Photo by Scott Beale / Laughing Squid.

DC permit officials wouldn’t let people take photos of building applications. Instead, people had to wait several days and pay to have copies made. But after several people including staff for Councilmember David Grosso reached out to officials through Twitter, this policy is no more.

In May, I learned that the owners of a house across the street in Trinidad were going to add a pop-up. I wanted to see some details of their plans. Matt Ashburn offered (via Twitter) to go on his lunch break to look at the plans.

But Eric Fidler warned us that DCRA doesn’t allow people to take photos of plans. Helder Gil, DCRA’s Legislative and Public Affairs officer, said that he should be able to. Gil gave Matt the name of the head of the permit division, just in case a problem cropped up.

At DCRA, Matt asked an employee at the file room to see the plans and permit application for the house. The employee asked him to sign in with his name, addresses of concern, and documents he’d like to view, but said he couldn’t see the plans that day. “If I [pulled plans immediately for someone in the office], I’d be working all day,” she said.

Matt had to fill out another form with his name, phone number, and the permit numbers, and wait for a phone call in 1-3 days telling him when he could come back. In the meantime, he could see the permit application.

But when he tried to take a photo of it with his phone, he was told he wasn’t allowed to take photos. Instead, he could pay the employee to make copies. “That’s the policy. No photos of the paperwork,” she insisted.

When Matt protested, the employee eventually offered to make free copies of the application to get rid of him. But then, the records manager, a Mr. Mason, refused.

Mason confirmed that all these records are public documents and that the public is allowed to view and hold them, but not to photograph them. “What a wonderful country we live in,” he told Matt. Matt would still have to buy copies of the application from DCRA and copies of the plans from Blueboy Printing, a private print shop, because DCRA can’t copy large pages itself.

Matt said he just wanted to take a quick photo to avoid the hassle. “That’s just how it is,” Mr. Mason replied.

Meanwhile, on Twitter, Aaron Pritchard, Councilmember Grosso’s chief of staff, saw our tweets about the issue and sought clarification from DCRA.

Gil jumped in. He made it clear that the director of DCRA was unhappy with the situation, and had asked the permit records department to stop enforcing it. Citizens could now take photos of permits, and that was that.

A few weeks later, I tried it for myself. I went to the permit office one Friday and asked to see the plans for the same house. Since the plans were off-site, I had to ask them to pull the plans, and an employee told me I could call back on Tuesday to see if they were available. When I did, I learned that I could come in the next day to see the plans. (They weren’t, as it turned out, and I had to come back twice before they were finally available.)

The same employee strongly encouraged me to take photos if I wanted to have a record. Thankfully, that part of the policy worked the way it should.

As for that pop-up, here’s what it will look like:

It appears that the new owners will replace one of the second-floor windows with a door, while the porch roof will become a deck. The plans don’t specifically say what materials they will use for the addition, but it appears that it will be something like vinyl siding, as opposed to brick like the rest of the house.

Since my neighborhood isn’t designated as a historic district, there’s no process that controls the materials or design of building additions in my neighborhood, except that they have to meet zoning. But we were able to change one problematic city policy with help from social media.