Category: District of Columbia
CSG in the News: “Program Helps DC Homeowners Provide Low-Cost Housing — and Build Wealth”
by JARED BREY, Next City, FEBRUARY 18, 2020
…With the ADU D.C. program announced last August, UPO [United Planning Organization] is trying to find ways to make ADUs cheaper and easier to build for moderate-income homeowners like [homeowner Lawrence] Foster. The program is starting as a small pilot: just two handpicked homeowners are participating so far, according to Kay Pierson, director of the community reinvestment division at UPO. It was created in partnership with the Coalition for Smarter Growth, and supported with a $180,000 grant from Citi Community Development. (Note: Citi Community Development also provides funding to Next City.) A lot of UPO’s programs are focused on helping people in poverty, with services like emergency rental assistance, Pierson says. But the ADU D.C. program is part of a series of efforts aimed at “asset development” — helping build wealth in lower-income communities — she says. The organization went looking for homeowners who earned up to 80 percent of Area Median Income (AMI is $121,300 for a family of four in Washington), and who had good credit, steady employment history, and equity in their homes. And the partners are hoping that the pilot program demonstrates ways that the city and others can help moderate-income homeowners create more ADUs….
The Coalition for Smarter Growth in Washington had been advocating for those kinds of rule changes for several years. The benefits just pile on top of one another, says Cheryl Cort, the Coalition’s policy director: ADUs can take advantage of partially developed and underused space, provide space for seniors to age in place or for family members with special needs, provide rental income for homeowners, and promote small-scale living, which has a smaller impact on the environment.
“And adding rental housing options can bring new types of housing to established neighborhoods that might have few rental options today, including high-priced neighborhoods close to the Metro or in-demand schools and other amenities,” Cort says. “It’s natural diversification of the housing stock, rather than just being uniform.”
Still, Cort says, it can be expensive to build a new unit, even when taking advantage of existing space. She says she’s talked to a lot of architects who are approached by homeowners to consult about adding an ADU, only to have the homeowners walk away when they hear the cost, which is typically around $150,000, according to Cort. (Other cost estimates for ADUs here.) As part of the ADU D.C. program, the Coalition is producing a manual for homeowners to help navigate the permitting process, and the partners are also working with the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs about ways to make permitting easier and faster for accessory dwelling units. And they’re exploring how financing programs might be scaled up to provide financial help for more moderate-income homeowners.
Last fall, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser announced a goal of producing 36,000 new homes in the District by 2025, with at least 12,000 of them being affordable to low-income residents. The city’s Housing Equity Report released at the same time has specific affordable-housing production targets for 11 different areas of the District. Those targets will help focus the city’s efforts, Cort says. And accessory dwelling units can be part of the mix of new housing that helps meet that goal, especially if the city can find ways to help moderate-income homeowners house lower-income tenants. The ADU D.C. program is meant to help show that tailored assistance and financing can produce more units.
“It’s a retail game,” Cort says. “We’ve got to be working individually with homeowners.”
This article is part of Backyard, a newsletter exploring scalable solutions to make housing fairer, more affordable and more environmentally sustainable. Subscribe to our thrice-weekly Backyard newsletter.
View the full story in Next City here.
RELEASE: CSG joins with United Planning Organization to Announce Launch of ADU DC, an Accessory Dwelling Unit Initiative in Washington, DC
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE | Aug 6, 2019
United Planning Organization Announces Launch of ADU DC, an Accessory Dwelling Unit Initiative in Washington, DC
Initiative will catalyze affordable rental housing and increase financial stability for lower-income homeowners in Washington, DC
WASHINGTON, DC: Today, the United Planning Organization announced the launch of ADU DC, a pilot initiative to make accessory dwelling units (ADUs) more accessible to lower-income homeowners in Washington, DC. The initiative is presented by United Planning Organization in collaboration with Coalition for Smarter Growth and founding corporate supporter Citi Community Development.
An ADU is a secondary dwelling unit on a single family home lot, such as a basement or garage apartment or a free-standing structure. A 2016 change to DC’s zoning regulations allows for ADUs to be built as a matter of right in certain low-density residential neighborhoods. ADUs benefit homeowners by creating an income stream, while adding lower cost and affordable housing in existing neighborhoods.
