Zoning Commission clears path for LGBT seniors home
December 14, 2016 at 8:42 am EST | by Lou Chibbaro Jr.
The D.C. Zoning Commission voted Monday night to temporarily withhold approval of a proposed “technical correction” for a zoning regulation that leaders of a planned home for LGBT seniors say could have prevented the home from opening in a residential area of Southeast Washington.
Officials with Mary’s House for Older Adults said they were advised by their attorneys that the so-called correction could be interpreted to require their planned residential facility to operate as a full-service nursing home, something they don’t have the funds to provide.
At the request of Zoning Commissioner Robert Miller, the five-member commission voted to put on hold the proposed technical change until the city’s Office of Planning, which initiates all zoning changes, develops clarifying language ensuring that facilities like Mary’s House would not have to operate as a nursing home.
“This is grand,” said Dr. Imani Woody, founder and CEO of Mary’s House for Older Adults, Inc., a nonprofit organization that plans to build the LGBT-friendly facility on the site of the Southeast D.C. home where Woody grew up. “This simply was a grassroots effort of support from the community – nationally and locally,” Woody told the Washington Blade after the Zoning Commission vote. “We need this kind of support,” she said. “The Zoning Commission recognized it.”
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http://www.washingtonblade.com/2016/12/14/zoning-commission-clears-path-lgbt-seniors-home/
