Virginia
Alexandria Office Conversion Proposed
ALXnow reports that there’s a proposal to convert the long-vacant Victory Center, an office building at 5001 Eisenhower Avenue, into housing. Developer Stonebridge had previously submitted plans to demolish the building, but now a memo from City Manager Jim Parajon to the City Council indicates that’s no longer the plan.
The memo said the City of Alexandria and the Alexandria Economic Development Partnership evaluated the viability of the Victory Center remaining an office building and both agreed the building is obsolete for office use . . . .
The memo said the City of Alexandria’s financial participation, in the form of partial tax abatements on improvements to the building, could pave the way for the developer to make a significant number of the new units committed affordable and workforce units. The exact amount of housing being considered isn’t included.
Nationwide
Post-Election Commentary on Housing Issues
At The Atlantic [gift link], Annie Lowrey attributes Donald Trump’s victory primarily to voter concerns about inflation. She notes that,
Home prices have jumped an astonishing 47 percent since early 2020. This has made homeowners wealthier on paper, but has priced millions of people out of the housing market. The situation with rented homes is no better. Costs are up more than 20 percent since COVID hit, and have doubled in some places. The number of cost-burdened renters is at an all-time high.
In response to inflation, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates. Inflation statistics do not include the cost of borrowing, but many Americans experienced higher rates—the supposed cure for higher prices—as making costs worse. Mortgage rates more than doubled from their pandemic-era level, adding insult to home-buying injury.
In a blog called Rental Housing Economics with Jay Parsons, Parsons looked at potential impacts of Donald Trump’s election on rental housing.
Parsons thinks it’s now less likely we’ll see expansion of the Low Income Housing Tax Credit program, though it’s not totally off the board.
We could see some federal lands repurposed for housing construction with "ultra-low regulation" as Trump has repeatedly pitched.
There may be a big bipartisan push to remove regulatory roadblocks to housing construction. Back in 2019, Trump launched the "White House Council on Eliminating Regulatory Barriers to Affordable Housing" -- targeting zoning, rent controls, building codes, impact fees, parking requirements, environmental reviews, etc. -- but it wasn't launched until late in his presidency, so it didn't go anywhere.
Tariffs and immigration policy may push up the cost of new construction.
A Trump Administration is less likely to try to regulate apartments via Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as the Biden Administration did, or push to attach rent control to agency debt.
Regardless of who won this election, we were highly likely to see multifamily apartment supply decline over the next presidential term.
Parsons also reported on state and local ballot measures, mostly in California. Highlights:
California voters not only rejected Proposition 33 rent control expansion, but did so in resounding fashion, with nearly 62% voting "no" -- indicating bipartisan alignment that rent controls backfire on renters. This was the third time in 6 years that California voters have shot down rent control expansion.
California voters rejected Proposition 5, which would have lowered the vote threshold needed to pass local bond measures to fund housing and public infrastructure, from 66.67% to 55%.
San Francisco voters approved $8.25 million in annual spending for “rental subsidies for affordable housing developments serving extremely low-income households.”
Voters approved bond referendums for affordable housing in Rhode Island ($120 million), Charlotte, N.C. ($100 million) and Baltimore ($20 million).
Affordable Housing Finance also has a rundown of many of the same housing measures on state and local ballots identified above. It adds that Measure A is expected to pass with over 56% of the vote in Los Angeles County. The measure will replace an existing quarter-cent sales tax that voters approved in 2017 with a half-cent sales tax to support affordable housing and homeless services.
The Real Deal reports that Daniel Lurie, who appears to have defeated incumbent London Breed to be the next mayor of San Francisco, has a strategy to jumpstart housing development. In 2021, Lurie’s nonprofit joined Mercer Housing and the San Francisco Housing Accelerator Fund to build a 145-unit permanently supportive housing complex — 30% faster and at 25% lower cost than comparable projects. Among other things, Lurie plans to exempt multifamily projects from city transfer taxes, while temporarily lowering affordable housing requirements for market-rate apartment development and lowering fees for those projects.
According to AP News, voters in Portland, Oregon, have elected political outsider Keith Wilson as their new mayor. The CEO of a trucking company and founder of a nonprofit working to increase homeless shelter capacity, Wilson “ran on an ambitious pledge to end unsheltered homelessness within a year of taking office. The Portland native says he will accomplish this in part by increasing the number of nighttime walk-in emergency shelters in existing facilities such as churches and community centers.” Wilson won in an election in which Portland voters used ranked-choice voting for the first time.
On his blog City of Yes, Ryan Puzycki observes that “city dwellers appear to have voted for urban abundance and against urban dysfunction, even as they still largely voted for Harris. Coast to coast, voters expressed dissatisfaction with housing scarcity,” among other things.
He noted that “nearly 60% of San Franciscans voted against a statewide ballot initiative that would have legalized [expanded] rent control—perhaps the most expensive way to create a housing shortage . . . .” Voters in Oakland and Los Angeles also voted against rent control expansion.
