Neighborhoods like City Center, The Wharf and Navy Yard have grown their populations by 90.4%, 125.8% and a whopping 398% over the past roughly decade. In about twice that amount of time, across the past two decades, Friendship Heights has grown its population by only 21.5%, according to the report.

Reviews from the city broken down by ward, indicated Ward 3, where Friendship Heights is, is also one of the slowest growing wards.

Natalie Avery is the President and Executive Director of Friendship Heights Alliance. Her organization is focused on improving the community, supporting area businesses and scaling up neighborhood walkability and diversity. But improvement relies on a thriving, growing populace.  

Avery sees a clear reason for the lag in growth. 

“Other neighborhoods have seen their populations grow because they’ve built a lot more housing,” she said.  

The neighborhood hasn’t seen significant new housing construction since the Chase Point Condos, she said. According to The Koitz Group at Compass, a real estate group, that property was built in 2007 – that’s 17 years ago.

Anyone who has traversed the city in recent years won’t be surprised by the differential in the data. The Navy Yard and Wharf areas have seen a recent influx of luxury apartments several stories high coupled with modern amenities and trendy, new restaurants popping up along the neighborhoods’ riverwalks. 

Meanwhile, outdated department stores and spottily utilized parks characterize the Friendship Heights area.

In a city, like most in the country, wanting for affordable housing, the Friendship Heights neighborhood, which includes a metro stop, high quality schools, parks and ample retail seems a good solution and an ideal place to locate needed units. 

What’s prevented that from happening isn’t just one thing, Avery said. 

“There’s sort of a multiplicity of factors. It has to do with the market. It has to do with the development cycle of these particular properties,” Avery said, referencing existing housing complexes slated for changes. 

“I do think that it has to do with having an ANC [Advisory Neighborhood Commission] and a community that is supportive of adding vibrancy and adding housing to the neighborhood, so it’s all sorts of things,” she said. 

Resident feedback on proposals to add housing to the region are often met with criticism and highly specific requests, according to documents from public hearings on these proposals. 

Meeting minutes show meeting attendees, who are oftentimes residents, exhibiting concerns over the prospect of upzoning – allowing for properties that house more people in the same amount of space – in certain parcels. They express concern over inadequate notification of immediate neighbors to the proposed changes. Some also take issue with the proximity of proposed new units to existing homes. 

Developers can see these issues coming, said Cheryl Cort, Policy Director at Coalition for Smarter Growth. That’s why they sometimes won’t even try to pitch development projects requiring a higher density designation than the area is zoned for in Friendship Heights and similar areas.

Residents against a project they view as overly ambitious “can just kill it with delays and lawsuits,” Cort said. “It’s just not worth it to take on the fight. It’s better to just convert it, you know, just to do whatever, use existing zoning.”

And that’s exactly what’s taking place now. The neighborhood has two upcoming redevelopment projects set to be completed next year. 

Lisner-Louise-Dickson-Hurt Home, an affordable senior facility, will add 93 affordable units. Meanwhile, the redevelopment of Mazza Gallarie will include 325 new rental homes, 40 of which will be affordable. 

They’re huge steps for a community that has been at a near standstill with residential development for almost two decades. But it’s modest growth, Cort said, and it’s not nearly enough or what Friendship Heights is capable of hosting. 

“Our big concern is how much we’re leaving on the table,” Cort said, adding that developers don’t want to do “anything that would leave them vulnerable to being dragged out for years fighting it out in court and so they’re basically rebuilding in what should be a really high value area where we should be able to maximize the housing.”

In a city well over 1,000 affordable units short of its 2019 goal to create 12,000 new affordable units by 2025, this neighborhood isn’t pulling its weight.

The plan subdivides the city into planning areas. The planning area Friendship Heights is in is farthest behind its affordable housing goal, having achieved only 11.6% of its affordable housing target. And it’s the planning area that was asked to house the smallest amount of units – 230. 

More apartments, and especially ones that are below market rate, could change the atmosphere of the neighborhood as well as property values. Cort argues that change is necessary and will benefit everyone.

“What’s happened to their [Friendship Heights’ homeowners’] property values over the last 10 years? They’ve probably gone up a whole lot,” Cort said, adding that residents “basically were able to buy into this community and profit from the public investments — things like Metro, nicer streets, better bus service — and so it’s time we have communities that are sharing the benefits of the public investments and giving people of different incomes opportunity to live in the community and not perpetuating economic and racial segregation.”

