Fix Contradictory Boarding House Laws/Oversight in DC

Concerned residents can contact their council members (if you live in Ward 2, that’s Jack Evans) asking them to pass legislation requiring a zoning variance for boarding houses in R-4 zoned areas.

As mentioned in the last post, DC has contradictory laws about whether boarding houses require a zoning variance in R-4 zones or whether they are a matter of right. Title 10.A315 mentions that special exceptions are to be required for a boarding house while Title 11 makes them a matter of right. Furthermore, there is contradictory information about how many people can occupy a boarding house. DCRA claims on their website here that not more than 6 unrelated persons can live in a boarding house, while the agency claims it sees no problem with a 9-room boarding house that is clearly intended for nine unrelated persons.

These distinctions are important to pin down because they affect whether boarding houses are something that must be considered as part of the neighborhood planning process that ANCs already participate in, with neighbors’ input taken into account. Boarding houses, hostels, hotels and other transient housing all have a productive place in society, but ensuring that they are well-located, planned and looked after is a critical part of the process that the ANCs could help oversee.

Update from CCCA Meeting

We had a great turnout of members at last night’s CCCA meeting, which together with the 60+ petition signatures demonstrated beyond a doubt that this is a neighborhood who’s residents really care and are active about shaping its future. Hopefully, this neighborhood attention to 605 P will continue, in order to make sure builders do not continue to steal water or electricity from neighbors or disturb neighbors on Sundays and after 7pm Monday-Saturday and that no shady activity occurs. If you catch any such activity, please call the Mayor’s hotline at 311 or DCRA at (202) 442-STOP (7867) right away.

The petition together with this website has caught the attention of DCRA and after months of repeated calls and visits to their “Illegal Construction,” Licensing, and Zoning offices from neighbors as well as followup from the mayor’s office, finally gotten the agency to respond to these complaints. Unfortunately, the response was not positive. Council Member Jim Evans read a letter from DCRA Director, Linda Argo, indicating that the agency has reviewed and decided that construction of a boarding house at 605 P ST NW is completely in compliance with existing permits. A DCRA representative, Don Masoero, attended the meeting to address questions noted the following in response to our concerns (a few points remain to be addressed, as noted below):

• The owners of this property are allowed to build a single family home that clearly looks like boarding house, then once built, seek a certificate of occupancy to turn it into a boarding house.
• They define “razing” differently than we have. Rather than calling it “razing,” there is a type of “demolition” which categorizes the work done at 605 P and includes knocking down exterior walls.
• The fact that building plans show that there would be 70 feet of disturbed earth though builders checked the box on the building permit application form indicating that <50 feet would be disturbed, and furthermore that they disturbed an additional 80 feet of earth beyond the scope of their plans to build a rear staircase (total ~150 sqft disturbed), is up to DCRA’s discretion to enforce, and this is something they are choosing not to be concerned about. Mr. Masoero indicates that this matters only for environmental review and that he checked with the DCRA environmental office yesterday and they did not express any concerns.
• The $36K construction costs listed on the application form are in fact a misrepresentation and when the building is completed, the owner will be taxed on the full amount of their construction spending, which, as the DCRA inspector pointed out, will help DCRA make up its budget shortfall.

For the record, the following points remain to be addressed:

• In a May 4th email, DCRA Zoning Administrator Matt LeGrant wrote that “If the intended use [of an R-4 property construction project] is a rooming house all building permit and C of O application submittals should list this as the proposed use (not as a single family house).” It appears that DCRA is choosing to ignore its own policies here.
• If what is going on at the property is not razing, then why did multiple DCRA review engineers (Thomas Guglielmo, Silroy Brown) note that a zoning permit would be required in earlier versions of the plans? The amount of walls that were to be razed in the plans do not appear to have decreased since that time AND the building plans themselves use the word “razing” to describe the knocking down of walls that has occured.
• The District’s laws about whether a boarding house is a matter of right are still vague and conflicting: Although Title 11 states that boarding & rooming houses are a matter of right in an R-4 zoning, Title 10-A315.10 makes it sounds like this is amended so that special exceptions are required for rooming houses in R-4 zoned districts. The statement in that title is as follows and can be found here: http://www.dcregs.dc.gov/Notice/Download.aspx?VersionID=1290990

“Amend the zoning regulations to require a special exception for dormitories, rooming houses, boarding houses, fraternities, sororities, and similar uses in the R-4 zoning district. 315.10”

Additional Violations Noted

It looks like there are more false statements on the building permit applications for 605 P than originally outlined. We’ve added the following additional violation pointed out by neighbors to the list of Detailed Complaints:

“Builders have clearly disturbed over 50 square feet of earth and are building a retaining wall near exterior stairwell despite claiming otherwise on both counts on their permit application. The building plans also show that over 50 square feet of earth would be disturbed.”

Your Support is Needed at CCCA Meeting Tuesday

On TUESDAY 5/25 at 7pm, we will be presenting our concerns to Council Member Jack Evans at the May CCCA meeting. It is critical to get a good turnout to demonstrate to the Council that this is a block with active neighbors who care about the status of this project. Come support these concerns or share your own!