What DC Residents Think About the Distribution of Affordable Housing

• September 23rd 2019

by Nena Perry-Brown

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As DC explores how and where to focus its efforts in creating 12,000 affordable housing units over the next six years, the Office of Planning has revealed the results from a survey on how city residents feel about the current distribution of affordable housing.

The survey garnered 2,763 responses. Forty-one percent of the respondents have been DC residents for at least twenty years, and the demographics of the respondents correlate reasonably well with those of the city -- 45 percent Black, 38 percent white and 8 percent Hispanic/Latino.

More than three in four respondents believe the current distribution of affordable housing in the city is unfair. Wards 2 and 3 had the largest proportion of respondents stating the distribution of affordable housing is not unfair, and the largest proportion of respondents who think the current distribution is in fact fair. 

Overall, respondents would like to see more affordable housing constructed west of Rock Creek Park, with Ward 4 and the Capitol Hill neighborhood tied for second place. Despite the abundance of affordable housing in Wards 7 and 8, people would still like to see more affordable housing built there, although OP anecdotally shared that respondents were more concerned with the preservation of affordability for all housing in this section of the city.

OP and partner agencies (including the Department of Housing and Community Development, DC Housing Finance Agency and the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development) will continue outreach efforts to gather resident perspectives on the matter over the next few weeks, with plans to present a final Housing Framework for Equity and Growth report to the mayor in October.

This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/what-dc-residents-think-about-the-distribution-of-affordable-housing/15919.