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Inside the court, attorneys for transgender minors and the Biden administration argued that Tennessee’s law banning puberty blockers, hormone replacement therapy, and related surgeries for those under 18 unlawfully discriminates based on sex. The case is known as United States v. Skrmetti. 

The Tennessee law allows minors to receive treatment for early puberty or congenital disabilities, but children are not allowed to access those same treatments for transitioning purposes. 

Those gathered in front of the Supreme Court steps separated themselves by opinion – those in favor of allowing transgender youth to access puberty blockers and other similar treatments gathered on the left—those against it and in support of the current Tennessee ban gathered on the right side. 

Lawmakers and advocates spoke to their respective supporters simultaneously through bullhorns on platforms only several feet apart. Meanwhile, listeners adorned with LGBTQ+ flags, insignia and signs about protecting children cheered and booed in the cold as the justices heard arguments in the building behind them. 

A ‘distraction’ from other issues?

D.C. resident Ari Bandy, a transgender Tennessee native, underwent gender-affirming care as an adult.

“Tennessee was a dangerous environment to be visibly queer, and after moving to D.C. specifically to get out of Tennessee, I wasn’t burdened by stricter diagnostic requirements and could get it [treatment] here,” Bandy said.

“These kinds of laws have a measurable death toll,” Bandy told 91���� during Wednesday’s demonstration, adding that being denied access to this kind of care “results in alienation and really poor mental health.”

“It’s a distraction from the real healthcare reform that Tennessee needs and serving the southern opioid crisis and the immense amounts of poverty in our state,” said Bandy.

Laws restricting transgender medical treatment for youth have passed in 26 states, , so the Supreme Court’s ruling could have implications beyond Tennessee. 

Lawyer Brian Burgess represents conservative officials, advisors, and activists who want to strike down the ban, in part because it infringes on parental rights.

This is “going to be an important case for understanding how this current court is going to be approaching equal protection analysis as it implicates issues of gender and gender identity,” said Burgess, author of an amicus brief in support of the teens who brought the case to the court. 

Parents divided

The Supreme Court chose not to address the question of parental approval for these kinds of treatments during arguments, instead focusing primarily on the issue of sex discrimination. However, this was still an important issue for demonstrators outside.

“I think that parents have a right to make decisions for their child’s welfare and their medical decisions, and I don’t believe that doctors or schools or anybody should be hiding those types of things from the parents,” said Jen Donnelly, who serves as chair for the Prince William County, Virginia, Chapter of Moms for Liberty. She said she supports Tennessee’s ban.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., known for her far-right views, including on LGBTQ+ issues, spoke at the rally in support of Tennessee’s ban. She told 91���� before taking to the platform, “I’m here to declare that God only made two genders, male and female.”

“Children need to be let alone. They need to be allowed to grow up.” Greene said. “No one should mutilate their genitals, perform surgeries on them, or give them dangerous medicines and chemicals.” 

Alex Shalom, co-author of an amicus brief representing expert researchers and physicians in support of the petitioner, told 91����, “Every established medical agency that has looked at gender-affirming care for children believes that it’s appropriate in particular situations, when the child and the parents want it, and when the doctor thinks it’s appropriate.” 

He cited research from the American Medical Association and American Psychological Association.

“At the center of this case, there are real children and their families who are worried about their safety and their ability to access life-saving health care,” said Shalom. 

This is the second major transgender rights case to reach the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2020, the court ruled in a 6-3 majority that workplace sex discrimination laws protect transgender people in a case known as Bostock v. Clayton County, Missouri.

Biden administration attorneys argued Wednesday on behalf of transgender youth. That support could change with the next administration. President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to

The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to issue a decision by June.

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The home is situated at the vertex of a pointed street, around where Whites Ferry and Darnestown Road converge. On Tuesday afternoon, a portion of the wall on the second floor of the building was charred and belongings lay splayed on the lawn, including a blackened mattress and broken furniture.

Neighbors and friends identified the building’s occupant as Helen White, a homebody and animal lover they estimated was in her 60’s. They said she worked closely with local rescues and nursed several animals from illness to health in her lifetime.

Catherine Sutton, a friend and neighbor who lives just behind the victim, said White lived in the home with her Siberian Husky, Happy, and a longhaired cat.

