Image courtesy of candidate's campaign.

更大华盛顿支持Brianne Nadeaufor a third term representing Ward 1 on the DC Council. As Councilmember Nadeau’s responses to our questionnaire demonstrate, she has been a leading, stalwart champion on the DC Council for many of GGWash’s priorities related to housing, transportation, and land use, and deserves a third term to continue to advance that track record of success.

Councilmember Nadeau and Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner Sabel Harris both responded to our questionnaire – a prerequisite to be considered for our endorsement (see Nadeau’s responses and Harris’s togetherhere)。专员哈里斯是波尔itically aligned with Councilmember Nadeau on many issues, as Harris herselfhas stated, but through the nuances in our questionnaire we find Nadeau to be overall more ambitiously and consistently pro-housing. When it comes to advancing key priorities on the Council, Nadeau’s eight years of direct experience and proven track record give her the clear advantage.

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On housing, Nadeau prioritizes two of the most impactful policies for enabling increased housing production and density: legalizing two- and four-unit buildings District-wide. She pushes back against a common NIMBY complaint about a perceived tension between neighborhood ‘character’ and increased housing supply, writing, “…Ward 1 is living proof that density and character go hand-in-hand in any neighborhood.” Putting that philosophy into practice, Nadeau notes that, “As part of the revisions to the Comprehensive Plan, I worked strategically to make changes to the Future Land Use Map all across Ward 1. There are dozens of sites that now have the opportunity for increased housing density.”

Nadeau is focused not just on supply but also on affordability, a critically important twofold approach. For example, somewhat unusually across all the Council races we’ve considered, she demonstrates a nuanced understanding of the power of public land disposition processes to create more affordable housing – and seeks to do more: “As a result of my work on Council, we require no less than 30% of housing built on public land to be affordable. We should also pass a bill I introduced to extend those requirements to quasi-public land like that owned by WMATA, DC Water and the DC Housing Authority.” Nadeau also lays out detailed ideas to “fix” public housing and to reform zoning and regulatory practices that inhibit affordable housing development, and expresses support for a broad range of rent stabilization policies.

She understands the useful but limited role of inclusionary zoning (a policy that elected officials commonly lean on as something of a silver bullet) writing: “I do not see IZ as an effective route to affordable-housing production on the scale that we need it, but it is an effective way of getting more out of private, market-rate projects without needing to subsidize them. I see IZ as more a way to guarantee that new buildings are not completely exclusive and are more economically integrated.”

Altogether, Nadeau’s responses to our questionnaire on housing constitute a top-notch pro-housing geek-out that demonstrates just how much is possible when a councilmember not only understands the broad goals but also deeply understands the tools at their disposal to effect positive change.

Harris and Nadeau both support fairly radical change to historic preservation – removing height and mass from the purview of historic review so that overall density is controlled by zoning rather than historic preservation officials – and agree that high-density construction shouldnotbe restricted to major corridors, which leaves residential areas untouched. We heartily cheer these shared views!

Choosing among several tactics available to the Council to increase housing production, we were pleased to see Harris’ top ranking for boosting affordable housing requirements in public land disposition. Her high prioritization of office building conversion, however, won’t lead to the short-term housing gains we need. Meanwhile, we would be encouraged to see her embrace the value of legalizing two- and four-unit buildings District-wide, which she rated at the bottom of potential priorities.

我们给哈里斯点细节在她的应答se to the question about where to increase density in Ward 1. It’s clearly a topic she has considered in depth, and she demonstrates more willingness to get specific than most candidates across the races we’ve considered. We do, however, find her description of new development’s impact on light, noise pollution, and vehicular traffic as “potentially detrimental” to be hyperbolic, and her limited appetite for amending the Height Act is disappointing (though, admittedly, that reform is outside of the Council’s control). Altogether, Harris’s approach to increasing housing supply and affordability, while meaningful overall, is more moderate than that of Nadeau – one of the challenges in running against an incumbent who has been among the Council’s strongest housing champions.

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Nadeau’s track record in office demonstrates consistent leadership on holistic efforts to improve pedestrian and cyclist infrastructure and safety, from the recent introduction of bills to standardize raised crosswalks and replace outdated, car-centric level-of-service metrics with road assessments that factor in pedestrians and cyclists, to a bill she introduced back in 2017 designed to combat street harassment. That bill not only became law, but was among the first of its kind in the country.

Nadeau and Harris share a lot of common stances on transportation, including the same top two priorities in our questionnaire: removing parking minimums for new developments near transit and building more housing proximate to transit and jobs. As above, we heartily cheer these shared views!

We are also glad to see that both candidates support road pricing (also known as congestion pricing). Nadeau would like to see the potential $90 million - $500 million in annual revenue from road pricing directed toward WMATA’s operating budget gap, as well as investments in bus, bike, and pedestrian safety infrastructure. Harris would steer those revenues toward transit infrastructure, particularly in Wards 7 and 8, fare reimbursements for low-income residents, and sustainability education in schools.

Speaking of WMATA’s looming $375 million budget deficit in FY24, in addition to her support for road pricing, Nadeau co-introduced the Metro for DC bill, explaining that the $100/month disbursed to DC residents’ SmarTrip cards “would significantly help close the WMATA budget gap, while also incentivizing WMATA to provide more effective service in order to unlock those dollars.”

Harris also supports Metro for DC, but when it comes to WMATA’s budget deficit, she identifies ticket reciprocity with Maryland and Virginia as a source of revenue. She notes that outstanding tickets among Maryland drivers total $240M and among Virginia drivers, it’s $133M.

Ward 1 is the most densely populated ward in Washington, D.C., and its populationincreasedby more than 18% from 2010 to 2022—compared to a 15% increase for DC as a whole. When it comes to ensuring that housing supply meets demand, economically vulnerable residents have access to housing they can afford, and transportation options make it easy and preferable to get around without a car, the stakes in Ward 1 are high. GGWash is glad to see that both the Ward 1 candidates who completed our questionnaire demonstrate commitment to the sorts of policies necessary to tackle these challenges. We enthusiastically endorse incumbent Councilmember Brianne Nadeau for a third term in recognition of her bold vision and an extensive track record that demonstrate her ability to meet the moment.

Visit our2022 elections hub, where you’ll find candidates’ responses to our questionnaire, information about who we are endorsing, how we arrived at our decision, recordings of our candidate forums, and ways you can get involved.

Disclosure (Update): GGWash board member Jayson Harpster is the husband of Councilmember Brianne Nadeau. As explained in thepost about our 2022 endorsement process, our elections committee is made up of all non-editorial staff of GGWash and one board member (Nick Sementelli); Alex Baca, GGWash’s DC Policy Director, was recused from Ward 1 endorsement decision-making. No other board involvement is permitted in endorsement decision-making. We are committed to integrity in endorsements and designed theprocesswith that concern foremost in mind. We hope this information helps to further clarify that process.