Plans for Commanders’ new stadium call for housing. Neighbors will believe it when they see it.

The campaign to bring Washington’s football team back to D.C. began over a decade ago.

Then-Mayor-elect Muriel Bower floated the idea in interviews and mentioned it on the campaign trail. She touted the potential tax revenue and housing opportunity if the Commanders left Landover, Maryland, and returned to the old RFK Stadium site along the Anacostia River.

“The next chapter … should be a return to winning right here in D.C.,” she said.

Now, as the sun sets on her mayoral tenure 12 years later, Bowser’s vision is inching toward reality. The Commanders are coming back to the nation’s capital in 2030 as part of a $3.8 billion development, and the city released a master plan for the 180-acre stadium site in late June.

For the last year, lawmakers asked the Commanders to attach some public benefit to the stadium if the city put up over a billion dollars for the project. The district is committing $1.1 billion to help redevelop the area around the stadium.

Outfitted with potentially 6,500 housing units, retail and parks around the stadium, the project could be an “economic engine” for D.C., with projections of more than $4 billion in new tax revenue and 2,000 permanent jobs, according to the city.

But some experts and community members fear the team will push back promises of housing or that transportation speed bumps will hinder the Commanders’ ability to build it.

“It’s hard to know whether any of this is real,” said Neil deMause, the co-author of “Field of Schemes: How the Great Stadium Swindle Turns Public Money Into Private Profit,” who operates a website casting a skeptical eye at publicly financed stadium deals. “The team would love to build everything and have it look like [the renderings]. But these are aspirational rather than actual plans.”

The area surrounding the stadium desperately needs affordable housing. In lower Greenway and Fort Dupont, just east of the river from the stadium, over half of the “renting households are cost burdened,” according to the city’s study from June. That means renters spend more than 30% of their monthly paychecks on rent. In River Terrace, also within the stadium footprint, 40% of households pay more than a quarter of their monthly salary for a place to live.

“Is this the type of development that is going to be a catalyst? Is it actually going to build more housing, more jobs, grow our city with more people and more tax revenue?” said Ward 6 council member Charles Allen, whose district includes neighborhoods just west of the stadium site. “That’s what we pushed for.”

The Commanders, at least on paper, responded. They increased the number of units from earlier drafts of the proposal, up around 500 units. The master plan splits the 180 acres at the site into six districts. Housing will be built in two of them, including the Kingman Commons along Oklahoma Avenue NE and the Riverfront District by the water.

A 2025 city law requires 30% of units constructed at the site at any time to be set at “affordable” rates, with half of those set aside for households earning equal to or less than 60% of the median family income and the other half for households earning 30% or less of that figure.

In Washington, the median family income for a family of four is $163,900, according to the D.C. Department of Housing and Community Development.

Still, some aren’t sure the housing will be built. As the master plan outlines, the stadium will be finished first and open by 2030. But the housing and development around the stadium will take longer and need to go through zoning.

“If they face any kind of headwinds — a changing macroeconomic environment or a different cash flow expectation, an ownership dispute — and they get locked into paralysis, the city is going to have to wait for housing,” said Nick Sementelli, a board member of the urbanist media and advocacy group Greater Greater Washington.

Ward 7 council member Wendell Felder, who represents the stadium site and parts of the city east of the Anacostia River, did not respond to a request for comment.

The deal does not say when housing construction must start.

Bryan Schauer, who lives in Kingman Park just north of the proposed stadium, believes it will be “at least 2035” before housing starts to go up.

Another community member, Eric Morris, shared that assessment.

“And, if they do build affordable housing, I hope it goes in east of the river, too, where we need it,” he said. “Not just in [Kingman Park].”

The president of the Commanders, Mark Clouse, said the team is committed to turning the area into the “jewel of the district”

“I hope we are able to go have a lovely dinner on Wednesday night by the stadium. Maybe experience a walk in the park or a concert,” he said.

But there are other obstacles, including parking and transit at the site, that could hold up construction of new homes.

When the stadium opens, the Commanders plan on building two parking decks and having overflow parking in empty lots where housing will eventually be built.

The idea is that the empty lots will go away once the housing is finished. But Sementelli worries the Commanders are going to need those lots for game days to accommodate 65,000 fans and will delay the housing build-out.

There are no plans to add a Metro station by the stadium. Instead, the Commanders hope to increase the capacity of the nearby Stadium-Armory Metro stop. Along with that, they are proposing a new Gold Line for buses to take people from Union Station to the stadium.

Schauer called the plan “ridiculous.”

With increased capacity, the Metro can get an estimated 25,000 people to games, Sementelli said, and the Gold Line can get an additional 3,000 people. But, with a stadium capacity of 65,000, that leaves plenty of people relying on cars and overflow parking.

“And the pressure will be, well, if we get rid of these parking lots for housing, now people can’t get to the game,” Sementelli said. “There is nothing that guarantees that those surface parking lots won’t just continue in perpetuity.”

In June, Metro CEO Randy Clarke told City Council members he understands the strain an NFL game will have on a single station but is optimistic it will work.

“We expect 38,000 people a day could use the Metro. That is up to three Nationals games all leaving at the same time,” Clarke said. “That is a serious amount of planning that we have to work through. But we are very confident in our ability to move a lot of people.”

The old RFK Stadium also had public transit congestion, something community members are aware of.

“People are going to have to bus in for these games,” Morris said. “I just don’t know. We are nervous about it.”

And, if the housing doesn’t come, Sementelli thinks the other amenities won’t either. The master plan has a grocery store, something the city says is needed in the area.

“I see all the beautiful renderings of the housing we could get,” Sementelli said. “I haven’t seen the plans that guarantee we will get it. I think we’re going to have empty lots full of parking for much longer than anyone is telling us.”

For now, community members are waiting for those answers.

And they believe they’ll be waiting long past 2030.

“I’m happy if it brings capital investments and affordable housing,” Morris said. “I just don’t think these add-ons to the stadium will happen. Or it will be so far down the road.”