At the Adams Morgan ANC meeting at the end of May, the Mayor’s Office declared it will not go door to door in the area around the 2-acres of public land at 1617 U Street to talk with neighbors directly about their push to dramatically change this community and the neighbors’ daily lives permanently (without compensation mind you).

Nor will the Mayor and Councilmembers pushing the project be directly informing anyone (until it’s too late) that their project will be 50%-70% unaffordable housing (aka market housing) on public land.

To do this on public land as the city is saturated with luxury housing for single professionals is criminal especially considering  DC’s immense racial wealth disparities,  Thus the unaffordable market rate housing being built in any project will be segregated by class and race.

Shouldn’t the city let Cushman & Wakefield deliver for the luxury class of single professionals and we use our public land for public needs like truly affordable housing (such as social housing) instead of the status quo behavior to use our public land and assets to financially back some private developer’s bottom line.

The opaque dealing with our public property allows the public officials to pick and choose the private winners of our public land and then these officials become king makers instead of creative public interest leaders like those who exist elsewhere.

All the while doling out public property, these same officials have deprioritized the future of the police station and fire station both of which remain in serious doubt.

There’s been no info shared on the future of our first responders other than some vague promises that those services will remain and come back to the redevelopment. We’ve been hearing otherwise, including from Councilmembers Nadeau and Pinto who are side stepping with the “It will be up to those agencies to decide what to do.” Say what?

Meanwhile, the Mayor and Councilmember say plow on with the rezoning of the whole site to make this a “by-right” high-density project — stop bothering us with wanting to get any more information.

So, yes, The U Street Air community survey is the only one in existence as it seems to be only on affected neighbors compelled to both get deeper meaningful info out to the others directly affected and at the same time try to dig any information at all out from the clutches of officials who are pushing the project but keeping it close to the vest.

For example, there’s been no community-wide discussion of impacts or even alternatives to more trickle-down housing on public land such as social housing.

As ANC Commissioner Shapiro said (at almost midnight on May 3, 2023): “The facts are it could all be affordable housing if the city were willing to pay for it.” “The idea that we would allow a zoning map change to this extent [to build lots more market rate housing] as inappropriate to the neighborhood is a little shocking to me.” https://youtu.be/r-4C7VaOaGg?t=15416

This is the state of planning and budgeting in the District of Columbia.