From the very inception of Washington, alleys have crisscrossed the city’s blocks, invisible passageways etched deep into the urban core. Over the course of generations, they have played host to horse stables, carriage houses, garages, artisans’ workshops and slums of such squalor that a 1912 inventory deemed them “evil.”

Now, the District’s alleys may be the next frontier in the city’s red-hot housing market. And across the country, cities including Austin and Denver are also turning to alleys in the hope of tackling unabating crises in housing affordability.

“This is creating new housing opportunities in places that are woven into our neighborhoods and were previously pretty much unavailable to us,” said Cheryl Cort, policy director at the Coalition for Smarter Growth. Adding alley-lot dwellings to a neighborhood block, she added, “can substantially increase the housing opportunity on that block . . . and that is a meaningful contribution to the diversity of housing choices and housing type.”

Tucked behind block upon block of neat rowhouses in the Capitol Hill neighborhood is an intricate network of alleys. The alleys, which historically served as back entrances or equestrian passageways, and in the city’s more recent troubled past as the domain of prostitutes, gangs and drug dealers, are today largely underutilized and underdeveloped. But the city’s new zoning code, which went into effect last September after almost a decade in the making, now makes it easier to develop alleys, easing previous restrictions like the minimum width of an alley, height limitations, and its distance to a main street.

One person doing a lot of that developing is Sean Ruppert.

Ruppert, the principal of the development firm OPaL, last month listed his latest completed alley project on the market, on Adolf Cluss Court SE in the Capitol Hill neighborhood: two 2,700-square-foot apartments, built out of a 1920s-era brick garage, for $1.895 million apiece.

Ruppert has done a handful of alley projects in recent years, including the award-winning three-home Naylor Court Stables development in the Shaw neighborhood of Northwest Washington, and has noticed the growing popularity of alley homes among home buyers.

“I think there’s more of a willingness to live in alleys,” he said. “Now it’s seen as a quirky, unique space to live in, especially in a city that is so full of traditional row homes. This is really quite a unique space.”

Ruppert is betting on growing demand for alley homes. Just a block and a half away from his Adolf Cluss Court project, he is collaborating with local developer Martin Ditto of Ditto Residential on an alley project that will feature 45 residential units when completed. The project is being billed as “D.C.’s Next Great Alley.”

Individual homeowners, too, are increasingly interested in developing alley lots, said Nick Burger, a commissioner with the Advisory Neighborhood Commission on Capitol Hill who has been helping his constituents and other neighborhood residents through the long, complex process of obtaining permission to develop alley lots. In his neighborhood alone, four alleys have been named since last September, all in relation to plans for development, Burger said.

“What we found was that the vast majority of alleys on Capitol Hill . . . didn’t have names,” he said. “What many of these alley lot owners found was that they couldn’t build until they got an address, and they couldn’t get an address until the alley had a name.”

And then there are neighbors to placate.

Gillette Wing, who grew up in the District and now lives in Kingston, N.Y., owns an alley building just five blocks from the Capitol. The former stable used to be her grandmother’s, and when she passed away, ownership was transferred to Wing’s parents. But the property was left in limbo after Wing’s parents divorced, and for years the building was used only for storage, slowly falling into disrepair.

After the new zoning code went into force last year, Wing started thinking about turning the building into a residential space. Because the building didn’t fit the exact conditions laid out in the zoning code — for one, the 10-foot-wide alley was less than the required minimum width — Wing had to apply for a special exception, a process that includes input from neighborhood commissions and other D.C. agencies. Initially, some neighbors weren’t too pleased.

“Nobody wants construction in their backyard. I understand that,” Wing said. “I think there were points when it seemed like, oh, is this going to be so hard and painful?”

Wing ultimately won the support of the neighborhood commission, and a final hearing this week before the Board of Zoning Adjustments also yielded a unanimous vote of approval.

While the rehabilitation of vacant alley buildings into residential homes is not new to the city, the recent flurry of activity involving alleys — both from developers like Ruppert and individuals like Wing — points to a growing public consciousness of all that an alley can hold.

Alley homes, Ruppert said, “are trending, but not trendy.” Yet.

The affordable housing crisis afflicting cities nationwide is partly a physics problem: There is only so much space to build on, but an ever-growing population to accommodate. Alley dwellings, experts say, help by creating housing options in existing, underused space.

“You’re kind of filling in the cracks and crevices,” said Yolanda Cole, the senior principal, and owner of Hickok Cole Architects, which is providing architectural services for the 123-unit residential project on Blagden Alley, in the Blagden Alley/Naylor Court Historic District downtown. Construction is expected to begin early next year.