ADU DC aims to help qualified homeowners build ADUs on their properties; give greater access to affordable and lower-priced housing in the District; and add housing stock by educating homeowners about ADU development, zoning, permitting, design, and financing.
“ADU DC has the potential to empower residents to create affordable housing in their own communities,” said Dana Jones, President and CEO, United Planning Organization. “Through this innovative approach, homeowners will be able to increase property values, age in place, build intergenerational wealth and grow new skill sets in development and property management.”
“In Washington, DC, approximately one in three Black residents is a homeowner. Yet, research shows that on average, Black households have lower home values and lower incomes than their White counterparts. As a result, Black households in DC have a net worth 81 times lesser than White households,” said Robert Burns, Senior Vice President, Citi Community Development. “Accessory dwelling units present a unique opportunity for homeowners to increase their incomes and begin to close the wealth gap. By supporting ADU DC we aim to help enable more homeowners to boost their financial resilience, while adding much-needed affordable housing for renters in the region.”
“In 2016, DC reformed its restrictions on accessory apartments, now we must ensure that homeowners, especially moderate and low income homeowners, can take full advantage of this new opportunity,” said Cheryl Cort, Coalition for Smarter Growth.
As part of the initiative, the Coalition for Smarter growth and UPO will produce “how to” guides, a report of barriers, a Homeowner’s ADU manual, a policy brief on financing for lower-income homeowners, and procedural recommendations for government.
ADU DC was announced at a multisector launch event featuring a panel of experts that highlighted current regulatory barriers, financing, and case studies from ADU initiatives nationwide.
“Mayor Bowser has set an ambitious goal for DC to create 36,000 more homes, 12,000 of which must be affordable,” said Polly Donaldson, Director, DC Department of Housing and Community Development. “In order to achieve this goal we must think differently, be bolder, and create new affordable housing tools; ADUs fit that bill and this initiative brings us one step closer to our goal.”
DC’s rapidly rising housing prices pose dire challenges to low income families. In the last decade, the city has lost half of its low-priced and affordable housing. DC’s lower-income households increasingly pay more than half of their incomes for housing, or are pushed out of the District’s housing market altogether. For older homeowners, rising values have been both a threat and an opportunity. Rising property taxes that follow increased values can be a threat to long-time homeowners on low and fixed incomes. But higher property values also mean greater wealth that can be used for retirement and shared with the next generation. This opportunity is especially important for African American homeowners who experience wide gaps in wealth with their White counterparts.
About United Planning Organization
United Planning Organization is a human and community development organization. As the Community Action Agency for Washington DC, UPO’s federally-mandated purpose is to help people lift themselves out of poverty. UPO surveys DC residents to learn the gaps in community needs and invents ways to bridge those gaps by uniting people with opportunities. A staff of 400 helps over 50,000 DC residents each year, with impacts in education, employment, health, housing counseling, and in strengthening families and communities.
About Citi
Citi, the leading global bank, has approximately 200 million customer accounts and does business in more than 160 countries and jurisdictions. Citi provides consumers, corporations, governments and institutions with a broad range of financial products and services, including consumer banking and credit, corporate and investment banking, securities brokerage, transaction services, and wealth management.
About Coalition for Smarter Growth
The Coalition for Smarter Growth promotes walkable, inclusive, and transit-oriented communities in the Washington DC region, and the land use and transportation policies and investments needed to make those communities flourish. CSG combines grassroots advocacy with policy expertise, media communications, and relationships with elected officials to advance smart growth. After many years of effort, CSG helped reform ADU zoning restrictions for DC in 2016, and since then has worked to bring down the barriers to building ADUs.
CONTACT:
Lauren Kannry
lkannry@thorpesearl.com
202.491.1001
ADU DC Initiative Presentations
CSG in the News: New report card gives Metrobus service in the District a failing grade
CSG in the Washington Post: New report card gives Metrobus service in the District a failing grade
But an analysis says there’s hope for a better bus system if recommendations are carried out.
by Luz Lazo, Washington Post, July 10, 2019
Despite efforts to improve bus service in the District to make it a more attractive option for travel, it continues to be slow and unreliable, with some saying the situation has reached a crisis point.
A report card to be released Wednesday gives Metrobus a grade of D — barely passing.
