Solving DC's Housing Crisis?
DC will have 28 more affordable housing units by the end of this week. It sounds small but it's a step closer to one local nonprofit's big goal. So Others Might Eat ("SOME") will unveil the newly-renovated Augusta and Louisa Apartment Buildings at 1151 New Jersey Ave., NW, where 28 families will eventually live. Next door will also be the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Building. SOME will provide on-site services like financial literacy and money management. Most of the families, who will pay 30% of their income in rent, will be referred by The Community Partnership for the Prevention of Homelessness, and SOME will interview and approve families for move-in.
It’s been 25 years since SOME opened its first affordable housing unit. But over half of DC’s low-cost rental units and 72% of its low-value homes disappeared between 2000 and 2010. The trend is partly to blame for DC family homelessness increasing 25% in the last year. SOME wants to create 1,000 affordable housing for families and singles in DC and is three-fourths of the way to its goal. It also started raising $80M in 2012 for the Building Hope Project, a 300k square foot green building to open in 2016 that will take up an entire city block in Ward 7 and house job training, affordable housing for homeless and low-income families and singles, health care services, retail space, and SOME staff offices.
Trying to determine why affordable housing shrank so dramatically in a decade is complicated. SOME president/CEO Fr. John Adams says as DC became more desirable for the higher-income, Section 8 apartments allowed buildings to run down so they wouldn’t be re-certified, moved out tenants, and turned them into high-end condos. Other reasons: The pace of development of affordable units has not kept pace with the need; Money dried up for the Housing Production Trust Fund, which provides grants to nonprofit and for-profit affordable housing developers; DC land value increased; and federal funding for affordable housing has been cut by billions.