She remembered her neighbor as a deeply generous person who often brought her thoughtful gifts including a favorite dessert of Sutton’s, rosemary shortbread, from a nearby bakery. White planned on making it from scratch for her next time, Sutton said.

“She was a sweet person,” Sutton said, adding that, when she learned of her neighbor’s death on Tuesday “my heart broke for her.”

Sutton displayed a tiny bouquet of red and blue flowers and a pine tree sprig in a small vase in her kitchen. She said the flowers were picked and gifted to her by her now deceased neighbor who also made sure Sutton had flowers when her birthday rolled around in September.

“She said something like, ‘a girl has to have flowers on her birthday,’” Sutton recalled.

Crews responded around midnight after getting the call about the blaze on the 16600 block of Whites Ferry Road in Boyds, said Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Service spokesperson David Pazos.

91���� 75 firefighters responded to the scene, Pazos said. They found the fire on the second floor of the home and attempted to get in through the doors but “heavy storage” inhibited their ability to get inside, Pazos said, so crews propped up a ladder and entered through the window.

Once in the home, firefighters discovered the body of a woman.

Police declined to confirm the name or age of the victim.

Around midnight, Edin Pass, who lives around the corner, heard the sound of sirens and saw flames down the block and immediately knew which house they were likely coming from. He said he tried to make his way to the building, but the street was blocked off.

“I’m thinking, ‘it’s her house because she have too many thing I think around the house,’” Pass said.

He didn’t know his neighbor well, but he works as a roofer in the area and had done an inspection on her roof after a recent hail storm. He said she was always kind and friendly.

“It’s hard to now understand she’s dead,” Pass said, adding he stayed home from work Tuesday as he processed the news. “I can’t believe.”

“She was a good, good person,” Sutton said. “Good, generous, kind, big heart – I will miss her very much.”

Update (12/3 midnite) 16600 White’s Ferry Rd, fatal house fire; victim located on 2nd fl; dog got out; fire originated on 1st fl w/ multiple competent ignition sources, none of which could be ruled out; Cause, accidental, under investigation; Damage $300K structure/$100K contents

— Pete Piringer (@mcfrsPIO)

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He’s worked in Tenleytown for about a decade. His office stands out. 

He can be spotted in front of the Wisconsin Avenue CVS parking lot every weekday during working hours. A bike rack serves as his desk, and a crate replaces an ergonomic chair. His wares are unique. It’s not clothing nor food that he sells but a digital newsletter, “The Hobo.” It can be purchased for $5 and downloaded via QR code. 

Foster has spent much of his adulthood homeless. In his newsletter, he writes about life on the streets under the guise of the fictitious character Black Fields. 

Earlier this fall, Foster turned 50 years old. It’s an age he wasn’t sure he’d reach, but he feels it in his back, ankles, knees, his stamina and his outlook on life.

“It’s a lot of guys out here, man, in their 40s and 50s that’s passing, so each day is like man… this might be it,” Foster said, adding that aging involves “just constant awareness of your mortality.”

He first became particularly conscious of the fragility of his life and body on September 18, 1992, his golden birthday. 

He got into a fight with a college peer when the other student closed the door on his hand, slicing off his finger. 

Had the incision been a quarter inch deeper, it would have impacted his artery and led to severe blood loss, the emergency provider told him in the ambulance.

“That was my first kind of instance where it’s like, ‘Okay, I’m mortal. I could die out here,’” Foster said, gesturing with nine and a half fingers. “You start thinking about consequences.”   

Within days, he began using drugs for the first time in his life. The habit would persist for years. He wouldn’t understand the correlation between the events until about seventeen years later in a drug rehab program. 

As he ages, it becomes harder to contend with the challenges of homelessness, he said. Each year, it’s more difficult to bear through the cold, defend himself against adversaries he encounters on the street and compete with panhandlers. He said he feels “vulnerable” sometimes. 

Fortunately, others look out for him. 

On an October afternoon, CVS security guard William Jones stopped by to say hello and give Foster a fist bump. Foster broke into a smile.

“That’s the head of my security team right there,” Foster joked.

Jones said Foster adds a nice bit of variety to the suburban neighborhood, even as far as the local homeless population goes. 

“He’s different from the rest of the homeless people,” Jones said. “He has a product for sale and it’s actually a cool product.”

