Press Alert June 27, 2024
Save DC Public Land: Working for a Safe, Truly Affordable & Racially Equitable U Street
Contact: Debby H. 202-854-1822, the1617project@savedcpublicland.org
U Street ANC Poised to Support Luxury Rezoning at 1617 U Street Again.
Local Commissioners Unfazed by Science Showing High-Density Development Will Most Certainly Push Out Remaining Lower-Income Families and Residents
1617 U Street approvals are on the table without any housing vulnerability mapping completed, without any displacement studies on the record & no outreach to affected remaining Black community
Washington, DC — Advisory Neighborhood Commission 1B meets tonight at a special meeting to discuss the future of 1617 U Street for the first time in more than a year.
Last April the Commission voted to support MU10 High-density rezoning at 1617 U Street but did so without all the data and information now available to them.
This time Commissioners may knowingly support a revised rezoning application still representing a dramatic land use change, one that experts show will imminently displace the remaining lower-income residents in the area as a pattern and practice with MU10 zoning throughout the District.
Moreover, expert review shows that any suggestion that Inclusionary Zoning will somehow mitigate the threatened displacement fails the reality that the “affordable” IZ housing is unaffordable most families making less than $55,000 annually (DC’s minimum wage is about $35,000/yr).
The DC Office of Planning has not refuted with any contrary evidence showing how MU10 will harm the existing neighbors.
At last week’s ANC-1B Economic Development Committee, as chaired by fresh-faced housing-theoretician, Commissioner Tucker Jones, a draft resolution was teed up that was exactly the same as the ANC1B April 2023 resolution and with some tweaks was signed off by the Committee.
Commissioner Tucker Jones referenced that since the area “has already been gentrified” and that historic Black displacement was nearly complete along U Street, it was ok to ignore the expert studies that show MU10 zoning will threaten the remaining community struggling to stay.
Arlene Feskanich, a longtime nearby neighbor opposed to high-density MU10 luxury zoning said: “We have to expose the ANCs for what they have become, representatives of developers.”
A rendering of MU10 zoning on most of the 2-acre site at 1617 U Street in the context of the low rise area of the Stivers Section along U Street and what was known as Black Broadway.
Experts have pointed to custom zoning or special purpose zoning as an alternative to MU10 zoning that will allow for more refined transitions in the building heights and provide for substantially more deeply affordable housing units that are family sized (3+ bedrooms). ANC 1B Commissioners have shown the capacity to completely pretend these suggested alternatives don’t exist.
If approved as is now, the plan to rezone 1617 U Street will be like other public-property deals around the city — a project containing hundreds of new housing units mostly market-rate luxury studios and one bedrooms profits of which will benefit the city’s next-in-line favorite developer who will likely be the new owner of the air rights above the public land. Moreover, there are no guarantees in writing as of yet that the police and fire stations will return to this their current home.
ANC1B meets tonight at 7PM in person at the Housing Finance Agency building, 815 Florida Ave NW, Washington, DC 20001. Public and press are welcome to attend.
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