This was originally posted to the Adams Morgan Listserv on May 2, 2019, as message #51027, groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/AdamsMorgan/conversations/messages/51027
As most are aware, our city is in the process of amending our Comprehensive Plan (Comp Plan) starting with the Framework. Later other chapters will be amended including neighborhood related chapters. DC’s Office of Planning(OP) which submitted its draft to the City Council last year is/was leading the effort. OP’s draft did not move, so Council Chair Mendelson is driving the effort in Council. Continued citizen input we be via the City Council.
The stakes are high because this Comp Plan will guide the fundamental redefining and restructuring of our city. Whether our city and/or certain neighborhoods will be restructured to optimize the influx, growth and development of large influxes of financial capital or to optimized the growth and development of neighborhoods and the families who live in them. And the levels and dynamics of that optimization will also be defined. My recommended reading list is designed to help us better understand these stakes. The list is not comprehensive, but does help set a context and act as a codex.
Many of the terms being used in the rewrite don’t fully mean what we think they mean or being applied in this time frame or the dimension. For example, population growth does not mean what most of us think it means. Some words are euphemisms for historic ethical, moral and economic dynamics in public and private that we normally would not easily tolerate.
William
Reading List:
SUBSIDIES MEANT FOR LOW-INCOME COMMUNITIES ARE PAYING FOR LUXURY DEVELOPMENTS
Tax increment financing, originally meant to spur development of “blighted” neighborhoods, is now being redistributed upwards.
SOPHIE KASAKOVEAPR 24, 2019
The mass exodus from Greater Washington continues. And it got worse last year.
By Andy Medici – Staff Reporter, Washington Business Journal
Apr 23, 2019, 2:58pm EDT Updated Apr 23, 2019, 3:39pm EDT
Current residents can’t seem to stop packing up and leaving Greater Washington.
The number of people leaving continues to dwarf the number of people moving here, according to data from July 1, 2017, to July 1, 2018, from the Stephen S. Fuller Institute at George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government. About 30,600 more people moved away than moved here during that time, a concept called “net domestic out-migration.”
That is significantly more than the 21,900 net loss of residents through July 1, 2017.
The net loss from domestic migration led to just 0.8% population growth, the slowest in the region since 1980, when Blondie’s hit “Call Me” topped the charts.
The region has had a net domestic migration loss since 2013, with the largest coming in 2014 with 32,700 more people leaving than moving in.
The relatively anemic 49,950 resident population growth in the new data came from a combination of natural births (40,800) and international immigration (39,600) minus the loss from domestic migration.
Perhaps more troubling is that this is the first time that all three substate areas saw a domestic migration loss. The District normally has seen small increases, but actually lost a net 940 residents to out-migration in the year ending July 1, 2018. Population growth from births is also slowing, coming in at the lowest it’s been in at least 10 years.
The metro area’s growth rate puts it in the middle of the pack of the 15 largest U.S. metro areas, just ahead of Miami but behind Minneapolis, which saw 1% population growth. Phoenix topped the list with 2% growth while Chicago saw a 0.2% loss.
“Our net domestic out-migration is partially tied to national economic factors; places that are seen to be attractive to people looking to leave our region had relatively strong job growth in 2018,” said Fuller Institute Deputy Director Jeannette Chapman. “Overall, the slowing population growth will likely exacerbate an already tight labor market.”
The Neighborhood Is Mostly Black.
The Home Buyers Are Mostly White
RALEIGH, N.C. — In the African-American neighborhoods near downtown Raleigh, the playfully painted doors signal what’s coming. Colored in crimson, in coral, in seafoam, the doors accent newly renovated craftsman cottages and boxy modern homes that have replaced vacant lots.
To longtime residents, the doors mean higher home prices ahead, more investors knocking, more white neighbors.
Here, and in the center of cities across the United States, a kind of demographic change most often associated with gentrifying parts of New York and Washington has been accelerating. White residents are increasingly moving into nonwhite neighborhoods, largely African-American ones.
In America, racial diversity has much more often come to white neighborhoods. Between 1980 and 2000, more than 98 percent of census tracts that grew more diverse did so in that way, as Hispanic, Asian-American and African-American families settled in neighborhoods that were once predominantly white.
