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Friend –

What a storm! I’m sure you also woke up on Friday morning to the tremendous damage from the previous night’s weather.

First, and thankfully as far as I know, no one was hurt from the damage or the storm, and I hope everyone's safe.

We have hundreds of trees down across Ward 6, and DDOT immediately went to work cleaning up that same morning, which I expect to take at least through the weekend. I want to thank neighbors for reaching out with your photos, comments, and information so we can get those cases prioritized for DDOT.

A couple quick tips as we continue the clean-up:

Report downed trees or blocked sidewalks/roads/public space to 311. And make sure to select the “Tree Inspection” service request through the online portal or app.
Build extra time into travel. There are still some roads and sidewalks blocked.
Don't climb on or in downed trees; they can still shift & settle. Please stay safe and watch for power lines or hanging limbs.
As storm recovery continues across DC, please place fallen branches/debris from your property or vehicle at your trash collection point or in a tree box. Please don't place debris in roads, bike lanes, or sidewalks.
Preach a little patience. Crews are out and will be out for a few days. I’m thankful for HSEMA, DDOT, DPW, DCPS, DPR, FEMS, OUC, and other agencies assisting in our recovery efforts.

The storm was certainly an abrupt end to recent days that have been filled with some sad news for all of us.

The passing of Dolly Parton, a truly wonderful person and embodiment of all that we should aspire to be, has given us a chance to reflect on, and celebrate, the many ways she quietly impacted our lives. It was immense. I’ll give a quick recap of my own connection with her.

Years ago, right before I was sworn in to represent Ward 6 on the Council, I was visiting family in Tennessee when my young niece proudly came up to me holding a book with her own name on it. She was so excited to get a book in the mail once a month, and it fostered a deep love of reading. My brother and sister-in-law told me that she'd been enrolled in Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library right after she was born.

That immediately got me thinking about bringing a similar program to DC, called Books from Birth, and partnering with Dolly’s initiative. It was the first law I wrote and passed at the Council. If you’re a regular reader of these newsletters, you’ll probably already know what comes next.

DC became the largest partner with Dolly Parton at the time, and Books from Birth is now 10 years old, with nearly 4 million books distributed to well over 120,000 DC kids. All thanks to Dolly.

There are so many families easily able to share a love of reading with their young children thanks to Dolly. Those books are still on their shelves even after kids age out of the program and into their own library card. I had the pleasure several years ago to meet with her at the Library of Congress where the millionth book was donated by the Imagination Library, an astounding achievement.

Over the last week as I was talking about her impact on social media, I’ve heard from so many of you who love the Books from Birth program. It warms my heart to see your children start their reading journeys thanks to this program and DC Public Library. Have a memory from the Books from Birth program? I’d love to hear it.

In the meantime, please continue to share your clean-up needs with my office, and there are plenty of updates from across the Ward, including the grand reopening of the Southeast Library next week! I also have another traffic safety update, some good news about DC students' academic gains, a packed next few months at the Wilson Building, and a recap on what a "Gold Line" could look like on H Street.

Let's get into it.

Miss the last newsletter recapping the return of Mott's Market, Back to School events, and more? Read it here.

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We Cut the Ribbon on a Beautiful, Modernized JO Wilson!

Welcome home, JO Wilson Elementary School families and staff! JO Wilson has completed two years of construction and students learning out of swing space (plus all the challenges that brings with it). The new school looks fantastic! With a beautiful gymnasium overlooking the neighborhood and one of top playgrounds in the city, that’s just the tip of the iceberg for what I think is one of the best communities in DCPS.

Thank you to DCPS and the JO Wilson staff and parents who volunteered to help shape the design and work through hiccups as they came up over the past three years.

For me, personally, the ribbon cutting felt like a full circle moment, as this is the school my daughter first attended. I really enjoyed meeting so many families, and I'm excited for today's and tomorrow's students to learn, play, and grow in their new school.

DC Schools Continue to Show Gains in Learning Post-COVID

Class is in session, and I’ve got some exciting news about how our DC students are doing!

More students in DC schools are proficient in math and reading than they were before the pandemic, according to a statement by the State Superintendent of Education. This is the fourth consecutive year of learning growth for the public school system. This annual test is taken by students starting in third grade through 8th grade, with a different assessment for high school students.

