In 2006 and 2012, DC set clear numbers for how many affordable housing units either needed to be built or needed to be preserved by a specific date. In both cases, there wasn’t enough data to actually track progress, and the goals fell by the wayside. Today, there still isn’t a plan for providing affordable housing for everyone who needs it.

Advocates and District officials often find themselves jumping from crisis to crisis. At Museum Square, for instance, residents are scrambling to prevent landlord Bush Companies from evicting half of Chinatown’s remaining ethnically Chinese population, after tenants (and many District officials) were notified of Bush’s plans via demolition notices.

As the DC Fiscal Policy Institute wrote in a 2015 paper, “While there have been some very important successes, the lack of a coordinated, proactive policy for [affordable housing] preservation has led to many missed opportunities, resulting in the loss of whole communities to sale [and] large rent increases.”

Meanwhile, too many DC residents don’t understand how big the problem of affordable housing is. They hear about crises like Museum Square, but are left to cobble the bigger picture together through disparate facts like “there are over 70,000 families on DC’s affordable housing waitlist,” or “there are effectively zero market rate units left in DC that are affordable for low-income workers.”

Here is an overview of the District’s past targets, and some ideas for new ones.

There have been attempts to set clear goals and stick to them

Two-dozen representatives from District agencies, local housing nonprofits, and research organizations helped author a 2006 report that then-mayor Anthony Williams commissioned. At the time, developers were starting to pour money into new projects west of the Anacostia River; DC’s housing problem in Wards 1-4 was less that development dollars were scarce, and increasingly that the new projects were raising rents, making it hard for low-income families to stay.

District leaders and the authors of the 2006 report were beginning to realize this, and they set these goals:

  • Produce 55,000 new units by 2020.
  • 19,000 of those units should be affordable (7,600 below 30% of AMI; 5,700 between 30-60% of AMI, and another 5,700 between 60-80% of AMI).
  • In addition, preserve 30,000 currently affordable units.
  • Adopt a local rent supplement program and reach 14,600 households.

Of course, goals don’t matter if nobody takes them seriously.

In 2007, Mayor Fenty appointed Leslie Steen as “housing czar” to implement the 2006 plan. She was supposed to cut through red tape and coordinate the many District authorities that touch on affordable housing, including DCHD, DCHFA, DCRA, DMPED, and DCHA. But she ended up being marginalized within the administration, and ultimately resigned in frustration.

In 2007 and 2011, Alice Rivlin wrote two follow-up reports; she praised the District’s progress on some fronts, and basically threw up her hands on others; in 2011, nobody had the data to track progress towards the 2006 targets.

Another report was released in 2012 under the auspices of the Grey administration, and laid out these goals:

  • Preserve 8,000 existing affordable units.
  • Produce and preserve 10,000 net new affordable units by 2020 (I couldn’t find a detailed AMI breakdown for these 10,000 units).
  • Support development of 3,000 market rate units by 2020.

Grey made a public commitment to reach the “10 by 20” goal, but since 2012 talk of these goals has faded. The Coalition for Nonprofit Housing and Economic Development has worked hard to get the District to commit to an investment goal: $100 million a year in the Housing Production Trust Fund. But Mayor Bowser has yet to adopt specific goals for the number of affordable units she wants to preserve and produce.

Mayor Bowser announcing affordable housing initiatives in January of last year. Photo by Ted Eytan on Flickr.

Setting numerical goals might be worth another look

If we establish another set of city-wide goals, they must be clear, and we must be able to track progress towards them. Such goals could accomplish at least two things:

  • Helping focus our collective efforts. Once we’ve agreed on a set of targets, we can get creative with solutions. Maybe it’s up-zoning some parts of Ward 3; maybe it’s strengthened Inclusionary Zoning, maybe it’s more preservation and accessory dwelling units. (If we set respectable goals, it’ll probably require some combination of all of the above).
  • Having a clear, public goals can help District residents hold their government to account. We could ask, “Why are we missing our targets?” We cannot ask that question now.

Here’s an example of a measurable goal, just as food for thought: “The District should have no net loss of affordable units, relative to our current stock and distribution of affordability.”

So if we have 40,000 units affordable to people who make below 40% of Area Median Income, we should still have that many in 2030. That’s a clear goal, which the public could use to hold their representatives accountable.

An equally clear, less conservative goal might be, “The District should ensure that 30% of its total rental units are affordable to people making below 40% of AMI.”

Today we’re closer to having the data to track progress towards city-wide goals. The Urban Institute, in conjunction with the DC Preservation Network, has compiled currently available records (you can find a report from December here). The city’s trying to improve its own data collection.

Clear goals and stringent data collection have helped the District come close to ending veteran homelessness. As Kristy Greenwalt, head of DC’s Interagency Council on Homelessness, told the City Paper, “In the past, there was no systematic approach. We’re in a very different place now, so we can actually track what’s happening and why.”

Goal setting alone can’t build or preserve housing, and planning isn’t execution. But without precise goals, it’s hard to know if we’re falling down or making progress—ensuring that new people can move to DC, existing residents can stay, and low-income people can live close to good jobs, schools, and public amenities. A comprehensive, strategic solution to our housing crisis begins with knowing what it would mean to win.