A recent Washington Post article<\/strong><\/a> highlights the Grenfell Tower fire, a building poorly constructed with questionable materials that was approved with little accountable municipal permitting review.<\/p>\n

The Grenfell fire illustrated in searing fashion the perils of life in Britain\u2019s public housing high-rises, where years of unheeded warnings, slashed costs and deregulation all added up to\u00a0a tragedy unlike any Britain has seen<\/a> in at least a century.<\/p>\n

But the aftermath has shined a spotlight on a different problem with Britain\u2019s strained-to-the-breaking-point housing system \u2014 a severe shortage of affordable options that has left people desperate for a roof over their heads.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The article captures London’s construction boom in a way that closely matches the problems in the District.\u00a0 DCRA is DC’s permitting office which is under much scrutiny<\/a> for similar oversight and permitting failures.\u00a0 And DC has been experiencing an affordable housing crisis for more than a decade.<\/p>\n

The article<\/a> sheds light on DC’s major planning and permitting problems.\u00a0 It’s a good read, if sad for all those families hurt or killed and displaced.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A recent Washington Post article highlights the Grenfell Tower fire, a building poorly constructed with questionable materials that was approved with little accountable municipal permitting review. The Grenfell fire illustrated in searing fashion the perils of life in Britain\u2019s public housing high-rises, where years of unheeded warnings, slashed costs and deregulation all added up to\u00a0a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,37,35,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-construction","category-displacement","category-housing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dc4reality.org\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dc4reality.org\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dc4reality.org\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dc4reality.org\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dc4reality.org\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=364"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.dc4reality.org\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":365,"href":"http:\/\/www.dc4reality.org\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364\/revisions\/365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dc4reality.org\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dc4reality.org\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dc4reality.org\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}