Los Angeles voters elected to increase funding for homelessness services and affordable housing.
In Austin, Texas over the past two years, a YIMBY supermajority on City Council has delivered major land use reforms, including the abolition of parking mandates and a reduction in minimum lot size requirements for single-family homes. Mayor Kirk Watson, who shepherded the reforms through City Council, won about 50% of the votes against four reform-skeptical challengers, but it’s too early to tell whether he will avoid a runoff by exceeding the 50% threshold. Of the three other incumbents on the Council, only the candidate who voted against the housing reforms lost reelection—to a pro-housing candidate.
Calendar
November 12 — Book talk: Greater Greater Washington policy directors Alex Baca and Dan Reed talk with The Atlantic’s Jerusalem Demsas about her new book, On the Housing Crisis: Land, Development, Democracy. 6:30-8:00 p.m. (doors open at 6:00), at People's Book, 7014 Westmoreland Avenue, Suite A, Takoma Park. Details and registration here.
November 13 — Next regular meeting of ANC 3A (Middle Wisconsin Avenue), 7:00 at the McLean Gardens Ballroom and via Zoom. A meeting notice with the agenda and Zoom link is here.
November 14 -- D.C. Zoning Commission public meeting, 4:00 p.m., online. Among other things, the Commission will decide whether to set down for a public hearing Case No. 24-12, the application of Harrison Wisconsin Owner LLC (an LLC of the Donohoe Companies) for a Planned Unit Development comprising approximately 127 new residential units at 42nd and Harrison Streets in Friendship Heights.
November 15 — Public hearing before the D.C. Council Committee of the Whole on B25-1003, the proposed “Vacant to Vibrant Amendment Act,” 11:00 a.m., Room 412 (Track B), John A. Wilson Building, 1350 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. The hearing notice is here.
November 18 — The D.C. Zoning Commission will hold a public hearing on a proposed zoning text amendment to allow Wesley Theological Seminary to build a new dorm on the Wesley Campus for Wesley & American University students. The proposed text amendment would add a new provision to the campus plan regulations’ commercial uses restriction and amend the student housing Inclusionary Zoning (IZ) exemption to allow for the development of the proposed dormitory. 4:00 p.m., online. The hearing notice is here, and the Zoning Commission docket is here.
November 18 — Next regular meeting of ANC 3C (Cleveland Park and Woodley Park), 7:00-9:00, online.
November 19 — Next regular meeting of ANC 3F (Van Ness), 7:00-9:00 p.m., online.
November 20 — (In-person) kickoff event for Montgomery Planning’s Friendship Heights Sector Plan Update, which will revise the 1998 plan. The update will build on the recent Friendship Heights Urban Design Study and address zoning, land use, housing, transportation, parks, schools, and more. 6:30 - 8:30 p.m. at Wisconsin Place Community Recreation Center, 5311 Friendship Boulevard, Chevy Chase, MD. RSVP here.
November 25 — Next regular meeting of ANC 3/4G (Chevy Chase). Hybrid, on Zoom and in-person at the Chevy Chase Community Center, 7:00-8:30.
December 2 — Montgomery Planning will hold a public hearing on the proposed Bethesda Downtown Plan Minor Master Plan Amendment. 6:00 p.m. at the M-NCPPC Wheaton Headquarters Auditorium, 2425 Reedie Drive, 2nd Floor, Wheaton. The existing plan caps total development in Bethesda at 32.4 million square feet. The proposal recommends removing a specific development level in the Bethesda Overlay Zone (BOZ) in favor of project-specific impact mitigation and improvements. In addition, the existing plan requires a minimum of 15% Moderately Priced Dwelling Units (MPDUs) in new development projects; the proposal recommends extending existing incentives for higher percentages of MPDUs to projects with the minimum MPDUs, but with family-sized and/or deeply affordable units. Find more details here.
December 2 — The D.C. Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) will hold a Ward 3 Housing Listening Session for residents “to learn about the District’s housing resources and programs, learn about the District's progress on affordable housing, and to share your housing needs and concerns with DHCD.” 5:30 p.m. Details to be announced.
December 3 — (Virtual) kickoff event for Montgomery Planning’s Friendship Heights Sector Plan Update, which will revise the 1998 plan. The update will build on the recent Friendship Heights Urban Design Study and address zoning, land use, housing, transportation, parks, schools, and more. 7:00-9:00 p.m. on Zoom. RSVP here.
December 12 — Next regular meeting of ANC 3E (Friendship Heights & Tenleytown), 7:30 p.m., online.
December 19 — The D.C. Zoning Commission will hold a public meeting to consider final action on its proposal to rezone the Chevy Chase Civic Core and surrounding blocks of Connecticut Avenue. 4:00 p.m., online.
To let us know of something we should add, please email christopher.vaden78@gmail.com.