It’s that time again, time to rewrite Washington, D.C.’s Comprehensive Plan. This plan influences every decision done by the city’s agencies, including the Zoning Commission who is in charge of what can be built where in the District. Curbed sister site Vox reported that because of this time of change a new, diverse political coalition has been formed to “defeat the blocking power of change-averse incumbent homeowners.”
This coalition is a mixture of affordable housing proprietors, real estate developers, urbanists, and poverty advocates. Groups include developer EYA, anti-poverty group Bread for the City, and organizations like the Coalition for Smarter Growth and local blog Greater Greater Washington. To put it simply, the group is composed of YIMBY groups, the opposite of NIMBY (which stands for Not in My Back Yard).
According to Vox, the most “conceptually significant” proposed change to the Comprehensive Plan is to increase the overall amount of homebuilding, while “reprioritizing the creation and preservation of affordable housing, and strengthening protections of lower-income tenants,” as stated by David Whitehead, Greater Greater Washington’s top housing organizer.
After over eight months of input from housing and development stakeholders, the amendments proposed include focusing on housing with at least three bedrooms in order to accommodate families and adding housing for all income levels in every part of the city with an emphasis on transit and commercial corridors.
For a full overview of this new group’s plans, be sure to check out this document, uploaded by Greater Greater Washington. Below, see the full list of members that have given input to the amendment proposals:
- All Souls Housing Corporation
- Bread for the City
- Coalition for Nonprofit Housing and Economic Development
- Coalition for Smarter Growth
- D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute
- Enterprise Community Partners
- EYA
- Greater Greater Washington
- Latino Economic Development Center
- Local Initiatives Support Corporation
- The Menkiti Group
- MidAtlantic Realty Partners
- Neighborhood Legal Services Program
- Trammell Crow Company
- United Planning Organization
- Ward3Vision
The Office of Planning will release their official amendments in the fall with reviews and votes on a final version held in early 2018.