Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser calls on President Joe Biden to assist resolve her metropolis’s rise in vacant workplace area and lack of inexpensive housing.
In line with ABC Information, Mayor Bowser urges Biden to finish “work-from-home telework insurance policies” for federal authorities employees or launch vacant authorities buildings over to a brand new initiative to “transfer 100,000 new residents into the town.”
In the present day, the federal authorities is answerable for one-third of properties owned or leased in Washington and 1 / 4 of the town’s jobs earlier than the pandemic.
Mayor Bowser, who was just lately sworn in for her historic third time period as the primary Black lady mayor to serve three consecutive four-year phrases, took over eight years in the past with a dedication to finish homelessness.
Nonetheless, for the reason that rise of distant work in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Mayor’s workplace wants extra assist selling inexpensive housing whereas providing new alternatives to transform vacant and underutilized workplace areas into new buildings for residential and retail use.
“We’d like decisive motion by the White Home to both get most federal employees again to the workplace, more often than not, or to realign their huge property holdings to be used by the native authorities, by nonprofits, by companies and by any consumer keen to revitalize it,” Bowser mentioned, per the information outlet.
The Mayor’s workplace reported that the Central Enterprise District is at the moment made up of 92% industrial area, with solely 8% allotted to residential. In response, Bowser says the nation’s capital will “add 15,000 residents over the subsequent 5 years and 87,000 extra earlier than it’s all mentioned and executed.” She additionally seeks to spice up an increase in new residential conversion initiatives by way of her Housing in Downtown Abatement Program.
In December, in an announcement to advertise a reimagined downtown, Bowser celebrated the conversion of the previous Vanguard constructing that beforehand headquartered the Peace Corps since 1965. The constructing will home the Elle Flats and is anticipated to convey 163 residential items when it opens in Could 2024.
D.C., which has over 20 million sq. toes of vacant workplace area, is hoping to see a brighter future with the assistance of Biden and Bowser’s bold conversion program.
“Now we have seen how mixed-use communities are extra resilient within the face of adversity, Mayor Bowser mentioned in a press launch. By changing vacant places of work into houses, we will put these areas again to productive use, add much-needed housing, and create a vibrant downtown the place folks stay, work, and play.”