Capitol Hill, the site of many alley buildings, has seen property prices increase by about 30 percent in the past five years, according to the online real estate company Zillow. Alley homes could take some pressure off the housing market, said Cort, of the Coalition for Smarter Growth.

“We think it’s great to bring these places back online in order to create more housing opportunities,” she said. “A smaller space also costs less to build, so it’s naturally less expensive.”

Of course, alley homes alone won’t solve the housing crunch. High-end homes like Ruppert’s Cluss Alley will be out of reach for many, and even non-designer homes may be too expensive for low-income home buyers. But middle-income households are also struggling to find affordable places to live, and alley homes can fill in the “missing middle” of housing, said Lisa Rother, executive director of Urban Land Institute Washington.

“It is not a big deal in and of itself,” she said of alley homes. “But I think what’s important is we need to use every single way of creating affordability in our toolbox. It’s not one-size-fits-all.”

Other cities are looking to alleys as a way to increase housing stock.

In Austin, the Alley Flat Initiative has identified a network of vacant and underused alleys in the city’s east, and is working to build alley flats in the residential lots facing these alleys. The initiative has built seven such flats and has another 10 in development, according to Nicole Joslin, who heads the program as executive director of the Austin Community Design and Development Center.

And in Denver, the Single Family Plus housing initiative, spearheaded by the city-supported West Denver Renaissance Collaborative, will kick off next spring with the goal of building 250 backyard or alley homes over five years.

Those homes, called accessory dwelling units, are technically different from the alley lot buildings seen in Washington. Instead of a structure on an alley lot unconnected to a street, an ADU is an additional dwelling on a single-family lot, either attached to the main building, say in the basement, or detached as a separate structure at the rear of the property. But while ADUs and alley lot dwellings differ in definition, they serve largely the same purpose: putting free space to use.

“Our goal is to create a pathway to make ADUs accessible to low- and middle-income homeowners,” said Renee Martinez-Stone, the collaborative’s director. To streamline the process and to reduce building costs, the initiative plans to offer a menu of preapproved ADUs for homeowners to choose from.

And beyond expanding the housing stock, the repurposing of alleys offers a new way to build and engage with the urban environment.

For Rebecca Summer, a Ph.D. candidate in geography at the University of Wisconsin at Madison who has studied alleys in the District, how alleys are regarded in the public’s mind offers a clear snapshot of the city. Where alleys used to be treated as breeding grounds for vice, they are now celebrated as edgy and quintessentially urban, she said.

“Now, they’re still hidden,” Summer said. “But instead of people denigrating them, they’re seen as cool spaces.”

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It took a few days and a lot of shouting, but the hullabaloo over the HOT lanes on Interstate 66 has settled down — not unlike the peak toll rates, and just as Virginia transportation officials predicted.

By Friday, the peak toll was $14.50, which seemed almost like a bargain compared with the $40 peak in the first few days after the system went live Monday.

Hate them if you will, but the new tolls also appear to be doing what they were supposed to do: If you really insist on commuting solo in a major metropolitan area on an artery that’s already clogged, then you also deserve a heart attack when you see the toll sign flashing the cost. That’s market price, and you should pay up, stay off or form a carpool. NBC4 reported that the fuss led at least one Virginia man to use social media to form new casual carpools, also known as “slug lines.”

What outraged some drivers most, however, was the feeling that they had been conned by Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) and his transportation team when the cost of the plan to commuters was under discussion. In the walk-up, before the new tolls went into effect, many Virginians got the idea that the toll would be no more than $9 to $10 a day. So when the tolls hit extremes, many motorists — not to mention some Democratic and Republican lawmakers — hit the roof.

“The bottom line is this is very different from what we briefed people it would be,” Del. John J. Bell (D-Loudoun), an opponent of tolling on I-66, told my colleague Luz Lazo.

Others have been blunter in saying the McAuliffe administration misled people. The Republican Party of Virginia accused McAuliffe’s administration of ensuring that the tolls would be switched on only after the gubernatorial election to choose his successor. Loudoun County Supervisor Ron Meyer (R-Broad Run), who is also a member of the Northern Virginia Transportation Commission (NVTC), urged the NVTC to pass a resolution demanding that the tolls be lowered or suspended.

But Brian Coy, a spokesman for the governor, said the administration never misled anyone. He said that when transportation officials talked about a $17 average daily toll during peak hours, they meant what they said, an average — all short trips and long trips along that section of highway, and with peaks and valleys of demand.

“All the discussion about this was in terms of averages,” Coy said. “So that would fundamentally require that at many other times tolls would be considerably higher and considerably lower.”

