CM McDuffie weighs in the Stronghold's uninhabited "tiny houses"

For our neighbors across North Capitol Street in the Stronghold:

 

First, see this item from Washington City Paper Housing Complex reporter Aaron Wiener:

 

Best Tiny Houses

Tiny Houses

Photograph by Darrow Montgomery

On a small, triangular patch of grass bounded by alleyways in Stronghold, previously used as a makeshift parking lot, tiny houses are springing up. They’re officially uninhabited—the zoning code doesn’t allow alley dwellings of this sort, at least not yet—and some neighbors have complained about the loss of parking. But Ward 5 Councilmember Kenyan McDuffie, who lives right across one of the alleys from the microdwellings on wheels, has been supportive, and really, what’s not to like? The creators see their project as a model of truly affordable housing and innovation and hope it’ll help spur the zoning changes needed to allow tiny homes, between 150 and 200 square feet, to proliferate in otherwise  unused spaces.

 

McDuffie Wants You to Know He Does NOT Support Tiny Houses

Posted by Aaron Wiener on Apr. 11, 2013 at 5:40 pm

For our Best of D.C. issue, out today, I wrote about the "Best Tiny Houses." It was an easy choice: It went to what, as far as I'm aware, are the city's only tiny houses, a delightful collection of micro-dwellings on wheels on a small plot of land between alleys in Stronghold.
       
Ward 5 Councilmember Kenyan McDuffie lives right across one of the alleys from the tiny houses, and in my pick, I wrote that he's been "generally supportive" of the project. That was based on a conversations I had with him and with one of the tiny house creators in the fall.

Now, McDuffie calls to say that he recalls our conversation differently, and he in fact does not support the project. (My memory of the conversation is still clear, and apparently different from McDuffie's.)
           
"As a concept, tiny houses, I don’t have a problem with, but the location has been a huge problem, and there’s been no support from any of the neighbors who reached out to me or my office," McDuffie says.
       
He'd like to see a "happy medium," he says, but "it just doesn't exist." The neighbors are universally opposed, and the tiny house folks want to stay, and there's no simple compromise.
         
I don't have a recording of our earlier conversation, so I can't prove that McDuffie was supportive, but his opposition now is clear. And it's understandable: If his constituents in the area—some of whom used to use the space for unofficial parking before it was purchased by one of the tiny house builders and are irked at the takeover of the plot by newcomers with their strange project—are all against the tiny houses, he has little reason to come out publicly for them.
           
Still, it'd be a shame to see a project that's the best in its admittedly small class displaced by political considerations. Here's hoping that some sort of compromise can still be worked out.