March 2023

Happy Women’s History Month from the Office of Planning (OP)! Our Commemorative Work Spotlight below features Dorothy Height, one of the most influential women in the modern civil rights movement and longtime DC resident. Also in this month’s Data Corner, we present data on the gender pay gap in the District.

Sincerely,

Anita Cozart

Director, DC Office of Planning

• Downtown Public Realm Plan
• Design Support for Commemorative Works
• Toward a Strategy to Combat Displacement: The District’s Affordable Housing Tools Part I
• 📈 OP Data Corner: Gender Pay Gap
• Commemorative Works Spotlight: Dorothy Height
• 📢 Engage in Planning Efforts

Downtown Public Realm Plan

Pop of Spring, April 2022, 9th & F St NW

OP continues to work on innovative ways to support Downtown’s economic recovery and advance DC’s Comeback Plan. Last year, the Streets for People initiative brought 110,000 people back to our downtown with over 100 activities. Building upon that success, OP is kicking off the Downtown Public Realm Plan which will generate design ideas that will make our downtown streets, sidewalks, plazas and parks safer and more enjoyable for residents, workers and visitors. By the end of 2023, OP will release a final Downtown Public Realm Plan that shows how we can elevate Downtown as a livable place for 15,000 new residents by 2028.

To learn more about the Downtown Public Realm Plan, visit publicinput.com/downtownpublicrealm.

Design Support for Commemorative Works

The DC Comeback Plan sets a goal of eliminating key amenity gaps including access to food, broadband, recreation and the like. Another gap that exists, especially in Wards 4,5, 7 and 8, is civic spaces that commemorate the lived experiences and contributions of Black Washingtonians and people of color. OP is launching a new program, Commemorative Works Technical Assistance Program (CWTAP), to provide design assistance to residents, community partners and local artists in each of these wards to identify and design commemorative works for their communities. 

We are proud to be collaborating with Upper Georgia Avenue Main Street, The Parks Main Street, Ward 7 Business Partnership, and Destination Congress Heights in this effort. 

To learn more about the CWTAP, get updates on the program, and be notified of public meetings to discuss commemorative work subjects and sites, visit publicinput.com/cwtap.

Carter G. Woodson Memorial Park, 900 Rhode Island Ave NW

Toward a Strategy to Combat Displacement: The District’s Affordable Housing Tools Part I

Last month, we discussed how jurisdictions measure and understand displacement pressures for both future and current residents. This month’s article focuses on several housing programs in the District of Columbia that researchers have cited as leading practices to combat displacement pressures.  The region’s Housing Indicator Tool categorizes these tools by their goals. Some programs are focused on protecting households from displacement. Others attempt to preserve existing affordable housing. And still others aim toward producing a greater supply of new housing units that are affordable to people with a wide range of incomes.

Protecting Households

The District has several programs that help protect individual households from threats of physical and economic displacement, including strong tenant eviction protections and rent control.  Rent control limits the annual rise in rents for buildings built prior to 1975 to the rate of inflation up to a maximum of five percent per year for older or disabled tenants Increases are limited to a maximum increase of 10 percent annually for all other tenants in these buildings. 

The Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) partners with community-based non-profit organizations to provide housing counseling services and training to prospective homeowners, current homeowners, and tenants. The services provided include foreclosure prevention, credit counseling, and relocation counseling.

The Department of Insurance, Securities, and Banking (DISB) offers foreclosure prevention resources including mediation, housing counseling, and legal aid for homeowners. Through DISB’s Foreclosure Mediation Program, 70% of mediations prevented foreclosures with lenders and homeowners agreeing to loan modifications, repayment plans, reinstatements, short sales, and other alternatives.

Preserving Housing Opportunities

The Affordable Housing Preservation Fund (HPF) is an example of the District’s commitment to preserving affordable housing. The fund’s goal is to preserve 100% of the District’s existing federally and city-assisted affordable rental homes. The fund offers eligible borrowers short-term financing for the pre-development and acquisition of occupied multi-family properties. Within its first year, the fund helped preserve 926 affordable housing units in the District.

The Historic Homeowner Grant Program provides funding to help homeowners of historic single-family residential properties restore or rehabilitate their homes. The grant is available to low- or moderate-income homeowners in 16 eligible historic districts. Since its inception, the program has awarded hundreds of grants and millions of dollars in financial assistance to help with the cost of repairing historic homes.

Producing Affordable Housing

The District is a national leader in the production of housing, most notably through the Housing Production Trust Fund (HPTF). Since 2015, the Trust Fund has created and preserved more than 9,000 affordable units through June 2022. Early studies have shown that the HPTF helped tenants stay in the District nearly two years longer than renters who do not live in HPTF subsidized units.

Inclusionary Zoning (IZ) has also increased the number of new affordable housing units since 2009. The program requires that most development projects set aside eight to ten percent of their residential floor area for affordable rental or ownership units. To date, nearly 2,000 affordable IZ units have been produced. In 2022, the IZ program delivered 380 affordable units, the most produced in a single year since the program began.  IZ tends to produce the most units in the high-cost areas that are attracting new development and where it is expensive to subsidize affordable units.

Our next article will focus on the District’s implementation of our Housing Equity Report.

Share your thoughts on the District’s programs by emailing us at planning@dc.gov or call us at 202-442-7600.

Previous articles in this series:

Toward a Strategy to Combat Displacement: Background and Context

Toward a Strategy to Combat Displacement: Measuring Displacement

📈 OP Data Corner: Gender Pay Gap

In honor of Women’s History Month, the OP Data Corner this month looks at the Gender Pay Gap in the District. Visit the OP Demographic Data Hub for more reliable, up-to-date demographic data on the residents of the District of Columbia.

Commemorative Works Spotlight: Dorothy Height

As the nation’s capital, and as a city of neighborhoods and residents, with a local history of people, places and events deserving their own commemoration; Washington, DC is home to many Commemorative Works honoring individuals and events of national and local significance. This month, we are featuring a mural of Dorothy Height in celebration of Women’s History Month.

The mural at 3211 Martin Luther King Avenue SE memorializes Dorothy Irene Height (1912 – 2010), one of the most influential women in the modern civil rights movement. She was president of the National Council of Negro Women from 1958 to 1990, a key organizer of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, an active member and leader of the Delta Sigma Theta sorority, and sometimes included as one of the Big Six leaders of the civil rights movement in the United States - the only woman included on the list. Height received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Bill Clinton in 1994. She lived in DC’s Southwest neighborhood from 1983 until her death in 2010. The Congress Heights mural depicts Height in one of her signature hats and was dedicated in January 2019. It is the result of a collaboration between Destination Congress Heights Main Street Program, Congress Heights Community Partnership, and Congress Heights Community Training & Development Corporation. Wendell Quann, Project Director for Destination Congress Heights, described the mural as a way “to promote a sense of identity, belonging, welcoming, and openness which strengthens our community identification.” The mural was designed by Montu Mitchell and painted by muralist Kaliq Crosby. Learn more about Dorothy Height.

📢 Engage in Planning Efforts

Learn more and get involved in our community planning projects: 

• OP Racial Equity Action Plan
• Commemorative Works Technical Assistance Program
• Connecticut Avenue Development Guidelines
• Downtown Public Realm Plan
• Foggy Bottom/West End Public Life Study
• Ivy City Small Area Plan
• Nannie Helen Burroughs Avenue Small Area Plan
• New York Ave Vision Framework
• Wisconsin Avenue Development Framework

OP in the Community

• The Nannie Helen Burroughs Corridor Marketplace at Riverside Center – April 1^st – 11 AM – Riverside Center, 5200 Foote Street NE