Improve your community in 2025

I’m Gordon Chaffin, a dog-walking community volunteer and advocate who nerds out on infrastructure policy. This is my newsletter with local news and researched opinions.

The Basics of Improving Your Community

As I reflect on 2024 and plan adventures for 2025, I wanted to share my gratitude for positive changes in my community and share them as a case study to inspire others. For many, November 2024’s U.S. Presidential and Congressional results sucked. For us in Washington, D.C., those results present new threats to our ability to elect local leaders and preserve the limited self-determination we had before. The cause for statehood is much bleaker in the short term, and it’s harder for neighborhood activists like me to convince people to vote and act locally.

But please feel secondhand joy from my soul today as the Sunbelt Rentals corporation — a bad faith neighbor — has put its 8th Street NE industrial building and parking lot up for sale. This follows one month after they moved their operations out of the Edgewood neighborhood, two months after they took down their fence blocking public space where a sidewalk should be, and 18 months after the 8th Street protected bike trail installation convinced them to stop loading their equipment and trucks on a public street with young schoolchildren walking to and from school. A sea change has happened on the 0.5 miles of 8th Street NE from Edgewood Rd up to Monroe St NE.

Since moving into the Edgewood neighborhood of Northeast D.C. in 2015, I’ve been peeved to downright angry about Sunbelt Rentals' unsafe operations. I’m sharing this news to do more than amplify a good riddance; I want to illustrate how positive change can happen in your neighborhood. I’ve been loud about this nuisance with decision-makers, but it’s taken many different people to make a difference.

The current elected neighborhood commissioner for the neighborhood, ANC 5F02’s Aru Sahni, filed a public space inspection request with D.C.’s Department of Transportation (DDOT) that finally got on record that the fenced-in Sunbelt parking lot was blocking what should be a sidewalk. Several prior ANC commissioners have tried to work with Sunbelt’s ownership and filed lots of traffic enforcement requests via 311 when polite asks went unheard. Current Ward 5 councilmember Zachary Parker and the previous council representative, Kenyan McDuffie, applied pressure in concert.

Findings from planning studies have been in our favor for community change: a Transportation Demand Management study for the new 8th St NE Hanover apartment building, a prior “Small Area Plan” for Edgewood near the Brookland-CUA Metro stop, and a Safe Routes to School study showing clear and present danger for the thousands of school families that access campuses on the south end of 8th Street near the Metropolitan Branch Trail (MBT). 

Despite what public plans and studies say, supportive elected leaders and their staff have been needed to make these plans a reality throughout many elections. Residents have raised the urgency by mobilizing: hundreds of them signed petitions and sent emails over the last decade to increase enforcement of Sunbelt’s traffic violations and to support a safer street layout. DDOT stuck with it, trying and trying again to advance projects that were penciled in with minimum viability when the first MBT alignment was completed 15+ years ago. CM Parker and that same line of ANC commissioners pushed the 8th Street NE bike and walk safety plan forward into today’s comfortable-for-everyone layout.

8th Street NE now has hundreds more housing units, a comfortable walk/bike connection for a regionally important trail, improved school pick-up and drop-off within walking distance of two Metro stops, and a new sidewalk slowly advancing south with each additional lot turnover. Our Edgewood/8th Street NE corridor has a trail-oriented hardware store, a walkable yoga place and a dance studio that operates a drinking water fountain for MBT users and other passers-by. The work continues. CM Aru Sahni got a bike lane blocking provision in the Trader Joe's alcohol sales settlement agreement as that grocery store plans to open soon at Monroe Street Market. I hope to work with neighbors on the ANC 5F transportation committee to get DDOT to install sidewalks at the former Sunbelt site, along the Collins Elevator building, and maybe even past Imagine Hope Community School and Dew Drop Inn.

In the last 25-30 years, changes in Washington, D.C., have been positive for many people and also displacing or harmful to many. Neighborhood change is inevitable when investment arrives, and I know the intergenerational harm of dis-investment from personal experience. I want to share this positive message: we can maximize the positives and minimize the negatives when we get involved. Sure, voting and following local government and community news helps. But, I hope you’ll join me in practicing the additional basics of community investment: Donate and volunteer with civic organizations, attend and participate in local groups and ANC commissions. Send testimony to the D.C. Council (see its calendar) and pull the ear of your council member at a neighborhood event. It’s scary at first, but lots of folks can help. After all, we all have a stake in the basics of a thriving community: affordable housing, personal safety, accessible amenities, and comfortable travel routes using every transportation mode.

DISCLAIMER: All opinions and analyses in this newsletter are those solely of Gordon Chaffin and do not represent his employer or community groups with which he’s affiliated.