Ethical Homes

A new study from the D. C. Fiscal Policy Institute confirms what anecdotal evidence has been indicating: the recent housing boom in DC has created a serious shortage of affordable housing in the city.

Although these sorts of reports rarely generate actual policy changes, this study might be different; as an article in the Washington Post and a post to the DCist website both note, DC is nearing an mayoral election in which both the outgoing mayor (assuming Williams doesn’t choose to run again) and the major challengers for the position have a need to court not just the business community (as Williams did early in his tenure) but also the lower-income residents who are most affected by this housing shortage. It will be interesting to see how the various mayoral candidates will propose to provide more affordable housing while still keeping the District’s economy growing as it has been doing recently.

(As far as I know, nobody has analyzed the corresponding census data for the rest of the Metro DC area, but anecdotal evidence again indicates that there is a serious shortage of affordable housing in Northern Virginia and metropolitan Maryland, as well.)