{"id":167,"date":"2019-03-11T17:35:10","date_gmt":"2019-03-11T17:35:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/?p=167"},"modified":"2019-03-11T18:17:04","modified_gmt":"2019-03-11T18:17:04","slug":"report-d-c-must-double-affordable-housing-spending-to-meet-rising-costs-dcist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/167\/","title":{"rendered":"Report: D.C. Must Double Affordable Housing Spending To Meet Rising Costs | DCist"},"content":{"rendered":"

dcist.com\/story\/19\/03\/11\/report-d-c-must-double-affordable-housing-spending-to-meet-rising-costs\/<\/a>
\nReport: D.C. Must Double Affordable Housing Spending To Meet Rising Costs
\nA report from the progressive D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute says the cost of housing construction and preservation is on the rise.D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute \u201cD.C.\u2019s housing challenges require a bold solution,\u201d writes FPI policy analyst Doni Crawford. \u201cDoubling D.C.\u2019s Housing Production Trust Fund to $200 million in FY 2020 would make important progress.\u201d
\nCrawford notes that even more funding is required to meet the needs of larger households and D.C.\u2019s lowest-income residents. Subsidized housing for extremely low-income tenants requires more funding to fill the gap between rent revenues and costs associated with construction, maintenance or preservation. The analyst says D.C. has failed to meet its own goal to dedicate at least 40 percent of housing trust funds to very low-income families..
\nMayor Bowser has issued a blanket call for the city to produce at least 36,000 housing units by 2025, with at least one third of them affordable. Her administration says it has helped produce more than 7,200 affordable units in the last four years. Many of those homes were not directly funded by city subsidies, but rather through inclusionary zoning requirements or a process called \u201cplanned unit development,\u201d in which the city grants developers more density in exchange for affordable units.
\nA spokesperson for the Bowser administration was not available to comment by deadline.
\nHistorically, the private sector has been hesitant to finance low-income housing because it\u2019s viewed as a riskier, less profitable investment than market-rate development or homes for middle-income residents, often called \u201cworkforce\u201d housing.
\nThe city generally defines \u201caffordable\u201d as costing no more than a third of household income, but median household incomes are based on regional data, not neighborhood-specific incomes, which vary significantly.. The Washington region\u2019s 2018 median family income is $117,200, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, so a deeply affordable unit would be within reach for a family earning $35,000 a year or less.
\nSome economists say building more housing \u2014 even if it\u2019s market rate \u2014 can lower overall housing costs by satisfying demand. But some District activists reject that claim, and have blocked new development with legal challenges that stymie construction of both market-rate homes and affordable units.
\nThe Fiscal Policy Institute applauds the mayor for investing in affordable housing. At the same time, analysts there have repeatedly called on her administration to increase its investment.
\n\u201cHousing is 3 percent of the city\u2019s budget, [but] I think most people would argue it\u2019s way more than 3 percent of the city\u2019s problems,\u201d the think tank\u2019s director, Ed Lazere, told WAMU in a 2018 interview.
\nPolicy analyst Doni Crawford, who wrote the recent report, says the District\u2019s affordable-housing crunch especially burdens people of color.
\n\u201cThe enduring legacies of structural and individualized racism \u2026 that for years prohibited Black families from equitably accessing the housing and employment markets, is further impacting all communities of color today,\u201d Crawford writes. \u201cNearly 90 percent of extremely low-income, severely rent-burdened households in the District are headed by a person of color.\u201d
\nThe institute says the city could find more money for housing in its general fund, or tap into surplus funds by changing rules around when they can be spent. The think tank also backs a \u201cmansion tax,\u201d which would increase property taxes on the city\u2019s wealthiest households.
\n In D.C., housing construction has been intense in neighborhoods such as NoMa and Brookland, but sluggish in other areas, according to a Brookings Institution analysis.Brookings Institution Other groups like the D.C. Policy Center and Coalition for Smarter Growth say the city should relax zoning rules to build more housing. Many neighborhoods outside the city\u2019s urban core restrict development to single-family homes, so cheaper housing \u2014 like apartments \u2014 is harder to build. A 2018 analysis by the Brookings Institution found that most new construction has been clustered in a handful of areas.
\nBut many residents in single-family neighborhoods \u2014 especially in the District\u2019s wealthiest areas \u2014 oppose development, saying it increases traffic, cuts into parking and alters the \u201ccharacter\u201d of neighborhoods.
\nMayor Bowser has said housing needs to be more evenly distributed across the city to achieve her goal of adding 36,000 new units by 2025.
\nThe mayor is expected to unveil her 2020 budget proposal this month.
\nThis story first appeared on WAMU.<\/p>\n

Mary Bolton 202-390-1208<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

dcist.com\/story\/19\/03\/11\/report-d-c-must-double-affordable-housing-spending-to-meet-rising-costs\/ Report: D.C. Must Double Affordable Housing Spending To Meet Rising Costs A report from the progressive D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute says the cost of housing construction and preservation is on the rise.D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute \u201cD.C.\u2019s housing challenges require a bold solution,\u201d writes FPI policy analyst Doni Crawford. \u201cDoubling D.C.\u2019s Housing Production Trust Fund […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-housingarchive"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}