When ANC 3C passed a resolution this year in support of more density along Connecticut Avenue in Cleveland Park, it was a significant moment. The neighborhood is a textbook example of a wealthy area that has preserved its exclusivity through low-density zoning, which largely makes illegal anything but single-family homes especially on residential streets.
The city’s population has grown over the last two decades, and is likely to continue to do so. Even if COVID stunts the inmigration growth rates cities saw pre-pandemic, the District’s population is increasing primarily because its existing residents are having kids.
But during these decades of growth, neighborhoods in Wards 2 and 3, like Cleveland Park, have added nearly no new homes at all, let alone subsidized or income-restricted affordable housing.
A view of Barry Farm by the author.
Although the DC Housing Authority’s (DCHA) redevelopment of Southwest’s Greenleaf Gardens community is starting off with some promising signs of transparency, the agency is still leaving a lot to be desired when it comes to the plans for some of the other public housing developments under its purview. One of the more obvious examples is just two miles, or two Metro stops, away, in Barry Farm, from which over a hundred households have already been scattered and left wanting for more input on what will happen next.
The history of Barry Farm and its redevelopment
Vincent Gray Tries (Again) To Block A Halfway House From Opening In His Ward npr.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from npr.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
New York Times reports. The society had selected Canal Park, which is near the US Department of Transportation building on M Street, Southeast, but
Marabar‘s creator, Elyn Zimmerman, objected to the change in venue, Rebecca Ritzel reports for the
Times. Zimmerman, Ritzel reports, “deemed it inappropriate, citing a lack of security and potential for skateboarders to damage the carefully polished and shaped granite boulders,” which are only half a foot thick in some areas.
The society told the Historic Preservation Review Board it would consult with Zimmerman on a new home for
Marabar weigh about a million pounds, with the largest about a quarter of that weight. Zimmerman would like to see the sculpture go to a “university, sculpture garden or other cultural institution,” Ritzel writes. Wherever it ends up, Zimmerman said, it should be somewhere ducks can access it, as they do now.
Hometown Heroes banners aim at community pride dailygazette.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from dailygazette.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.