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Will D.C.’s Housing Ever Be Affordable Again? [TheAtlantic.com]

 

D.C.’s affordability problem arrived and grew—rapidly. For low-to-middle income households, average monthly rent in the District hasgone up by between about $50 to nearly $400, adjusted for inflation, between 2002 and 2013. The number of apartments that cost less than $800 per month, adjusted for inflation, was nearly cut in half in that same time period. Incomes, meanwhile, have remained largely the same.

Now, D.C.’s government is trying to ramp up efforts that would ease some of the pressure on the housing market and help more middle and low-income residents stay put. To do this, they’re relying on a mix of tax dollars from their own coffers and federal housing funds. Already, in the past two years, the District has significantly ramped up its own spending on affordable-housing projects in an attempt to create and rehabilitate more housing. The District anticipates that itslargest federal funds will come in the form of an annual $13.7 million infusion from the Community Block Grant Development program. Another effort, known as the HOME program, will provide $3.7 million each year, and a grant from the National Housing Trust will dole out around $3 million a year for programs targeted toward residents who make less than 30 percent of area median income. The federal funds provided will be used for things such as grants and subsidies for housing, for improving public facilities and amenities in poor communities, rehabilitating old buildings so they can be put back into use, making much-needed upgrades to housing stock, and erecting additional affordable housing units.  



[For more of this story, written by Gillian B. White, go to http://www.theatlantic.com/bus...rdable-again/496676/]

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It may help to take note of the strategy used in the Anacostia area of Washington, D.C. -shortly after passage of the Community Development Credit Union Act , where not only housing was renovated, but storefronts to enhance the job market in that 'neighborhood' such as a new Day Care center on the street level [which subsequently employed numerous people-mostly women in the neighborhood], next door to a soon to be newly renovated Bakery, etc., while the upstairs apartments were renovated to meet building and fire codes, and avail Safe, Affordable housing; and the people in that neighborhood who acquired much of the funding through their own Community Development Credit Union, and apprenticeships in building trades for unemployed young [mostly] men, etc. ...

Last edited by Robert Olcott
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