Jones said he enjoys having Foster around the corner every day and reading his newsletter every so often. It reminds him of “The Boondocks” TV show, he said. It’s fun and unique.

Homelessness isn’t ideal for Foster, but he isn’t ignorant of the challenges of participating in the housing market. In order to afford a comfortable, well-insulated and clean home in the Washington D.C. area, he’d need a much higher and more stable income than his business brings in now. 

“All the discomforts that I would experience outside, I’m going to experience in the type of place that I’m going to get,” he said.

Unless he stumbles into a fortune, the Tenleytown block where he’s become a mainstay will remain his makeshift office for the foreseeable future, and that’s alright with him. He feels lucky just to be waking up each day.

“The lifestyle I lived, I really probably should have been dead in my 20s or 30s,” he said. “It’s just God been walking with me the whole time.”

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The results are in sooner than expected, but the uncertainty for businesses in downtown D.C. continues as they tell 91���� they will remain barricaded until after the inauguration. 

One of the businesses is Potbelly, located opposite the White House. Assistant Manager Danna Kelly said some of her colleagues feel uneasy with the barricades; “it’s a little nerve-wracking not to know what’s going on outside.”

It’s affecting business. Sitting in an empty shop at lunchtime, Kelly said, “it’s pretty dark and isolated.” 

Kelly thought the security measures were precautionary, telling 91����, “If nothing’s happened now or thus far, I don’t think we have too much more to worry about.” 

But Ray Copper, an employee at T-Mobile’s nearby location, said, “I anticipate something going on.” He said, “You never know people get a little riled up at this time,” referring to previous vandalism. 

Copper said he supported the safety measures D.C. was implementing, considering – located down the street – had been vandalized and looted in 2020 during a protest over the death of George Floyd.

Devonte Williams, a resident of DC for over 30 years, said he had never seen election safety precautions like this year. He also said as someone who experienced the anxiety of the Jan. 6 Capitol attack near his home, he was thankful for the preventive actions taking place around the District.

How long will barriers last?

Mayor Muriel Bowser responded to questions about boarded-up businesses in a press conference on Nov. 4. The mayor said the Metropolitan Police Department  “is out in all eight wards and is very focused on commercial districts.” She said they will share information with so-called business improvement districts “so they know what we know and we trust that they will make the right decisions.”

Bowser said the city expects to request National Guard help between now and Inauguration Day. 

Golden Triangle business district, home to more than 550 shops, bars and restaurants, including on Pennsylvania Avenue, has encouraged businesses to be “ready with a plan for if a threat does emerge,” according to an emailed statement.

In the meantime, the U.S. Secret Service spokesperson, Alexi Worley, wrote in an email that fencing and other physical public safety measures put in place for Election Day are expected to be removed this weekend.

Other businesses are more focused on getting customers over the emotional barriers of the election, particularly in heavily Democratic D.C.

, a cat cafe in Georgetown, has in the last day noticed an increased police presence, but they’ve decided not to board up their windows, a manager said. 

Sydney Floyd, shift manager at the facility, said customers have come in this morning “definitely bummed over the results.” The customers are coming in for some animal therapy. Floyd noticed less foot traffic, too. 

“I would assume that people are, I don’t know, either staying clear out of D.C. for the most part or are celebrating elsewhere,” she said.

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Only the truest of procrastinators trickled into the facility two hours before the polls closed. Still, Patty Davis, 78, and Susan Corfman, 66, were determined to offer each one a sample ballot who seemed even remotely interested.

The women each sat on lawn chairs under tents. Their tables, facing one another, were covered in pamphlets and reading material supporting candidates. For Davis, those candidates were Republicans, and for Corfman, they were Democrats.

Davis, with the Rural Women’s Republican Club, located herself at a polling place in a community that lived up to her organization’s name. To get to Poolesville from almost any other part of Montgomery County, one will drive past sprawling farmland, horse stables, grazing cows and grain silos to reach the western portion of the county near the Virginia border.

“We’re going to make America great again,” Davis said in an unmissable southern accent. “Close the border. Drill baby drill.”

Originally from a small town in Texas, Davis felt Donald Trump, the former president and Republican presidential nominee, spoke more to her background. He’s less insulated in the D.C. climate and makes an effort to reach Americans across communities, she said.