“Transit is really in crisis,” said Cheryl Cort, policy director at the Coalition for Smarter Growth, which co-sponsored the report along with the MetroHero commute app. “We have been losing riders for quite a few years, and the speed and reliability of the bus just continues to decline.”
Metrobus’s grade was pulled down by some of its biggest — and well-known — problems: buses are commonly stuck in traffic gridlock, they aren’t properly spaced, and they are chronically late.
The good news is the system, which for a long time was an afterthought in a region that prioritizes Metro, is getting some attention….
The report card unveiled Wednesday concurs with the recommendations by the [Metro-led Bus Transformation] transportation project. Among them are making boarding easier through mobile or offboard payment systems; enhancing affordable options with free transfers between bus and rail and reduced-fare passes for low-income riders; and improving the rider experience with efficient next-bus technology, modern fleets, clear system maps, and safe and accessible bus stops….
The District this summer launched the H and I street NW bus lanes, aimed at speeding travel of about 70 buses an hour in the downtown corridors. Hill said that though the bus lanes are only a pilot, she hopes they will be made permanent. The District is also moving toward construction of a long-planned bus lane on 16th Street NW and a transitway in the congested K Street corridor, which carries a bulk of the routes servicing downtown.
“This is the right direction. These are the things D.C. should be doing,” she [co-author Jennifer Hill] said.
[Poll: Majority of Washington-area residents support bus-only lanes.]
Jeff Marootian, director of the District Department of Transportation, said the recent investments in the downtown bus lanes, along with the other bus priority plans, will make buses more attractive to riders and are part of the city’s strategy to decrease congestion and make the District’s transportation more sustainable.
Read the full Washington Post story here.
RELEASE: DC Bus Service gets a “D” on its Report Card
Press Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 10, 2019
CONTACT
Cheryl Cort, Coalition for Smarter Growth
202-675-0016
cheryl@smartergrowth.net
DC Bus Service gets a “D” on its Report Card
Groups highlight how DC buses can be faster and more reliable
D.C. – Today, Coalition for Smarter Growth and MetroHero released a first-ever performance-based DC Bus Report Card. Developed from real-time data collected in May 2019 by MetroHero, the report shows DC’s major bus routes suffer from poor reliability and sluggish speeds, factors that are likely major contributors to the system’s declining ridership. The analysis of the report card can be found here.
“Our analysis shows the challenges Metrobus riders encounter on a daily basis. On the city’s priority corridors with high-ridership routes, we found service to be generally unreliable and unpredictable, with speeds slower than 10 mph,” said Jennifer Hill, Ph.D., Lead Researcher at MetroHero.
“The slow speeds and lack of on-time reliability are contributing factors in declining ridership. But we know how to turn this around: give buses priority on the streets, speed up boarding, balance bus stop spacing, and provide customer-focused service,” said Cheryl Cort, Policy Director for the Coalition for Smarter Growth.
MetroHero analyzed bus performance for 34 routes in DC’s highest ridership corridors in May 2019, focusing on three key factors: adherence to designated headways, adherence to scheduled arrival times, and average travel speed. Bus speeds on these routes averaged just 9.5 mph over the entire month, confirming other data showing that Metrobus speeds across the entire system have been getting slower every year.
“We hope that this report will be a useful tool to inform decision-makers about where DC’s buses need the most help and what solutions will have the greatest impact for riders,” said Hill.
DC and Metro are stepping up to implement improvements to bus service. DC recently implemented pilot bus lanes on H and I Streets downtown, and is planning to run bus lanes on 16th Street and K Street in the near future. The city has also implemented traffic signal priority and queue jumps on several corridors.
On an average weekday, Metrobuses transport over 200,000 riders around the District of Columbia to and from work, school, doctor appointments, grocery stores, entertainment, and more. Buses offer transit service far beyond the reach of Metrorail.
“This is an important moment for DC’s bus service. Buses are the most efficient use of limited public street space for moving people, and critical if the city is to grow without choking on traffic. We are encouraged by recent city actions, but urge the Bowser administration to make moving buses truly a top priority on our city’s streets,” said Cort.
