Peace Neighbors,
For years, pro-growth activists in Washington, DC have framed debates about development through a misleading binary: branding advocates of corporate-driven deregulation and by-right real estate speculation as “YIMBYs,” while dismissing community members who question unrestrained growth as “NIMBYs” or obstructionists.
But Zoning Commission hearings on Ward 3 upzoning have begun to expose how hollow the false YIMBY v. NIMBY binary framing truly is.
The testimony and record make clear that this debate is not about being “for” or “against” housing, but about who benefits, who bears the costs, and whose voices are ignored—raising serious questions for those who have long pointed fingers rather than examining the realities they defend.
AN OPPORTUNITY FOR INCLUSION: WARD 3 UPZONING HEARINGS
The Ward 3 upzoning proposals were brought forward by the Mayor, through the Office of Planning, (Case Nos. 25-09 and 25-13) and ask the DC Zoning Commission to upzone dozens of parcels in by swipe of the pen — effectively creating hundreds of millions of dollars in new speculative land value and air rights.
At these DC Zoning Commission hearings, the supposed villains — longtime Ward 3 residents, preservationists, better planning advocates and community housing activists — were the ones demanding that much more truly affordable housing and actual planning for the immense population growth be expressly tied to the massive new density giveaways proposed for large swaths of Connecticut Avenue and Wisconsin Avenue, including Woodley Park, Cleveland Park, Tenleytown, and Friendship Heights.
The question raised by the alleged “obstructionists” was simple: why should that value accrue to the market without real consideration of the impacts and without firm public benefit?
Meanwhile, at these same hearings many self-identified “pro-growth” voices loudly focused almost exclusively on maximizing new construction, demanding as much height and density as possible while leaving racial equity as an afterthought — something the market might deliver later, if at all, per the YIMBY-way.
Let’s be clear: bigger, taller new buildings in Ward 3 without real requirements to repair the harms of the past are not progressive housing policy.
They are a choice — one DC has made for decades — with predictable results: tens of thousands of new expensive market-rate units, a miniscule amount of family-sized homes, little deeply affordable housing, and continued displacement, including the loss of roughly 60,000 Black residents over the past two decades (US Census).
So who is actually asking for inclusion in exchange for the proposed new taller bigger buildings in Ward 3?
Not the pro-growth advocates calling for upzoning at any cost, no strings attached, let the market figure it out later.
Rather, it was neighbors who insisted that if the city is going to create enormous new land value along Connecticut and Wisconsin Avenues with the stroke of a pen, DC’s working families and public must receive something real in return — something that actually meets DC’s stated affordability goals and racial equity commitments.
That position was captured plainly by Deidre Brown of the Ward 3 Democratic Committee, who warned that affordability set at 60% of median family income does not reach most Black families in DC — and that without deeper affordability and family-sized units, equity rhetoric rings hollow.
See: https://www.youtube.com/live/35td4HApPCo?si=sFME7EyE8PPG9AzB&t=16337
CHECK OUT THE VISIBLE CONTRAST OF POSITIONS ON THE RECORD YOURSELF :
- ZC Case No. 25-09 – Hearing Video
- ZC Case No. 25-13 – Hearing Video
Density is easy. Equity is the fight — and many longtime Ward 3 residents are showing up for it.
Truly disgusting racism and classism exists, and when it appears during testimony at hearings, it deserves outcry and criticism. But that’s not what these Ward 3 zoning hearings are revealing.
Instead, what the hearings show is a deeper split: between those who treat density as the goal itself, perhaps knowingly or not in service of DC’s real estate speculators, and those who insist new growth be a tool for racial and economic equity in the District of Columbia.
In Ward 3, the people fighting hardest for affordability aren’t the loudest “pro-growthers”. It’s the neighbors who have in many cases been unfairly castigated as “obstructionists” — those folks who are now demanding that new growth finally deliver on the promises DC keeps making, and failing, to keep.
The recent zoning hearings reveal it is past time to shed the gross rhetorical reductionism of the binary IMBY vs. IMBY high-school name-calling and get to the real work of delivering true inclusivity in Ward 3 and beyond.
Chris Otten (social housing in my back yard)
DC for Reasonable Development
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