“He went into the Bronx, went to barber shops. He really wanted to connect with all of the Americans and not just the white guys down the street or whatever,” said Davis, a retired special education teacher. “Everybody got to see through that the kind of person he really is.”

Corfman signed up to man the table when a neighbor asked her to help out. She’s stressed about the very same prospect that excites Davis: Trump winning.

“I’m worried about a Trump America,” said Corfman, a retired occupational therapist in Montgomery County schools. “He wants to be a dictator. It’s bad. He’s not a good person, and he’s losing his mind.”

Corfman said she doesn’t understand Trump’s appeal to so many Americans.

“It’s just interesting how he gets people behind him,” she said. “It’s just mind-boggling.”

In Davis’s eyes, Trump is simply misunderstood. One term is not enough. The naysayers don’t understand all Trump is capable of.

“When he went into office, he didn’t really know all the opportunities there were to help people. He just thought, ‘Well, we’ll get the financial thing straightened out because that was where he came from in business,'” Davis said. “I don’t think when he got into it, he realized all the opportunities to help people.”

Another term will allow him to break ground on issues he didn’t have the time for in the first term. He’ll take advantage of those presidential opportunities, Davis said.

With a little over an hour left for voting, people entering the polling place approached both women’s tables at a nearly exactly even frequency. It was impossible to tell which way the rural heart of a deep blue county would swing.

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“This is hope. This is change. This is what the country needs,” Ledford said as a Beyoncé song accompanied hoards of people scattering in all directions after Harris finished her remarks.

Harris’s event at The Ellipse, where roughly four years ago then-president and current Republican nominee Donald Trump lit up a crowd that went out and stormed The Capitol, filled practically the entire immediate neighborhood. Harris spoke about the high cost of groceries, health care, housing, border security and what she vows to do to work toward solutions for average Americans. 

“If you give me the chance to fight on your behalf, there is nothing in the world that will stand in my way,” Harris told a crowd of an estimated 75,000 people, according to CSPAN. 

Ledford, 57, and Christopher Howell and Ken Miller, both in their 40s, are all LGBTQ+ identifying men living in D.C. In their opinion, this election isn’t about them. It’s about marginalized groups of all kinds and what their fates would become under another Donald Trump presidency. 

Howell and Miller live in Logan Circle and have been together for many years but are not yet married. They both said their top issue this election cycle is abortion protections.

“I’m most excited about the reproductive rights,” Miller said. “I think that that’s the most important thing. I know how important it is to women. I have a lot of women in my life that I love.”  

In her speech, Harris vowed to support a congressional effort to restore national protections for reproductive choice following the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe vs. Wade. She said she would “proudly sign” it into law. 

Ledford highlighted Harris’s comments on housing as a particularly inspiring moment of the speech. 

“As president, I will fight to help first-time homebuyers with your downpayment, take on the companies that are jacking up rent, and build millions of new homes,” Harris said. 

For Ledford, housing is an issue close to home. As an LGBTQ+ person from Texas, he said he’s experienced discrimination in the housing market searching for a home. That signals to him a much deeper systemic problem. 

“I’m a very straight-presenting white man, but, yeah, I’ve been discriminated against. So I can’t even imagine what people that don’t look like me go through. It’s much worse,” Ledford said, wearing a shirt with the Tide logo that read “Kamala – removes stubborn orange stains.”

The three men stood in a crowd that stretched from Constitution Avenue to behind the Washington Monument. Many had toddlers on their shoulders or in strollers. The crowd cheered wildly when Harris presented progressive agenda items and booed loudly when she mentioned her opponent. 

“I think that it’s just time to turn the page,” Miller said. 

“There’s a lot of people hurting out there,” Ledford said. Under a Harris presidency “we will change the trajectory that we’re on.”

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One major category: young voters. 

Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, 60, and Republican nominee Donald Trump, 78, may be generations removed from voters in their late teens and 20s, but both campaigns are getting creative with social media to attract those voters. 

How effective that campaigning work has been will be known soon, but young voters and pollsters said that, when used effectively, social media can reach Gen Z when little else can.

According to poll data released earlier this month by the Pew Research Center, adults under 30 are almost as likely to trust information from social media sites as they are information from national news organizations. While 56% of respondents noted trust in national news, 52% said they trust social media.  

For young Democrats, social media efforts early in Harris’s campaign – including video clips dubbed over with her comments about falling out of a coconut tree and posts associating her with Charli XCX’s “Brat” album – proved to have staying power. 

