This post from The Next American City's blog looks at plans for building affordable housing in Washington D.C. and how the city is in a much better position to provide for its low income residents than many other major cities.
"The need to preserve affordable housing in DC was acknowledged by new DC Mayor Adrian Fenty in his 2006 campaign promise to leaders of the Washington DC Interfaith Network to fund, build and preserve 14,000 affordable housing units over a four-year period. Included in that goal is the creation of 2,500 units for the chronically homeless. Recently, Fenty outlined for the Interfaith Network how he intended to keep this commitment. Goals of the plan are to provide permanent housing for the city's chronically homeless, to preserve affordable housing by making it harder for landlords to convert buildings into high-priced condos and to help fund 500 townhouses annually for low- and moderate-income workers."
"It is no small feat to articulate a vision for affordable housing in a hot real estate market, and so Fenty's vision has been aided immensely by the slow leak pricked in the DC market. The DC market is nothing like the free-fall in some parts of the country. Rather it's more like NYC where housing in some boroughs have dropped a notch or two, but others have gained in value. DC overall has seen a 0.5 percent drop in housing value since August 2006, but most of that has been in the price of condos."
