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"District
officials have a plan to harness
the real estate boom to build affordable
housing and create economically
integrated neighborhoods" |
Regional Report
Washington DC |
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Affordable
Housing Finance
Excerpt: June 2005 |
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DC
Harnesses the Boom |
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By
Bendix Anderson |
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"Columbia
Heights has turned from a blighted place into a charmingly
restored, fully gentrified neighborhood that is financially
out of reach for affordable housing developers that
don’t already own land there." |
Washington
DC’s Housing
Production Trust Fund (HPTF) has
been on the books for years, but 2005 is only the third
year that it has actually received any money.
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| Read
the Entire Article |
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| Now the HPTF
has a dedicated stream of funding from the District’s
15% real estate transfer tax. With all the condominiums
being bought and sold here, cash is pouring into the trust
fund.... |
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Friends
of the Fund &
Endorsing Organizations |
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| Officials
Rush to Build |
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| This city
is in a hurry to build affordable housing. Officials believe
that the District’s real estate boom and the isolated,
blighted neighborhoods left behind by that boom combine
to offer an opportunity to create integrated, healthy communities. |
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| “We’ve
gotten to a point in history where all the stars are
lined up for what we do,” said Deputy
Mayor Stanley Jackson. |
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Deputy
Mayor Stanley Jackson |
However, as property values
rise in some transitional neighborhoods, Jackson recognizes
that the opportunity to build new affordable housing won’t
last forever.
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| “Columbia Heights
is a great example of that. It’s an impossible market,” Jackson
said. In recent years, Columbia Heights has turned from
a blighted place into a charmingly restored, fully gentrified
neighborhood that is financially out of reach for affordable
housing developers that don’t already own land there. |
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Even in the Ivy
City and Trinidad neighborhood, which was once one of
the city’s toughest places, property values rose
an average of 31% in 2004 and affordable housing is in
increasingly short supply |
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| The
District never had as large a portfolio of abandoned
properties to work with as some run-down cities. There
are currently 2,900 abandoned sites, down from 9,800
15 years ago. As the cost of land rises, the DHCD has
created a site-acquisition
program that
lends affordable housing developers up to half of the
cost of acquiring a site (Read
More). |
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Phone
202-483-4986