“I think that was really influential in kind of cementing the opinions of Vice President Harris among young voters,” said Matthew Vigneau, an American University junior who is the President of school’s College Democrats which has nearly 900 members.

While Vigneau is already a politically active young adult, he noticed friends who weren’t previously as tuned into politics sending him TikToks and Instagram reels about the campaigns. 

Those posts may not have generated a vote on the spot, but they started a conversation.

Friends would say, “‘Hey, this is pretty good. Tell me more about this person,” Vigneau said. “The fun stuff kind of leads people down the rabbit hole to where they’re doing deeper dives on health care, the economy, reproductive rights, climate change. So I think like the fun stuff is kind of a good hook to get people in, to get them used to consuming political content.”

Social media driven campaigns hinge upon that kind of curiosity, said Alberto Medina of the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, which studies youth civic engagement in the United States.

“There needs to be sort of a step two,” Medina said. “We often find like, ‘Okay, I see something. I get excited about maybe voting or learning more about a candidate. Do I have easy access to information to do that?’”

There’s a feedback loop, as well, Medina said. His team’s research found that younger voters may be more likely to turn out and vote when they get opportunities to engage in the media, respond to posts and create their own content. 

Despite that, investing so much time and money into social media messaging is still a gamble. According to Medina’s team, 41 million members of Gen Z will be eligible to vote by Election Day. Harris’s campaign TikTok, Kamala HQ, has 4.8 million followers. Trump’s Truth Social account, where he shares much of his promotional media, has 7.9 million followers.

Images disseminated on social media have also been an effective tool for young conservative voters as well as Democrats. To Joel Pritikin a sophomore at American University who leads the 65 members of College Republicans, a standout was Trump’s recent spin as a McDonald’s worker.

“He’s showing that he’s getting on the ground with normal people,” Pritikin said. 

Another inspiring social media moment for young Republicans was when Trump bore a triumphant expression as his face bled following an assassination attempt at a Pennsylvania rally.

“It shows that he’s not stoppable,” Pritikin said.

If these moments are simply a flash in the pan or contain a stronger power over voters, their actions will likely become better understood in the months and years of research following the election.

Anne Arundel Community College political science professor Dan Nataf directs the college’s Center for the Study of Local Issues. He recently started including young voters in his research on voting behavior in Anne Arundel County, Maryland’s most politically divided large jurisdiction. He wanted to track the effects of various kinds of messaging on his students and their peers. 

For young voters, entertainment is one of the most effective tools, Nataf said. 

“The TikTok generation, they value entertainment,” he said. “Information is secondary to the way in which it’s presented.”

Whether entertainment, information and voter activation can exist in concert for Gen Z will be decided Nov. 5. But it’s a near certainty that if investments in social media prove effective on young voters in either party, it’s something Americans will start seeing a lot more of in subsequent elections. 

The next step is refining the way it’s used. 

It’s “something that has to be mastered,” Nataf said. 

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Instead of merely viewing it as a disturbance, community leaders viewed it as an opportunity. 

This area could be a mecca for cyclists and public transportation users with just a little bit of foresight, planning and money. Visitors can see whispers of this potential in the brick-laid sidewalks designated for bikes, mostly empty bike racks near the Metro station and signage for cyclists to better navigate the area. 

“This is kind of an important opportunity to transition the space when nobody’s using it,” said Tom Quinn, the region’s representative on the Advisory Neighborhood Commission. 

The only, but a large missing piece: protected bike lanes. They’re strips of asphalt offset by concrete barriers blocking drivers from veering into the cyclists’ territory. Cyclists say they’re the only real way to incentivize cycling in urban areas. 

Two small protected lanes are coming to downtown Friendship Heights in the coming months after receiving the go-ahead from both the Advisory Neighborhood Commission and the District Department of Transportation this fall. A construction date has yet to be set but is anticipated in either the fall or spring, Quinn said. 

The lanes are planned for 44th Street NW between Harrison Street and Jenifer Street and for Jenifer Street between Western Avenue and 43rd. The completed design was published this month for the plan covering a third of a mile of road. DDOT officials did not disclose the price tag in time for publication.

The project is a bit of a gamble. It assumes there’s a demand for this kind of infrastructure. But if they’re not built, the community will never know what type of cycling potential the neighborhood could have and, in turn, the potential to reduce greenhouse gases, car accidents and pedestrian deaths.

