(Washington, DC) – Today, Mayor Muriel Bowser announced that the District has surpassed its goal of delivering 36,000 new homes by 2025, a target the Mayor set in 2019 at the start of her second term. Since then, as of July 29, 2024, the District has produced 36,216 total housing units.
“In 2019, we set out to meet a bold goal – build 36,000 new homes in five years. To get it done, we made historic investments in affordable housing, we worked strategically with our housing partners, and we made DC the first city in the nation to set affordable housing goals by neighborhood,” said Mayor Bowser. “I’m proud that DC has been leading the region in this work, and looking ahead, we know that we must sustain and maintain these investments so that we can continue building on our progress.”
At the start of her second term, Mayor Bowser set the District’s housing goal and signed a Mayor’s Order on housing, directing District agencies to identify new policies, tools, and initiatives to begin fulfilling that goal. Since 2019, Mayor Bowser has invested over $1.3 billion into the Housing Production Trust Fund, the District’s primary tool for producing and preserving affordable housing.
In the fall of 2019, the Mayor also released the Housing Framework for Equity and Growth, making Washington, DC among the first cities in the nation to create neighborhood-specific goals for affordable housing. In 2021, the District’s Office of Planning also released the Rock Creek West Roadmap, which outlined District programs and policies to address the shortage of affordable housing in this area of the city. The Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) has implemented a new weight in its scoring system for projects applying for Housing Production Trust Fund dollars that prioritizes projects in planning areas that are below their target goals. In FY23, DHCD closed on its first HPTF loan in Rock Creek West at the Lisner-Louise-Dickson-Hurt Home that will bring 93 affordable homes to Ward 3.
“This is a historic milestone for housing in the District, we know how vital housing is for our residents and its role in strengthening our communities,” said DC Department of Housing and Community Development Director Colleen Green. “DHCD will continue to provide gap funding through unique financing structures for affordable housing construction and preservation across the District.”
The Mayor’s housing goal also aims to produce 12,000 new affordable units to households earning below 80% of Median Family Income (MFI). As of July 29, the District has produced 9,845 affordable units, reaching 82% of this goal. With over 2,500 units currently under construction, the District expects to meet the Mayor’s affordable housing target by the end of 2025.
The District is at the forefront of housing production in the region, including both overall and affordable housing. Despite comprising only 12% of the region’s population, the District has achieved the following over the past five years:
While average rents nationally have increased by 3.4% since 2019, average rents in DC have increased at half the national average (1.5%) during the same period. In addition, the jurisdictions surrounding the District experienced double the average annual rent growth as compared to DC’s average between 2019 and 2024.
At today’s event, Mayor Bowser also announced that on October 24, the District will host a housing summit on the future of sustainable and affordable housing. As cities grapple with housing supply shortages and rising costs, the summit will convene city leaders, government officials, affordable housing developers, national and local policy practitioners, and investors. They will discuss policies and initiatives to develop and preserve affordable housing and leverage resources to create healthy and environmentally friendly homes.
To follow the District’s overall housing progress on the #36000by2025 initiative, visit open.dc.gov/36000by2025.
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