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CIAO DATE: 06/06
Homes for an Inclusive City: A Comprehensive Housing Strategy for Washington, D. C.
Comprehensive Housing Strategy Task Force
April 2006
Executive Summary
The Charge. The growth and movement of jobs and population in the Washington, DC metropolitan area and the persistence of the booming housing market in the city have created both a crisis of affordability and an opportunity to strengthen and rebuild portions of the District of Columbia.
To help the city respond to the critical housing problems created by the housing boom and take advantage of the opportunities offered by available land and rising real estate values, the mayor and city council of the District of Columbia established the Comprehensive Housing Strategy Task Force in 2003. They charged the task force with assessing the quality and availability of housing for households at all income levels in the District and developing a set of polices asked that the task force recommend ways to:
- preserve and create mixed-income neighborhoods;
- improve rental housing,
- increase homeownership opportunities for households at all income levels;
- prevent the involuntary displacement of long-term residents;
- make housing available to those with special needs; and
- improve the quality of workforce housing and ensure that District residents can obtain it.
Task Force Goals. Guided by the authorizing legislation that created it, the Comprehensive Housing Strategy Task Force has emphasized three goals:
- preserving and creating mixed-income neighborhoods and reducing areas of concentrated poverty;
- encouraging and providing housing for the sought after growth of 100,000 residents with a focus on retaining current residents while attracting new ones; and
- realizing the "Vision for an Inclusive City" laid out by the mayor and in ways that overcome barriers of race, education, income, and geography.
While housing markets are regional and long term solutions to problems of housing affordability must ultimately be shared with other jurisdictions in the metropolitan area, there is much the city can do by itself.
The Recommendations. The Task Force recommendations fall into several categories.
Doubling the effort. The city should implement its "Vision for Growing an Inclusive City" and do so by doubling current annual expenditures on housing.
Preserving Existing Affordable Housing. The city must give priority to preserving at least 30,000 existing affordable units including all federally assisted housing.
Producing New Housing. The city should produce an additional 55,000 units by 2020 and ensure that at least one-third or about 19,000 units are affordable on a long-term basis. The District should support a balanced growth policy which allows for increased population densities and mixed income, mixed-use development along major corridors and at transit stops and approve a mandatory inclusionary zoning requirement for all new housing.
Increasing Homeownership. The city should increase its homeownership rate from 41% to 44% and provide more assistance to tenants seeking to purchase their units.
Supporting Extremely Low Income Renters. The city should directly assist an additional 14,600 extremely low-income renter households by adopting a local rent supplement program.
Supporting Neighborhoods. The city should target existing neighborhoods with the potential for sustained improvement and coordinate its investments in them. The city should continue its efforts to transform distressed public and assisted housing projects into viable mixed-income neighborhoods. The city should pursue its efforts to convert the numerous large parcels of land into new neighborhoods with housing affordable to all income levels.
Housing for Persons with Special Needs. The city should integrate housing for persons with special needs into all types of housing in neighborhoods throughout the city. Permanent housing solutions should be favored over short-term fixes. Housing and support services for special needs populations should be closely coordinated. The mayor's plan to end homelessness should be fully implemented. Eight percent of all units in the city should be accessible to people with physical disabilities.
Streamlining the Process. The mayor and council should designate a member of the cabinet as chief of housing, charged with improving, streamlining, and coordinating the actions of the several city housing agencies. The mayor and council should support needed reforms of, and provide the resources necessary to, the critical housing regulatory agencies, especially the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs.
Other Critical Programs. Housing programs alone cannot create a livable, inclusive city. Equally critical to attracting and retaining residents are much needed improvements in schools, public safety, health care, recreation facilities, transportation, and air and water quality.
Funding the higher effort. The city can and should tap new sources of revenue for the Housing Trust Fund to support the subsidies needed to keep homeownership and rental housing affordable. This includes
- increasing the portion of the deed recordation and transfer tax dedicated to the Trust Fund from 15% to 20%;
- restoring the level of the deed recordation tax to 1.5% and dedicating the entire proceeds from the 0.4% increment to the Trust Fund;
- earmarking 5% of the increase in revenue from residential real estate taxes over a base year for the Trust Fund;
- assessing a direct linkage fee for some types of commercial-residential development; and
- requiring commercial developers granted planned-unit development zoning to contribute a fee to the Trust Fund.
Implementation. The mayor and council should act immediately on these recommendations. The mayor should report regularly on implementation progress.