“You don’t decide whether or not to build a bridge based on how many people are swimming across the river,” Quinn said. “People just don’t use something if it’s not there.”

However, evidence throughout the city and common sense suggest that protected bike lanes could draw cyclists to what’s currently “a pretty unpleasant intersection” to bike through, said Josh Rising, an active cyclist in the area. 

“They really give bikers that confidence that this is a place that’s safer. They really do a lot to encourage people to get on a bicycle who otherwise might be hesitant because they’re so worried that they might be struck by a car,” Rising said.

Rising co-founded Ward 3 Bicycle Advocates to organize the effort to better lobby for local cycling infrastructure. The fact the group has several hundred email subscribers may hint at the more widespread demand for this kind of work in the area.

And where better to start than near the Metro, Quinn added.

“You got to start building a network, he said. “We think this is a really important place to do it.”

The Friendship Heights neighborhood abuts Montgomery County, which has a more robust biking network. Quinn said the new lanes will allow cyclists to more seamlessly traverse between the two areas. 

As a cyclist, Rising has observed cars blocking bike lanes. It forces cyclists to make a snap decision about navigating around them. 

“As somebody who’s on a bike, you then have to decide, ‘Do I need to pull around this vehicle and into where the traffic is?” he said. 

These lanes are just the beginning for a planned larger protected bike lane network for the shopping center region, Quinn said, adding that lanes are planned next summer for Western Avenue, a larger thoroughfare dividing Maryland and D.C.

Friendship Heights is an ideal place to invest in this work, Rising said, partly because there are numerous schools around. Protected lanes could get kids out of school buses and onto the roads cycling to class.

“Kids 40, 50 years ago, the vast majority biked to school,” Rising said. 

To revert back to that, the city has to work through and around the built environment, which has thrown many literal and metaphorical roadblocks in the way of safely getting around the neighborhood on bike and foot. Namely spotty support from D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser and city administration officials, he said, who removed Connecticut Avenue from a bike lane project earlier this year.

“D.C. has set out so many goals for what it wants to achieve as a city – Vision Zero goals [reducing pedestrian deaths], climate change goals … the question is how do we actually reach these goals,” Rising said. “In so many of the cases cases, it’s making it easier and safer for people to bike.”

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They convened to discuss a question the university announced it would begin assessing almost exactly a year ago: should American University campus police officers be armed or equipped with more enhanced weaponry?

An October 2023 letter from the university’s Chief Financial Officer, Bronté Burleigh-Jones, explained the school would be reassessing the weapons available to campus officers following a shooting at Morgan State University in Baltimore. 

The first three sessions were intended to host only staff, faculty and students, respectively, in favor of arming the officers or enhancing the options of weapons available to them. Future sessions, starting today, are designed for staff, faculty and students against the change in practice.

Burleigh-Jones explained the goal of this format was, with such sensitive subject matter, to make as many campus residents as possible feel comfortable sharing their opinions.

“People need to feel safe to talk about it,” she said. “There are students who won’t talk freely in front of faculty and staff. There are staff who will not talk freely in front of faculty. We don’t want this to be a debate.”

The first October community forum we attended was the beginning of a sequence of events designed to solicit community feedback from staff, faculty and students at American. The meetings were organized so only like-minded people were speaking to each other.

Of the small group in the meeting room, only one person was a staff member there to voice an opinion. The rest were part of the team organizing the feedback effort.

Sam Sadow, visual resources curator at the Katzen Arts Center, was strongly against arming campus officers, but he was unable to make it to the anti-enhancing weapons event so he came to this one instead to share his thoughts. 

Organizers clicked through slides with discussion questions and listened intently as he conveyed his concerns. 

“In my own experience, guns add a level of menace and threat that is just unavoidable,” said Sadow, who is also an elected representative of the AU staff union. 

He and colleagues he’s heard from worry the guns would be used to hurt students, but, even short of that, he’s concerned just the presence of guns in holsters would change the campus climate and strike fear into the young adults that populate the university.

“I think the real threat of violence and harm is one thing,” Sadow said, but having armed officers could also “chill activism on campus, chill free expression on campus.”

“They’re students and shouting at a cop that’s unarmed is a lot different than shouting at a cop that is armed and I want them to be able to shout at cops,” he added.

