Support for ANC 3C’s Historic District Analysis Resolution
Here are the comments I sent in to the Commissioners of ANC 3C regarding the resolution they are considering at tonight’s meeting regarding their call for the District to collect and analyze data to related to DC’s historic districts.
Commissioners of ANC 3C, (all@anc3c.org)
I am writing to support the resolution asking for the Office of Planning to collect demographic and related data to measure the racial equity impacts of DC's historic districts and those proposed going forward.
I wrote an article about this topic last year that outlined the great disparity in racial composition between DC's historic districts and the rest of DC. I think this is something the District should be measuring itself. The benefits of historic districts are self-evident. But they also have costs that we are largely ignoring. Having data makes a cost-benefit analysis harder to avoid.
Earlier this year, Cleveland Park Smart Growth held a webinar discussing the exclusionary beginning of Cleveland Park. The event included a presentation by Dr. Brian McCabe of Georgetown (now the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy Development in the Office of Policy Development and Research in HUD) whose research showed that in high opportunity areas, historic districts can contribute to patterns of segregation and marginalization. Information from that event, including the video, can be found here.
This resolution isn't a call to end historic districts. It's a call to open our eyes to study the effects of historic districts so future policy decisions can be based on data. The District government is actively engaged in developing tools to assess its work through the lens of racial equity. The Office of Planning is already working with the Office of Racial Equity on a pilot project to incorporate racial equity analysis. Now is the opportunity to let them know that including the Historic Preservation Office in that pilot should be a priority.
We cannot evaluate what we cannot measure. And even though the legal requirements of DC's preservation law are constrained to specified criteria, this work, this insight will still be important. It could serve as a basis for Mayor's agent decisions for cases of special merit. It could also inform the Council should it ever decide to update the preservation law.
I hope ANC's across DC will follow ANC 3C's leadership in this matter.
Thank you for your consideration.
Bob Ward