The idea of tolling I-66 inside the Beltway is part of a larger program to expand the highway’s number of lanes and raise funds for additional improvements to mass transit and bike lanes.

In September 2015, Nick Donohue, deputy transportation secretary, gave a presentation to the NVTC on the state’s proposal for dynamic tolling inside the Beltway. He told the commission the “typical toll” during rush hour would be $7 inbound in the morning and $9 outbound at night — a number picked up and repeated many times in media coverage. He did say the tolls would vary depending on congestion.

Coy, the governor’s spokesman, said that transportation officials modeled those estimates based on the experience of the HOT lanes that already are in place on the Beltway — where, incidentally, some tolls were up around $30 last week. He also wanted to emphasize that the new I-66 tolls are voluntary: they apply only to solo drivers during the height of the rush hour. He also made another prediction: In time, I-66 traffic would adjust to market forces.

“[W]e’re only four days in. I think in two weeks, this conversation will be fundamentally different,” Coy said Friday.

Stewart Schwartz, executive director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth, also thinks Virginians had fair notice. He suggested that some commuters and Northern Virginia lawmakers might not have been listening — or chose to hear what they wanted to hear — when state officials discussed the plan. And in any case, he said, the $40 tolls this week weren’t out of line, considering the circumstances on the first day.

“Remember, this is a peak-of-the-peak toll. It’s also a peak-of-the-peak in the first day for a road that hadn’t been available to single-occupant drivers,” Schwartz said in an interview. “It suddenly became available for single-occupant drivers, and so there’s probably a ton of interest and demand that is far beyond what we will see” later.

Schwartz praised the plan for I-66, though he would have preferred more emphasis on promoting transit-oriented development instead of highway expansion. He believes Virginia transportation officials did their duty to advise commuters about how the system would work.

“I can’t speak for all the comments that were made back in the day,” he said. “But I do know they were talking about averages.”

McAuliffe is and has always been a pitchman, known for sometimes making claims whose casual relationship with the facts could make a used-car salesman blush. (Cf. GreenTech.) It’s almost become part of his charm.

But it seems like an overstatement to say that McAuliffe or Transportation Secretary Aubrey Layne deceived people. There may be broader issues to consider about HOT lanes — whether they aggravate America’s growing inequities or whether we should be placing tolls on roads purchased with taxpayer funds — but when state officials talked about what they thought would be the daily cost, it seems reasonable to speak of averages and the bulging middle of the Bell curve for all trips.

But even if they didn’t sell Virginia a lemon this time, the administration should have been much more explicit in its briefings for the public and public officials; their public presentations should have explained more clearly what they were averaging. In the run-up, the administration also could have prepared commuters with more upfront warnings that the sky was the limit for tolls, depending on the circumstances. Sure, these caveats might have played into the hands of their political opponents, who had their own reasons for playing up the impact, but it also would have spared lots of people this week’s sticker shock.

Phot by Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post. Click here to read the original story.

In addition to reducing parking requirements to 0.2 to 0.6 spaces per unit for developments “approved by special exception,” the board went a step further by requiring mitigations if developers provide more than 1.65 spaces per unit.

UPDATED – 12:25 p.m. – Montgomery and Prince George’s county leaders promised Tuesday to commit to equitable economic growth along the Purple Line during an event in College Park.

Montgomery Executive Ike Leggett and Prince George’s Executive Rushern Baker described the agreement as a way to protect local businesses and residents located along the light-rail line’s route.

The agreement espouses four goals for local governments and planning boards along the route: help local businesses prosper, expand the local labor force, create housing opportunities for all incomes and promote vibrant, sustainable communities.

The agreement is not legally enforceable, but the leaders said it could provide a moral guide to future leaders who will have to handle the new development and economic growth expected after the Purple Line is completed in 2022.

“Keep in mind this is not a legally binding agreement,” Leggett said. “It rests upon the will, it rests upon the motivations and attitudes of the people who want to see this happen.”

Leggett said that to make the agreement a reality, it will require the people who have pushed for it the past several years to continue to lobby for equitable growth well after the Purple Line is completed.

Local leaders such as Leggett, Baker and University of Maryland, College Park, President Wallace Loh signed the agreement, along with Montgomery County Planning Board Chair Casey Anderson and other regional planners.

Baker related a story about how U Street developed after he started working as a community organizer in the Washington, D.C., neighborhood in 1978. He said the area is now appealing, but it displaced long-time residents and businesses who could no longer afford to live or operate there.

“A lot of good-meaning folks wanted to see the neighborhood stay the same and grow with it,” Baker said about the displacement in that area. “What was missing is what we have today.”

Both Baker and Loh said Prince George’s County and the University of Maryland should grow together.