The assistant vice president of university police services, Phillip Morse, explained that the department is currently trained to, in every way possible, reduce violence.

“We train deescalation so we do not train aggressive tactics,” Morse said. “Deescalation, deescalation, deesecalation. That’s everything we do starts with that.”

The following day, a large campus community space was again occupied by the same handful of organizers and a singular campus community member present to offer an opinion. Though the afternoon was designed to attract faculty members in favor of providing the officers more enhanced weaponry, this sole attendee, was, again, anti. He simply wasn’t aware the forums were organized by opinion, he said.

William Brent, a performing arts faculty member who teaches audio technology at American, has seen one too many horrific news stories to view guns as a good addition to campus.

“That kind of escalation could lead to a tragic outcome involving a firearm where it really wasn’t necessary,” Brent said. “That’s what I worry about the most.”

Over his 14 years on campus, the school has become his and his children’s home. The university community’s safety is paramount for him. He’s not convinced arming officers would better protect the school but imagines how it could do the opposite. 

“A lot of people I care about are here,” said Brent, the only person sitting in the right half of the window-lined conference room. 

The final session of the week was designed for students in favor of changing the practice around arming officers and adding more sophisticated weapons to their arsenals. This one was better attended, but the majority of the participants were, again, anti-arming officers, according to Joey Katzenell, an undergraduate student and March for Our Lives member. Most of the students had come with Katzenell, they said. 

During the event, other students with March for Our Lives sat on the other side of the meeting room’s glass walls handing out pamphlets featuring gun violence statistics and a list of student organizations that had come out against the change in practice.

“More guns doesn’t mean less gun violence,” Katzenell said. “I think it poses a huge threat to students, especially Black and brown students, especially disabled students.”

Katzenell and Sadow expressed concerns about not just the issue of arming officers but the way the university was conducting the project. 

“Where’s the problem that this is trying to solve?” Sadow asked.

According to Burleigh-Jones the question originated with a member of the Board of Trustees who inquired about the school’s procedure in the event of an active shooter on campus. The university’s 23-member Board of Trustees is primarily composed of people based outside of Washington D.C. and with work experience in education, media and weapons manufacturing. 

The policy around the use of weapons for campus police had not been assessed recently, Burleigh-Jones, so it seemed time to look into it and worth investigating all options in the process.

“That’s when we took a look at, ‘What is our current practice? What are the spectrum of practices? Let’s do an examination,’” Burleigh-Jones said. “Why would we take on the question and not consider the full spectrum?”

After the shooting at Morgan State, the Baltimore university announced it would have armed campus security around the residence hall near the scene of the incident.

George Washington University recently completed arming top officers. According to the school’s website, it announced it would receive community feedback on the topic in the spring of 2023 and started implementation around August of that year. 

Katzenell said the thoroughness and length of American’s process, which has now surpassed a year, gives them confidence that the school is trying to go about this in the most transparent way possible. 

However, the lack of dialogue across viewpoints worries Katzenell.

“If we had a forum where we could all just communicate and talk about what we think is right or wrong we could at least see where the other one was coming from,” Katzenell said.

In addition to the pro and anti events, the university has upcoming one for campus members “on the fence” about amping up weaponry for campus police and a forum for “impacted communities.”

Community forums will conclude Thursday, Oct. 17. After that will come a survey. Happening concurrently with all the steps so far, a feasibility study is being compiled which will, in addition to the feedback collected, inform a draft report sent to campus leadership. The process will end with a decision by the board and campus community.

Though Sadow and Katzenell appreciate the time and attention being given to collecting community feedback, they’re unsure it will be carried through all the way to the decision.

“We never interact with the Board of Trustees. They’re not in these forums. They are not available to talk to. It is almost impossible to reach them. I have no way of having faith that they’re going to listen to us,” Katzenell said. “Why do they need this privacy so bad that they want the community to investigate it but they don’t want to be part of the conversation?” 

Sadow expressed the same uncertainty about how this all ends. 

“That’s my concern and it’s not assuaged by that like nice, thought out community study process and the just ‘decision’ basically,” he said.

The Board of Trustees did not return a request for comment. 

Burleigh-Jones said she hopes to bring the findings to the board in February.

“The level of thoughtfulness that has gone into this project, when it is all said and done, I know that we will all be proud of,” Burleigh-Jones said.

Upcoming community forums are over the next two weeks.

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