Petworth needs to preserve and increase affordable housing

The District faces a housing crisis that has been made more urgent than ever during the COVID-19 pandemic. As your commissioner I will:

• Support the creation of more housing in the neighborhood.

• Work to maximize the percentage of units that are affordable in new developments, as the ANC did during the Hebrew Home redevelopment process.

• Push developers who come before the ANC for zoning variances to include more variety of housing type and size, to preserve our community’s diversity of families, seniors, and young people.

• Work to create an inventory of affordable units that currently exist in the neighborhood, especially those at risk of losing affordability protections.

• Support ANC 4C’s efforts to gain commitments from developers to contribute to DC’s Affordable Housing Production Trust Fund.

Petworth needs better streets for everyone

Our streets are the most abundant public space we have. We need to make sure that they are safe for everyone and serving their highest and best use. Our neighborhood deserves top-quality, well-maintained infrastructure. As your commissioner, I will:

• Listen to folks in the neighborhood about what trouble spots on our streets need fixing.

• Push DDOT to implement the Move DC plan, which was published in 2014 but still has not been achieved. The plan includes protected bicycle facilities on New Hampshire Ave, Kansas Ave, Rock Creek Church Road, and Harewood Place that would make these streets much safer for people traveling by bike.

• Work with the ANC in Park View to expand the Crosstown cycle track up Park Place and Warder Street, which DDOT sadly cut from the ongoing Irving Street project. I would also push to expand the bikeway on Kenyon Street west into Columbia Heights. I know this is outside ANC 4C, but our streets are a public resource that belong to everyone. ANCs must work together to improve them.

• Collaborate with ANCs up and down Georgia Ave to get dedicated bus lanes on this corridor. The few blocks of bus lanes that exist now in front of Howard University Hospital are a great example. We need to get them all the way up through Petworth and Brightwood to Silver Spring.

• Ask DDOT to widen the Georgia Ave sidewalk by Safeway and CVS permanently to replace the temporary barriers that they put in place during the pandemic.

• Add more pedestrian islands on busy streets.

• Support local restaurants that want to add “streateries” to help with recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.

• Work with the office of Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton and local leaders to improve the narrow and poorly maintained sidewalk around the Old Soldier’s Home and bring it up to ADA compliance.

• Ensure that Victory Housing fulfills its community benefits agreement and coordinates with DDOT to get a bikeshare station installed at the Hebrew Home once they finish construction.

Petworth needs great parks

Isn’t the new meditation garden great? At Kansas & 13th, DC Parks and Rec have created a nice place to hang out, chat with neighbors, or have a snack. We need more parks like it. But too many of our parks are poorly maintained. To fix that, I will:

• Always be listening for ideas from constituents about how to improve our parks.

• Ask NPS to add more benches to Grant and Sherman Circles.

• Work to keep Beach Drive open for recreation 365 days a year.

• Support the NPS plan to build a multi-use trail along Piney Branch Parkway, and seek to accelerate that plan through ANC action.

• Support a long-term vision for transferring NPS properties like Grant and Sherman Circles and many of our triangle parks over to DC’s jurisdiction. In addition to the public space benefits of having local influence on these parks, there would be the added benefit of transferring police jurisdiction from the federal Park Police to DC. Police accountability is important, and as a federal agency, the Park Police is not democratically responsible to our community.

• During the upcoming redevelopment of parts of the Soldier’s Home, support the opening of more of the campus as a park-like space for our community. In the past, the Old Soldier’s Home was much more open for neighborhood recreation, like picnics. We should bring that back, especially because the eastern side of the neighborhood does not have very many parks.

Petworth needs responsive government

The most important job of an ANC commissioner is to represent local issues here in Petworth to the DC government. To that end, I will:

• Immediately establish points of contact and an open line of communication with the Ward 4 councilmember’s office and the mayor’s office.

• Raise cleanliness issues promptly and persistently with the Department of Public Works, including trash in alleys and on sidewalks and overflowing public trash cans.

• Push DDOT to address the backlog of poorly maintained sidewalks and alleys in our neighborhood. In Petworth alleyways, we have seen problems of poor maintenance, potholes that go years without being fixed, and runoff problems that are getting worse as climate change increases the intensity of storms.

These are a few of the issues I have heard from residents. Are there other local issues that you want the DC government to respond to? Let me know and I will add them to the list! Email me at mike4petworth@gmail.com.