Relevant Resources and Reports about DC’s Affordable Housing

1. In 2015 the mayor convened a ‘Strike Force’ on affordable housing preservation. They released a report in November 2016. In particular read the recommendations; this is the ‘current state’ of the DC governments thinking about future changes to DC’s affordable housing policy.

2. The Preservation Network published a report in December 2015 about their suggestions for improving DC’s affordable housing preservation. This report provided some of the impetus for this project in the first place. Scott (CNHED) and Peter (NeighborhoodInfo DC), our non-profit project partners, lead the Preservation Network.

Funding streams allocated by DHCD

Big list of reports published by the Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD). The key ones for this group are called out below.

1. The Housing Production Trust Fund
   • 2016 scoring criteria and request for proposals are located here.
   • 2015 report pending - should have been published, request out to DHCD for link
   • 2014 annual report contains overall budget and spending information, and allocation details including each building that received funding in 2014. At the end of the document is a list of all projects since 2001. Note that even in this document they call out that 2014 funding allocation didn’t meet statutory requirements for helping very low income populations (p. 4).
   • 2013 annual report is similar, but worth noting the few changes and the 2013 allocations have more details about the buildings. Previous reports available from the big list above.
2. HUD (federal) money channeled through DHCD
   • National Housing Trust Fund is separate from DC’s Housing Production Trust Fund. The money comes from HUD, and is distributed by DHCD This short report outlines FY2017 allocation strategy.
   • The Consolidated Plan is how DHCD tells HUD how it’s going to spend their money over the next 5 years for several programs (CDBG, HOME, NHTF most notably for us). This is a very long report, worth a quick skim just to get a feel.
   • This online tool is how local agencies (e.g. DHCD) typically get their data now for including in reports to HUD to show the needs of their community and how they’re meeting objectives. It’s (mostly?) a wrapper over the same census data we’re pulling into the tool. You’ll see it cited in reports like the consolidated plan.
   • HUD requires communities (in DC, via DHCD) to comply with rules on “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing”. Basically this means affordable housing should not be at the cost of being far from opportunity in the city - it should also be near transit, near jobs, etc. I haven’t found a good summary of AFFH; you can see what HUD says about it but it’s a long Final Rule in the federal register.
     • The executive summary provides a short, digestable statement of purpose but not enough details to understand how communities would comply.
     • AFFH alsh has a data tool for reporting on compliance. I found it impossible to use…
     • The most recent report I could find by DHCD to HUD about analysis of current state of AFFH is from 2012. Again, long and hard to get good takeaways from (it insists repeatedly that you should read the whole report. A good editor could have helped this significantly). This is how demographic data (one of our target data sources) is being used currently in understanding affordable.