36,000 Homes By 2025: OP and Mayor Release Housing Production Goals by Planning Area

• October 15th 2019

by Nena Perry-Brown

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Update: The deadline for public comment on the Comprehensive Plan amendments was extended to January 10th; for ANC comments, the deadline was extended to February 14th.

Earlier this year, Mayor Muriel Bowser announced a commitment to create 36,000 new housing units in DC by 2025, including 12,000 affordable units, to help alleviate the constrained local housing market and preempt an anticipated housing shortage. Now, the mayor and Office of Planning (OP) Director Andrew Trueblood drilled down further with those goals.

The city released a Housing Equity Report on Tuesday setting specific affordable housing production goals in each of the city's ten planning areas. Those goals are as follows:

• Rock Creek West: 1,990 units
• Rock Creek East: 1,500 units
• Capitol Hill: 1,400 units
• Upper Northeast: 1,350 units
• Near Northwest: 1,250 units
• Far Southeast and Southwest: 1,120 units
• Central Washington: 1,040 units
• Mid-City: 1,010 units
• Lower Anacostia Waterfront and Near Southwest: 850 units
• Far Northeast and Southeast: 490 units

The report highlights how current affordable housing production remains concentrated in certain areas and not others; for example, while the affordable housing pipeline exceeds targets by a respective 800 and 330 units in the Far Northeast and Far Southeast planning areas, there are only 80 affordable housing units in the pipeline in Rock Creek West. In the context of this report, “affordable housing” costs no more than 30 percent of household income for households earning up to 80 percent of median family income.

While the overall goal of 36,000 housing units assumes new construction, the affordable portion of those housing goals seems to have more wiggle room, as preservation of endangered affordable housing units would count toward the overall targets. Thus far, specifics about how these goals will be achieved remain elusive.

Today's announcement also included the release of drafts of the remaining elements of the Comprehensive Plan, intended to follow the lead of the DC Council's passage last week of an amended Framework Element. Now, the city's Advisory Neighborhood Commissions will have until January 31st to submit resolutions regarding the Comp Plan drafts before the amendments are submitted to the Council next year. The public comment period ends December 20th; there will be a series of community forums in the interim.

This article has been updated since it was first published.

This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/op-and-mayor-release-affordable-housing-production-goals-by-neighborhood/16013.