There’s a couple reasons for this, but I’m going to highlight a few that City Cast DC reports on: a citywide math taskforce and expanded access to tutoring, which 4,700 students have taken advantage of last year.

The best part: These gains happened in every ward - with much of the improvement driven by elementary and middle school students. There's still much more to be done and differences in gains deeper than the surface level, but these are encouraging results that speak to the hard work of educators and support staff, investments made by the District in our students, and families and community members working together.

Related: The Wall Street Journal reported just this week that DC and Seattle are two cities bucking the trend where the population of children has increased by 10%+. This is an important data point, and I think it shows that with investments in families to make childcare more affordable, provide good schools, create a robust paid family leave program, and expand health care, the District can be an even better place to raise a family.

Public Safety Update

Our Chief Judges are Sounding the Alarm: In an important op-ed in WaPo, the Chief Judges of the DC Court of Appeals and the DC Superior Court write that our courts aren’t receiving enough funding, undermining their ability to administer justice in a timely and fair manner.

Similar to past crises such as a shortage of judges, because our courts are administered and funded by the federal government, it's easy to fall behind in both resources and attention. This is particularly true at a time when the current US Attorney’s Office has adopted a much more aggressive charging posture, which has driven caseloads up significantly and presented serious constitutional issues when those awaiting trial can’t get their day in court in a reasonable time.

Arrest Made in May 2025 Benning Road Homicide: MPD announced an arrest in a fatal shooting from last year at 17th and Benning NE, which isn't in Ward 6, but was close enough to the border I wanted to provide an update for neighbors nearby.

MPD Arrest of Gold Bar Scam: Earlier in August, MPD announced the arrest of two men who posed as federal agents over the phone to try and scam an 85-year-old man into purchasing $200,000 of “gold bars.” Thankfully, the gold dealer alerted the man, and MPD got involved. I’m including this alert to help reinforce that everyone needs to be extremely careful of scams, particularly with so many rapid changes in technology available. Remember, a legitimate transaction can be verified offline and shouldn't come with urgent deadlines.

The Southeast Library Returns Next Week!

It’s the final countdown to the re-opening of our beloved Southeast Library, which will have an official ribbon cutting ceremony on Thursday, September 10, in the morning, followed by a community block party that night from 5 to 8 p.m. in Eastern Market Metro Park. The library has been closed for modernization since early 2024, but let me tell you: it’s a beautiful renovation, and the wait was worth it.

The new space includes:

Expanded space for children, teens and adults
More room for books, computers, and seating
A universally accessible entrance
An environmentally sustainable design
More meeting, collaboration, and study spaces

It was a $33 million effort I was proud to help secure the funding for and work in close partnership with the DC Public Library and neighbors to get the design right. See you Thursday!

Touring a Poorly Maintained Affordable Housing Building in Mt. Vernon Triangle

This week, I spent several hours touring Capitol Vista, an all-affordable apartment building that opened in late 2020 to much fanfare. DC taxpayers supported the development to the tune of $18 million from the Housing Production Trust Fund. It’s centrally located, near plenty of transit options, and plenty of retail. But nearly six years after opening, Faria Management is running the building into the ground. My staff visited the building earlier this summer after several residents reached out to us about broken elevators, leaks and mold, no air conditioning, bugs and pests, and unsafe conditions. They were at their wits end dealing with management. I was welcomed into many of the apartment homes this week, where neighbors shared their stories and showed me persistent poor conditions (the neighbor pictured above helpfully organized her neighbors and was our tour guide; the unit shown isn't her home, but hasn't had working air conditioning for months):

I saw HVAC units leaking water everywhere and flooding units;
I saw flooded floors where each step forced water out of the joints in the flooring;
I saw bugs and gnats flying around, particularly in apartments so badly neglected tenants moved out and into a hotel rather than stay there. When my team visited in July, the gnat infestation was so severe in the entire building residents told them they can’t eat at home;
I saw mold in children's bedrooms and along baseboards and walls due to the numerous plumbing leaks;
One resident told me her dishwasher hadn’t worked for five years despite repeated maintenance requests;
Some windows wouldn’t open, and others wouldn’t stay closed if the wind blew;
Residents talked about prolonged court fights with management over simple, easily disproven claims about owed rent and repeated disrespect and absence from management; and
Over and over, we heard how management routinely papers over issues rather than dealing with them (there were plenty of repair people working during my tour, which the residents told me was only happening because I was there).