About the Coalition for Smarter Growth
The Coalition for Smarter Growth is the leading organization in the Washington DC region dedicated to making the case for smart growth. Our mission is to promote walkable, inclusive, and transit-oriented communities, and the land use and transportation policies and investments needed to make those communities flourish. Learn more at smartergrowth.net.
About MetroHero
MetroHero (www.dcmetrohero.com), which began as a simple app designed to visualize real-time train positions in the D.C. Metrorail system, has been monitoring and providing performance metrics on WMATA’s trains for over three years. The app has gained popularity with many area commuters, averaging roughly 15,000 unique users every month, largely due to its unique real-time visualizations of the current state of the Metrorail system, from train delays and service outages to user-driven reports of inconveniences such as station crowding and broken intercoms. In September 2018, the MetroHero team extended a number of their train performance tracking algorithms to the Metrobus system, which they used to gather performance data for the report card.
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Making DC’s Buses the Best: A forum on the first performance-based D.C. Bus Report Card and next steps for faster, more reliable bus service for all.
Join us for the release of the first D.C. Bus Report Card. A short presentation will be followed by an interactive discussion with leading decision-makers, transit experts, and advocates sharing ideas on how to make D.C.’s bus system the best way to travel on city streets.
WHEN: July 10, 2019, 6:30-8:30 pm
WHERE: Georgetown University’s Downtown Campus, 640 Massachusetts Ave NW, Washington, D.C.
There is no charge to attend this event, but pre-registration is required.
Representatives from the Coalition for Smarter Growth and Metro Hero will present the results of the first ever performance-
based report card for D.C. buses and a panel of local experts will discuss how this assessment ties in with other studies being done to improve the bus. The panel will include Councilmember Mary Cheh, DDOT Director Jeff Marootian, and representatives from WMATA, TransitCenter, and the Greater Washington Partnership. Uwe Brandes, of the Georgetown Urban & Regional Planning Program will moderate.
Join us on July 10 to learn about new ideas and next steps to improve bus service in the District and hear updates on current projects at DC Department of Transportation and Metro! Through this discussion, we hope to inspire public involvement and support for the best possible bus service in the District of Columbia and the National Capital Region.
Co-hosted by: Coalition for Smarter Growth, MetroHero and Georgetown SCS Urban & Regional Planning Program
photo credit: Cheryl Cort
CSG partnering with MetroHero on “Report card” to determine if D.C. Metrobus service makes the grade
“Report card” will determine if D.C. Metrobus service makes the grade
May 9, 2019 — The Coalition for Smarter Growth (CSG) is partnering with MetroHero to release a report card on Metrobus service in D.C. The report card will grade bus service on speed and reliability.
The MetroHero team will be monitoring activity on 34 major bus routes in D.C.’s priority corridor network throughout the month of May, evaluating each route based on metrics such as average travel speed, spacing between buses, and how closely the buses keep to their scheduled arrival times. The results will be publicized in a digital “report card” which will assign grades to each of the routes based on their performance in each of these different areas, inspired by a similar project by the Bus Turnaround Coalition in New York City. The resulting analysis will form the basis of a public report written by CSG and MetroHero that will identify the greatest problems faced by D.C.’s priority bus routes today and make recommendations for how to improve their performance in the future.
The reports will be made available to the public in June.
MetroHero (www.dcmetrohero.com), which began as a simple app designed to visualize real-time train positions in the D.C. Metrorail system, has been monitoring and providing performance metrics on WMATA’s trains for over three years. The app has gained popularity with many area commuters, averaging roughly 15,000 unique users every month, largely due to its unique real-time visualizations of the current state of the Metrorail system, from train delays and service outages to user-driven reports of inconveniences such as station crowding and broken intercoms. In September 2018, the MetroHero team extended a number of their train performance tracking algorithms to the Metrobus system, which will be used to gather performance data for the report card.
CSG (www.smartergrowth.net) is the leading organization in the Washington, D.C. region dedicated to making the case for smart growth — promoting walkable, inclusive, and transit-oriented communities, and the land use and transportation policies to make those communities flourish. In 2017 and 2018, CSG organized non-profits and partnered with the business community in the MetroNow campaign to win $500 million per year in dedicated funding for Metro. CSG serves on the Bus Transformation Study executive committee, previously led and won an 81-mile bus rapid transit plan for Montgomery County, Maryland, and has led other campaigns for improved transit.