“On a given day, I count between five and ten DC Housing Authority vehicles parked there.”

“Dear PoPville,

I write to you to highlight what appears to be a systemic problem and/or waste of resources by the D.C. Housing Authority and its employees at their headquarters, located at 1133 North Capitol St. NE in NoMa.

Although the Housing Authority has two parking lots (an open lot in the front of their building and a gated lot behind as noted in some of the pictures, in addition to paid parking in lots at 44-88 M St NE), the Housing Authority routinely and consistently parks their DC government vehicles in metered spots on both M St NE and Pierce St NE.

On a given day, I count between five and ten DC Housing Authority vehicles parked there. These cars sit there from anywhere between 24 hours to several days at a time (even though the meters have 4 hr parking limits), occupying spaces that would otherwise generate revenue for the District (all the white vehicles lined up in the pic below are Housing Authority vehicles, note the lot in the background). One particularly outlandish example involved two vehicles that remained in the same spots for 11 days (even with daily tweeting at the relevant parties).

I live in 2M, the building directly north of the Housing Authority, so I have a front-row seat to this problem, which has been ever-present in the two years that I have lived here. I have tweeted at 311, the Housing Authority, and Mayor Bowser, and have never gotten a response or an indication that they find this to be concerning or are doing something about it.

Either one of two things is happening here: (1) the District is parking in these spaces and not paying for extended periods of time, thereby preventing paying drivers from parking there and generating revenue for the District, or (2) the Housing Authority is indeed paying to park these vehicles there (even though all of the metered spots have 4 hour parking limits, so that problem persists), which essentially results in a net zero because funds from the Housing Authority would be flowing into the revenue stream of DC from the parking meters.”