Again, this is a building the city invested $18 million of your taxpayer money in to make sure we have enough homes and apartments, but it’s being run into the ground by property management. And for many of these units, taxpayers help subsidize the rent each month. They shouldn't have to tolerate the way this company is neglecting residents.

Does all this sound familiar? Well, this is the same company the Office of the Attorney General just this week announced a major lawsuit against for neglecting another affordable property. The OAG “found evidence of severe and pervasive housing code violations at the building, which is owned and managed by developer Buwa Binitie through two of his companies.”

The residents deserve a lot more, and that’s why I’m working closely with the Department of Buildings and the OAG to make sure these residents, and the city, get dignified housing.

More on the Future of Transit on H Street NE and the RFK Campus

Earlier this summer, WMATA made a splash announcing its ambitions to build a "Gold Line" bus connecting RFK Campus to Union Station and Benning Road Metro stations. The Gold Line would be a Bus Rapid Transit line, a supercharged bus service – think center-running lanes with hardened stations and buses running every 3-5 minutes during peak hours.

This obviously has major potential for connecting people headed to and from RFK to the Red Line at Union Station, and further relieving some of the demand on Stadium-Armory (although I still believe we should be planning for a new metro station on the north end of the RFK Campus that could serve Kingman Park, Benning Road, Langston, Carver-Terrace, and the east end of H Street and Bladensburg).

And it also has big implications for H Street.

That’s why last week, I pulled together a meeting with some ANCs and businesses along H Street to hear directly from me, WMATA General Manager Randy Clarke, and DDOT Director Sharon Kershbaum about the project. Understandably, a lot of folks are skeptical after living through the streetcar’s rocky start and sudden demise.

But it’s worth keeping in mind this project’s central proposal would fix one of the biggest shortcomings of the streetcar – it wasn’t running down the center of the street with its own, dedicated lane that didn’t interfere with the rest of the corridor.

That one change means more of H Street’s curbs are available for whatever use makes the most sense – each block can sort out a division of uses, including deliveries, rideshare, parking for customers, parking for employees, etc.

The Gold Line hasn't yet been designed, so I don’t have anything to share with you with specificity. We don’t know how many stops there will be yet, either. But I do know this is a major project and investment that I’m excited about, and I hope you are, too. I’ll keep you updated as planning gets more detailed in the coming months and year.

A Bottle Bill, Waymo, and Affordable Utility Bills, Oh My! A Packed Few Months are Coming at the Council

The Council is about to be back in session, and there are a number of major bills I'll be moving out of the Committee on Transportation and the Environment over the next two months.

We’ll take up a vote on my bill to cut the red tape and cost to install solar and lower people’s bills, tackle several reforms to the Public Service Commission to prioritize fighting rising utility and energy bills, automatically enroll eligible residents in utility discount programs, advance my legislation creating a pathway for autonomous rideshare service to begin, create the first new bottle redemption bill in the US in more than two decades to cut litter on our streets and in our rivers, and take on protecting residents during DC Water disconnections.

As background, the Council operates on two-year legislative cycles, during which a bill needs to be introduced, have a hearing, pass a committee vote, and then pass the full Council. If that doesn’t happen, the bill dies, and the process can begin anew in January.

Many of these bills have had at least one hearing, and this fall is the time to start making decisions on if we move forward and how. You’ll hear more from me on these bills as we get to them, so stay tuned.

We also have a few more public hearings on the books, and I’ll share those dates as they're finalized, but there is one coming up at the end of this month:

September 24 - Public Hearing on Councilmember Brianne Nadeau’s legislation to create a Neighborhood Management Authority and on Councilmember Janeese Lewis George’s bill to make it easier to close streets for neighborhood porchfest events. You can sign up to testify here.

Congrats to Mr. Henry’s on 60 Years on Capitol Hill

Last weekend, I had the pleasure of joining a full house at Mr. Henry’s to celebrate their 60th anniversary and present Mr. Henry’s owner Mary Quillian Helms with a resolution approved by the Council to mark the occasion.

