DC wants more affordable housing in wealthy neighborhoods, per its newly-released targets

On Tuesday, DC released targets for affordable housing production by neighborhood planning area. Mayor Muriel Bowser committed to building 36,000 new units by 2025 in her inauguration speech, and these targets show where a third of this total, the affordable units, will go. The boundaries of the 10 planning areas do not change with the city’s redistricting practice (which occurs every decade to keep ward populations even, per the Home Rule Act), which makes them a better fit for this exercise.

The plan recommends that the majority of 12,000 new affordable homes be built in the Rock Creek West, Near Northwest, and Capitol Hill planning areas, which have seen scant housing production as the city’s population has grown. Twelve thousand affordable homes is one-third of the city’s goal of 36,000 new units by 2025, which tracks with the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments’ proposed regional targets for housing production.

The targets are part of a report, Housing DC: A Framework for Equity and Growth, that Bowser mandated in a mayor’s order earlier this year. The city also released amendments to the remaining 24 sections of the Comprehensive Plan, the document that guides how the city will grow.

Bowser and Office of Planning Director Andrew Trueblood made the announcement at the Wisconsin Avenue City Bikes. Her choice of location seemed pointed, since it’s the end result of a contentious development proposed by Georgetown Day School. If not for opposition from nearby residents, the project would have included more housing. The mayor’s message was, essentially, that housing will be built. The debate is not whether it should be built or not, but rather how and where it should go. (I asked similar questions when I started as GGWash’s housing program organizer this spring.)

The mayor’s remarks were very much of the economist Raj Chetty’s playbook: She emphasized that the city’s current distribution of housing, and affordable housing, is restricting DC’s poorest residents from accessing the kind of opportunity—longer lifespans, better education, and an all-around higher quality of life—that its wealthier households enjoy.

This is a tonal shift from even just a year ago, when the lawsuits against redevelopments like McMillan Reservoir and 901 Monroe cast the sentiment that whether or not something should be built—rather than how it should be built—was what was up for litigation. It seems that the city is now firmly declaring that individual projects are no longer referendums for how development in DC should work at large, and that all neighborhoods have a role to play in helping to house the growing number of DC residents.

Some things to think about

The most immediate thing to dissect here is the Housing Equity report. Is it really equitable? If you are looking for a social housing program, or 100% affordable developments, this might not speak to you. But GGWash has long argued for more housing to be built in the city’s most affluent areas, and we think that where housing is has almost as much to do with equity as what it costs. The Housing Equity report exists in that vein.

Secondly, can it happen? Sort of, kind of. Yes, new units will get built, and they’ll count toward the targets. The city does have a good deal of influence over this: It is effectively its own developer on projects like Walter Reed, St. Elizabeths, and Skyland. But even though municipal planning rests with the mayor’s office, not the council (a good thing!), the city can’t snap its fingers to produce housing by 2025. The affordable units will require subsidy, possible conversion of existing housing into affordable housing, and an increase in available vouchers. The rest will require actually building things.

There’s a strong argument to be made that in order to meet these targets, the city’s existing land use regime—which includes restrictive zoning and problematic historic-preservation designations—will need to change. That’s the link between the Comp Plan amendments, which include changes to the Future Land Use Map (FLUM), which could enable a change in the zoning code down the line. So, think of the targets as the tangible representation of what changes to the Comp Plan can either induce or stifle.

Reactions to the plan

The mayor, Trueblood, and Department of Housing and Community Development Director (DHCD) Polly Donaldson fielded questions after the presser. A couple of hyperlocal concerns popped up, but the primary focus from reporters was on how the city was going to pay for it all.

The total target for housing production is 36,000 units. What the mayor and OP were talking about Tuesday was one-third—so, 12,000—affordable units of that total target. OP defines affordable as:

There are two types of affordable housing: dedicated and naturally occuring. Dedicated affordable housing is defined as income- and rent-restricted housing supported or subsidized by local and federal programs for households ranging from extremely low-income earning less than 30 percent of the Median Family Income (MFI) up to households earning less than 80 percent of the MFI.

To make dedicated affordable housing financially feasible, it is necessary to support or subsidize it, even in areas with very low land costs. Each year, DHCD issues rent and income limits for dedicated affordable housing based on the MFI published annually by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The District’s 2019 MFI limits of 80 percent or below are $97,050 for a family of four and $67,950 for a single-person household (see Appendix 1). Maximum and minimum income limits, rents, and purchase prices for dedicated affordable housing are all based on the MFI and adjusted for house-hold size.

Naturally-occurring affordable housing, in contrast, is unsubsidized and not income-restricted but rather is privately-owned housing with market-based rents affordable to low- and moderate-income residents. Naturally-occurring affordable housing is increasingly at risk of disappearing as the cost of housing rises. Even where naturally-occurring affordable housing exists, it does not meet the needs of the lowest income households. Rent controlled apartments, which restrict the rent of a unit but can be occupied by residents of any income, are not counted as affordable housing in our analysis.

Bowser, Trueblood, and Donaldson mostly punted this to next year’s budget, which isn’t surprising. Affordable housing is really expensive to build, and those 12,000 units will require subsidy from a bunch of different places, like the Housing Production Trust Fund, LIHTC credits, or funding residents directly with Section 8 and Low-Income Rent Supplement Vouchers.

What’s next?

You can read the report here. More information about the what Office of Planning and the mayor’s office are doing with relation to the mayor’s order on housing lives at housing.dc.gov. Office of Planning’s proposed amendments live at plandc.dc.gov. There is a 60-day public review period, and a 90-day period for Advisory Neighborhood Commissioners (ANCs) to submit resolutions.

We’ll have a summary of OP’s proposed amendments later this week. But it’s not too early to start telling OP, the Executive Office of the Mayor, and the DC Council how you feel.

If you like what OP put out Tuesday, or don’t, or wish that it had higher targets, the most effective thing that you can do is send a personal email. Direct emails with your thoughts about how the city should work move the needle more greatly than click-to-send form letters. It takes a little more initiative on your part, but it’s worth it.

The Comp Plan amendments that OP has proposed will live or die on the volume of meaningful comments submitted by DC residents over the next 60 days. This is the first major stake in the ground from the top down, by city leadership, that makes it clear that building affordable housing is a priority. If you believe in that at all, make sure you say so, early and often.