“It is certainly a moral obligation, it is an institutional obligation to make sure that the community and economic benefits of the Purple Line spread throughout the whole region,” Loh said.

Gustavo Torres of the immigrant advocacy group CASA and Gerrit Knaap, director of the National Center for Smart Growth at the University of Maryland, also signed the agreement Tuesday.

The Purple Line Corridor Coalition, which drafted the agreement, is made up of resident groups such as Safe Silver Spring, business groups such as the Maryland Building Industry Association, local governments, and community organizations such as the Coalition for Smarter Growth and Purple Line Now.

The coalition started work on the agreement in 2014 after the federal government approved the project’s Record of Decision—effectively giving it the green light to move forward.

David Bowers, vice president of Enterprise Community Partners Inc., an affordable-home developer, gave the most passionate speech of the day, urging leaders and community members in the room to make the agreement a reality.

“We can put our heads in the sand and act as if we haven’t seen this in other places—where investment comes and residents and businesses get displaced,” Bowers said. “We know it has happened. You can go 15 minutes down the road to the nation’s capital and look at neighborhood after neighborhood where investments have been made and because there was not sufficient proactive steps taken, you look and say, ‘Wow, a lot of folks who used to live there don’t live there anymore. A lot of businesses that used to be there aren’t there anymore.'”

Bowers said the people in the room Tuesday need to make sure affordable homes along the route can stay affordable and more homes and opportunities for low-income residents become available.

“The question is: Do we have the heart?,” Bowers said. “To make sure the words on this paper, while not legally binding … are compelling enough [that] everyone who wants to stay has the opportunity to do so.”

Once completed, the 16.2-mile light-rail line will stretch from downtown Bethesda to New Carrollton in Prince George’s county.

Gov. Larry Hogan broke ground on the project in August. Since then, crews have been clearing trees along the former Georgetown Branch Trail between Bethesda and Silver Spring, as well as preparing construction sites along the rest of the route. The state estimates construction to be completed in 2022.

The line is expected to cost about $2.4 billion to construct and is being built under the state’s $5.6 billion, 36-year contract with Purple Line Transit Partners. The private team of construction and finance companies has been tasked with financing, constructing, operating and maintaining the project.

Anderson said Monday that Montgomery County has been proactive in approving master plans in Long Branch, Lyttonsville, Chevy Chase Lake and downtown Bethesda along the light-rail route to protect current communities while also encouraging new development. He noted that the Downtown Bethesda Sector Plan requires 15 percent of new residents to have “moderately-priced dwelling units” (MPDUs), which is more than the 12.5 percent required elsewhere in the county for developments with more than 20 units.

“It’s not just about making sure that people are able to stay in places like Long Branch, where people have lower incomes, but also about creating opportunities for people who have moderate incomes in more affluent areas along the corridor like Bethesda and Chevy Chase,” Anderson said.

“This is zoning, this is land use, this is something that’s within our control,” Montgomery County Council President Roger Berliner said. “Now, is it also true market forces can only be nudged so far, before they say, ‘I’m sorry, you’re exacting too much from me.’ That’s true, too. You have to find that sweet spot to ensure you exacted everything you can and still allow progress to occur.”

Still, concern remains that the multi-billion-dollar Purple Line will price people out of existing communities if land values increase significantly along the route. Another concern is that five years of construction might put existing stores and shops along the route out of business due to the inconvenience to their longtime customers.

State Sen. Will Smith (D-Silver Spring) is proposing changes to state regulations to potentially enable business owners along the project’s route to be reimbursed for significant losses.

On Tuesday, Montgomery County Council member Marc Elrich, a candidate for county executive, expressed his concerns about potential community displacement. Elrich has stood by comments he made at candidate forums when he described anticipated development along the Purple Line route as a form of “ethnic cleansing.”

Elrich first used the loaded term to describe proposed zoning changes in the Long Branch area. He said Tuesday his use of the term helped defeat those proposed zoning changes that could have displaced existing communities in the area.

“The older apartments along the corridor are going to remain vulnerable,” Elrich said. He noted that the agreement signed Tuesday originally was intended to be a compact, but the label was changed after leaders couldn’t agree to changes in law or regulations to protect existing communities.

“Everyone’s words are be vigilant, look forward, be aware, but those have no teeth,” Elrich said. “Absent figuring out what we’re going to do make sure these people don’t get displaced, I think we have a long-term problem.”

He proposed rent stabilization on older buildings to preserve them. If not, owners of land and buildings along the route should be persuaded to pursue goals other than “making large profits,” he said.

Photo courtesy of Andrew Metcalf. Click here to view the original story.