Mr. Henry’s is a legacy small, local business in the Capitol Hill community, renowned for its live jazz (where, of course you already know, the late, great Roberta Flack got her start). The upstairs has also hosted a wide range of civic meetings and debates over the years, typically with the bar open. Congrats to Mary and the whole team at Mr. Henry’s, and here's to the next 60!

Join Me to Celebrate the Unveiling of Lenora Baker Way in Southwest

The Southwest community is commemorating a much beloved resident, Lenora Baker, by designating the cross streets of 3rd Street between I Street, SW and M Street, SW in her honor.

Known for her hospitality as a server at Friday Night Jazz and Monday Blues, Lenora was also affectionately known as ‘Bell-Bell’ and served the community in a multitude of ways. She volunteered at Amidon-Bowen Elementary School, Jefferson Middle School Academy, and Richard Wright Public Charter School, in addition to serving as a deaconess and cook at Westminster Presbyterian Church. She was an advocate for fair housing in Greenleaf Gardens and the surrounding public housing communities.

After ANC 6D voted unanimously in support of a symbolic designation for her, I introduced legislation for the renaming, and it passed the Council unanimously.

If you’re interested in commemorating her life and legacy, please join me for the unveiling of her street sign on September 11 at 1 p.m. at the intersection above.

And Also Come Out for Southwest Neighbors Night!

It's the first ever Southwest Neighbors Night! Join me, ANC 6D, and MPD First District Commander Colin Hall to mingle and come together.

See you on Sunday, September 27, from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Canopy Hotel (975 7th St. SW).

New Ward 6 Traffic Safety Update

During my last newsletter, I highlighted the newly installed 6th & A St SE stop sign, which was one of the only intersections in the neighborhood with no all-way stop, confusing drivers, bikers, and pedestrians with regular crashes as a result.

The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. Keep your recommendations coming, and be sure to follow DDOT’s Traffic Safety Input (info) process (to start a new request, use 311 and select “Traffic Safety Input”) to centralize all of the requests for safety interventions. DDOT does a quarterly evaluation of smaller projects like these and selects new projects every three months based on TSI requests.

In the meantime, I have another update:

8th and D Street SE – This is a huge improvement and was just recently completed as part of Barracks Row Bus Priority Project. The project will improve bus service, access to bus stops, and safety between East Capitol Street and M Street SE, and should deliver a number of safety interventions as part of the broader project.

Prior to the project, buses were on-time just 68% and 70% of the time, so the main goal is to make these routes faster for the C53 and C55 busses. And there’s more: buses will now be able to fit back at the original bus stop, and it’s also safer for people connecting to Eastern Market, the playground, childcare, and important retail along the corridor, including two grocery stores.

Urban Heat Effect is a Real Problem. What If a Different Paint Was Part of the Solution?

Here’s a cool idea: In order to bring down the temperature, DDOT’s running a pilot to find ways to reduce the heat coming off of our pavement by painting select streets with ‘solar reflective pavement coatings.’

This pilot comes in partnership with American University. As explained by a professor at the school to WTOP, “The idea is that when you have a cooler surface, it doesn’t radiate as much heat back out, and that’s when humans start to hopefully feel the improvement.”

The idea has been used in Phoenix, Austin, and Orlando. Keep an eye out for some cool corridors, and let me know if you think it makes a difference.

The test areas include:

West of Nationals Park in Southwest
Benning in Northeast
Brightwood in Northwest
North Michigan Park in Northeast
Ivy City in Northeast

Good News: No More Tickets for Parking at Inactive Bus Stops

After residents called our office when they received tickets for parking in front of a bus stop - even though that bus stop was no longer in use - DDOT has now confirmed it's updating its parking restrictions around all inactive bus stops.

This became a bigger challenge following WMATA's Better Bus Network implementation, when more than 500 bus stops were removed across the city. Now, to be clear, those tickets issued were still legally valid, but clearly unfair, and DDOT and WMATA should have been quicker to update the stops.

DDOT has also updated ticketing for illegal parking along H Street NE, now that the DC Streetcar is out of operation. It's still illegal to park in a travel lane, but it no longer carries the enhanced fee that was in place for the streetcar. All outdated signage should also have been removed.