Jair Lynch to invest $200 million on affordable, workforce housing projects
By Daniel J. Sernovitz – Staff Reporter, Washington Business Journal
Apr 29, 2019, 4:26pm EDT
Jair Lynch Real Estate Partners has set a goal of investing more than $200 million on workforce and affordable housing projects in the D.C. area over the next three years.
The District-based developer has teamed up with the California State Teachers Retirement System on the initiative. CEO and Founder Jair Lynch said the effort is aimed addressing a critical shortage of affordable units and helping those individuals or families who make too much to qualify for affordable programs but not enough to live in the communities near where they work.
Jair Lynch has developed a wide range of product types over the years, from new charter schools and two library branches in Southeast D.C. to the $60 million eNvy condos by Nationals Park. Lynch said that mix highlights for him the profound income gap among the District’s residents and the initiative is a way of bridging that divide.
“We’re acknowledging the fact that we will often work in three worlds and they aren’t really connecting with each other,” Lynch said. “We think that it’s the right time to really get this out and produce affordable and workforce housing units.”
Jair Lynch hopes to hit that $200 million goal through acquisition and development projects. It has identified a planned development at 218 Vine St. NW in Takoma as its kick-off effort.
That project, slated to cost about $50 million, will include 121 affordable housing units, two dozen of which will be permanent supportive units for individuals or families transitioning from homelessness and making no more than $35,160 a year, or about 30 percent of median family income. The project has been awarded $12 million from the District’s Housing Production Trust Fund and $11 million in Low Income Housing Tax Credit equity.
The developer will continue to pursue market-rate, mixed-use and other commercial projects on a track separate from its workforce and affordable housing initiative. Jair Lynch has a development pipeline of more than 2.3 million square feet, including its planned redevelopment of the McMillan Reservoir with partners EYA and Trammell Crow.
CalStrs Real Estate Portfolio Performance
www.calstrs.com/sites/main/files/file-attachments/realestateperformancereport_1q2018.pdf
District of Columbia Analysis of Impediments to Fair Housing Choice 2006–2011
dhcd.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/dhcd/publication/attachments/DC_AI_2012_-_FINAL.pdf
Wednesday, May 16, 2018
A Study of the District of Columbia’s Apartment Rental Market from 2000 to 2015: The Impact of Millennials
cfo.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/ocfo/publication/attachments/DC%20Apartment%20Market%20from%202000%20to%202015_The%20Impact%20of%20Millenials.pdf
Wednesday, January 9, 2019
Generational Cohort Housing Preferences
cfo.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/ocfo/publication/attachments/Generational%20Age%20Cohort%20Housing%20Preference%20JPTAA%202017.pdf
D.C. Has Had the Most Gentrifying Neighborhoods In The Country, Study Finds
When it comes to the intensity of gentrification across the country—at least over the first 13 years of the 21st century—the District tops the list.
D.C. had the highest percentage of gentrifying neighborhoods in the country between 2000 and 2013, according to a study from the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, a group that works to “increase the flow of private capital into traditionally underserved communities.” It estimates that around 20,000 black residents were displaced over that period.
Most ‘Gentrifying’ Cities Aren’t Actually Experiencing Displacement. But D.C. Is, Study Finds
Washington, D.C. is one of the few major cities in the entire country where gentrification is actually displacing people from their neighborhoods, a new study has found.
According to the study from the Institute on Metropolitan Opportunity (first reported on by the Washington Post), in most cities, low-income people are still less likely to live in areas experiencing economic growth. What’s more, the share of low-income individuals living in a given neighborhood actually hasn’t changed all that much in many U.S. cities. Using census data from 2000 and the 2016 American Community Survey data, the report tracks granular neighborhood changes by loss or gain of low-income populations.
2018 District of Columbia Long-Range Capital Financial Plan Report
High-tech redlining: AI is quietly upgrading institutional racism
Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy
What scares major D.C. developers? The demands of millennials and the impact of rising prices.
“We’re underwriting the narrowest returns we’ve ever underwritten,” Foulger said. “In fact, these are the narrowest returns today I’ve ever seen in my career.”
To Foulger, the problem can be distilled to a simple dynamic; technology has made the costs of all manner of services cheaper, but apartment construction has remained expensive. That’s driven rent prices ever higher, putting the squeeze on people across the income spectrum.
“Incomes aren’t growing, and we’re the one thing that continues to increase in cost,” Foulger said. “You can’t just not buy a car. We’ve got to figure out a way as an industry to create better economies and efficiencies in housing.”