We Celebrated the RESALE Act’s Passage at The Anthem

On Tuesday, we celebrated the passage of my RESALE Act at where else: The Anthem. It was wonderful to see so many of our beloved local music venues and theatres represented and excited to see the damage done by secondhand ticket resellers ended, starting this January.

To recap: The Council passed the strongest consumer protection laws in the nation around reselling tickets to live music and theater events, including a 10% cap on how much a ticket can be resold above face value and a ban on selling tickets not in your possession. I took this on because technology has quickly allowed bots and scalpers to scoop up thousands of tickets immediately from the box office and sell them on sites like Stubhub and Seatgeek at inflated prices. Sometimes they sell so-called "speculative" tickets that aren't even real or haven't been released!

It was hurting DC music-goers by ripping them off and pricing them out of shows, and in turn, hurting our economy. I’ve covered this bill in-depth in previous newsletters, so here's more if you're interested The celebration at The Anthem was a welcome reminder that this has the potential to be an economic driver for DC, too, as people can go to more shows, and more of that money stays here in DC at our local venues and nearby restaurants, rather than being funneled out of state to scalpers.

I can’t stress enough how much this will impact the rest of the country: I’ve been fielding calls in the past few weeks from policymakers as far away as Hawaii, and I know other state legislatures are considering their own laws tackling the issue.

Mulch is Back at the Fort Totten Transfer Station

This isn’t mulch ado about nothing! (Sorry, I had to). Mulch services have returned to Fort Totten, and residents can grab up to five 32‑gallon bags for free. Please bring your own bags and a shovel.

The Fort Totten Transfer Station is located at 4900 John McCormack Rd. NE, and is open Tuesday–Friday: 10 a.m.– 2 p.m. and Saturdays from 7 a.m.–2 p.m.

More information here on Fort Totten Transfer Station.

Meta Will Pay up to $17.1 Billion for Exploiting Kids with Intentionally Addictive Social Media Platforms

Last week, the company Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, agreed to settle with 47 states, including DC, for up to $17.1 billion over allegations that its platforms are a danger to children. I'm very grateful to our DC Attorney General Brian Schwalb for his leadership on this.

In addition to the settlement, there’s also another part of the agreement that’s just as important: Meta agreed to make changes to Instagram and Facebook designed to reduce young people’s use of the platforms.

This is a national story and potentially a turning point in how we all think about and use social media. It was a multi-state effort and “the largest state consumer protection settlement in history outside of the Big Tobacco settlements of the 1990s,” according to OAG. Of the $17.1 billion in the settlement, DC will receive between $90-$130 million.

A Few Good Constituent Services Wins

It's been a surprisingly busy last few weeks for my constituent services team, even in the dog days of summer, and as I have in past newsletters, I want to take a moment to share some of the different kinds of problems they're helping Ward 6 neighbors solve every day. As always, you can request help with a challenge through our website (please include your address or quadrant when you submit so we can respond faster).

Here are a few constituent services wins from the last couple of weeks:

Helped a constituent with their LIHEAP energy assistance application and get on a payment plan to get their utility bills back on track – there was initially an issue with their filing that had tripped up the paperwork. This led to a savings of more than $700.
DC Water had conducted lead service line replacement work around a constituent's home, which led to his water being shut off and then never turned back on! After we raised the issue with Lead Free DC, the water was turned back on within a day.
A constituent had been uninsured since February because Healthy DC wasn't recognizing that she was eligible for a basic health plan. We reached out to the Department of Human Services about the issue, and the resident was enrolled within a week.
We helped neighbors get the Department of Buildings' attention to abate a property's overgrown yard.
We got the Office of Tax and Revenue to refund a constituent thousands of dollars in taxes from several years earlier after they were offset when the constituent experienced unemployment fraud.
And this was a fun but frustrating one: a resident had bought a horse trailer and was attempting to register it with the Department of Motor Vehicles, only to be caught in a loop over whether it was legal. The end result with our team's intervention was a registered and titled trailer (and hopefully, a happy horse)!

Ticket Giveaway

Thanks for reading to the end! The Caps are back, and you can watch them play the New York Rangers on October 9. Reply to this email if you'd like to be entered into a drawing for two tickets.

See you around the neighborhood,

Charles Allen

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Councilmember Charles Allen · 1350 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Suite 110, Washington, DC 20004, United States
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